Alaska Village Aids Stranded Jet Passengers

Residents of a tiny village on the wind-swept tundra of the Alaskan peninsula pitched in to find blankets and food for 220 passengers stranded when their plane made an unscheduled landing.

The MD-11 landed Friday evening in Cold Bay, a community of about 65 residents about 625 miles southwest of Anchorage and 40 miles from the start of the Aleutian Islands.

Delta Air Lines Flight 79 from Los Angeles to Tokyo carried 220 passengers and an unknown number of crew members--nearly quadruple the village’s population. Airline spokeswoman Tracey Bowen said the crew smelled smoke in the cabin.

The 10,000-foot runway, Alaska’s third largest, is a remnant of Cold Bay’s days as a key World War II staging area. It is an alternative landing site for the space shuttle, and other aircraft, usually cargo planes, make about one emergency landing there a year.

Emergency medical technician Eric Skansgaard said the Delta passengers, mostly Japanese, disembarked into temperatures in the teens and winds of 30 to 35 mph.

A caravan of public and private vehicles ferried passengers to the village’s two hotels, which usually house 20 guests each but took 40 Friday night. Another group stayed in Fish and Wildlife Service housing, and the rest spent the night at the three-room Cold Bay School.

“We rounded up all the spare bedding and mattresses that were in the community,” said electric utility owner Gary Ferguson. “It was an experience.”

Community members provided rice, home-canned salmon, biscuits and bacon for breakfast. Cold Bay Lodge baked about 500 biscuits plus bacon and sausage. “All the women in the community brought their rice cookers,” Skansgaard said.

Delta flew in mechanics to repaired a shorted-out ventilation motor, Ferguson said. Passengers reboarded the jet Saturday morning for Anchorage, where it left Saturday afternoon for Tokyo.