Ouzinkie's tsunami shelter is zoned as a house. The borough is about to fix that.

On an island reachable only by boat or small plane, where a tsunami evacuation plan sends people to higher ground, the designated shelter has a paperwork problem: it's zoned as a single-family home. The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly votes July 16 to fix it.

The building sits on the former Ouzinkie Airport, and when that airstrip closed, its residential zoning stayed behind — leaving the community's tsunami shelter and tribal government offices operating on land that, on paper, isn't allowed to be either. The Native Village of Ouzinkie, with the city's backing, applied to rezone the parcel to public use so the building can legally be what it already is.

"The proposed tsunami structure site needs to be rezoned into an appropriate zone for its use as a tsunami shelter, tribal office and multi-purpose building," Community Development Director Chris French wrote in the application.

The borough's planning commission recommended approval, and the Assembly advanced it to a public hearing without objection. For a low-lying village on Spruce Island, it lines up the paperwork with the shelter the community already relies on.