He fought the fire that destroyed his Kaktovik school. Now he's helping to rebuild it.

On a February night in 2020, RoyRobert Fischer-Akootchook drove a front loader through the burning hallways of his old school, dumping snow to try to stop the flames. It wasn't enough. The fire took most of Harold Kaveolook School, the building generations of Kaktovik kids had grown up in — including him. Nearly six years later, he's back at the same site, running a crane to help rebuild it.

"We did everything we could to save it," Fischer-Akootchook said. "I even plowed through hallways with a loader and dumped mountains of snow to help stop the spread of the fire." He fought it as a volunteer firefighter, in −35-degree cold, the night the heart of the village burned.

The years since have been hard on Kaktovik. The Iñupiat community of about 300 people, perched on Barter Island on the edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, lost the building that held its classrooms, its gym, and its gathering space all at once. Students have made do in a cramped interim school ever since — and the rebuild has crawled, slowed by the brutal work of replacing fire-contaminated soil and driving foundation piles in a place where nothing is easy or quick to build. The nearest other school is more than 140 miles away.

The delay came at a real cost. Without a proper gym, some Kaktovik kids left the village for boarding schools just to be able to play sports. So when the new gym finally opened last December — the first of three phases — it landed as more than a building. Residents gathered for the ribbon-cutting with Iñupiaq dancing and drumming, in a space that will now host home games, feasts and funerals. The rest of the school isn't due until the winter of 2027-28, eight years after the fire.

Fischer-Akootchook is part of why it matters that the work is being done by people with roots here. He went to Harold Kaveolook through high school, helped expand its old gym in 2016, and rejoined UIC Construction in 2023. He earned his crane operator certification this year, and the rebuild of his own school is his first job as a certified operator.

Local people "can play an important role in building our own communities," he said. As for the subsistence life that has held Kaktovik together through all of it: "It's about respecting the land, providing for family and elders, and carrying on traditions that have been passed down through generations."