Fire broke out at Sand Point’s Peter Pan Seafood Co. facility last Wednesday morning. Office manager Edith Mejia said the fire likely started between 7 and 8 a.m. Mejia also serves as the dispatcher for the local police department.
The facility is not a processing plant for the company but a stock room and bookkeeping space, with the number of employees ranging from just two to four people seasonally. Sand Point is located on Popof Island, a municipality situated nearly 800 miles southwest of Anchorage, AK, near the entrance of the Bering Sea.
According to a press release from Peter Pan, the warehouse and stock room were both involved in the fire, and there were no injuries.
“The town smells like burning plastic- it’s awful outside,” Mejia stated in the release. “You can smell it from here, and I’m far away from them.”
She said the smell of burning plastic was due to the fishing gear, such as nets and rope, kept at the Peter Pan building.
The statement also included, “We have staff on the ground in Sand Point and teams coming from King Cove to continue to assess the situation and gather information on the incident.”
The local fire department, emergency medical services, public safety, and TDX Power Group, a rural utility provider on the island, all responded to the fire and were on the scene Wednesday morning, according to KUCB.
The cause of the fire is still unknown; however, the facilities were completely destroyed.
