The town of Whittier has had no gas for weeks, and it's only manageable because it's summer

The entire town of Whittier has been without natural gas since the night of Aug. 16, and ENSTAR does not expect to restore it until Sept. 5, leaving residents to go about three weeks with no gas appliances. The utility shut off every meter in town after the pipeline that carries gas to Whittier, running beneath the Twentymile River, deteriorated further.

Much of Whittier lives in one building, which makes the outage unusually concentrated. Of the 39 gas meters ENSTAR serves in town, one feeds Begich Towers, the 14-story condominium where a large share of the community's residents live. When the gas went off, it went off for the building much of the town calls home.

The break was found almost by chance, after a boater on the water smelled gas on Aug. 9; ENSTAR confirmed a break the next day. The pipe runs under the Twentymile River near Portage, a salmon-bearing waterway that empties into Turnagain Arm, and the state has authorized emergency repairs there. ENSTAR is fixing the line while it prepares a new crossing under the river, and is trucking liquefied natural gas down from Fairbanks to keep some supply flowing in the meantime.

The timing is the town's good fortune. An outage this long would be far more serious in an Anchorage-area winter; in late August, with the weather still warm, going without gas heat and hot water is an inconvenience rather than a danger. What caused the failure, and its full scope, has not been stated.