Hurricane-force winds pound remote Coast Guard station

ANCHORAGE - The crew at the Coast Guard station on Attu Island was digging out Wednesday following a weekend storm packing hurricane-force winds that left 7-foot snow drifts and a thick layer of ice on just about everything.

The storm shook the Loran Station's 1-foot thick concrete walls. The sturdy station's wind meter peaked out early Sunday with a 178 mph-hour blast.

The station windows were still covered in thick ice, said Stephen Strecker, the Loran Station's 52-year-old engineering petty officer from Kenai, Alaska.

Strecker, who has been at the station for seven months, said he's getting more used to the horrendous storms that rip through Attu Island, which is located at the end of the 1,200-mile Aleutian Island chain. He was even able to sleep through the weekend storm, but only because it wasn't pounding the wall next to his bed.

Even so, it was hard to ignore.

"There are no trees out there, so nothing blocks the wind," he said. "It just sounded like you were next to a train station and a train was going by. It kind of sounded like ongoing rumbling thunder and then there would be peaks where it sounded like something hit the building ... like somebody had bumped into the building with a truck or something."

When Strecker placed his hand on the wall during the storm, he could feel it vibrate. The sound of the storm came through the building's ventilation system. The level of the water in the toilets went up and down with each wind gust.

Strecker ventured up to the recreation deck to watch the storm out the one window that remained clear during the storm.

"It looked like you were going through a snowstorm in a jet," he said.

When William Sniffen first arrived at the Coast Guard station a month and half ago from his hometown in Sidney, Ohio, he was struck by how quiet and peaceful life was on the remote Alaska island. But the 19-year-old firefighter's impression of Attu changed after the storm, which packed the strongest level of hurricane-force winds.

Sniffen said the crew stayed inside for a couple of days. The constant roar of the storm was enough to persuade him not to venture out, he said.

"It was pretty crazy," said Sniffen, a member of the Loran Station's 21-person crew - the only people who live on Attu.

"Even when it wasn't snowing it looked like it was because the wind was blowing snow all over the place," he said. "It was definitely white everywhere, somewhat blinding at times."

By the time the storm ended, there was more than a foot and a half of new snow. One of the communication station antennas was gone.

The storm died down Sunday morning, enough to let the station's crew begin the huge job of digging out - even if winds were still gusting up to 80 mph.

"That seemed pretty tame," Strecker said.