Mushers and Dogs Braved Horrific Alaska Winter to Deliver Lifesaving Serum 100 Years Ago

FILE - The snow-covered coastal plain area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is seen, with the Brooks Range at right, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, near Kaktovik, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
FILE - The snow-covered coastal plain area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is seen, with the Brooks Range at right, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, near Kaktovik, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
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Mushers and Dogs Braved Horrific Alaska Winter to Deliver Lifesaving Serum 100 Years Ago

FILE - The snow-covered coastal plain area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is seen, with the Brooks Range at right, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, near Kaktovik, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
FILE - The snow-covered coastal plain area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is seen, with the Brooks Range at right, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, near Kaktovik, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The Alaska Gold Rush town of Nome faced a bleak winter. It was hundreds of miles from anywhere, cut off by the frozen sea and unrelenting blizzards, and under siege from a contagious disease known as the “strangling angel” for the way it suffocated children.
Now, 100 years later, Nome is remembering its saviors — the sled dogs and mushers who raced for more than five days through hypothermia, frostbite, gale-force winds and blinding whiteouts to deliver life-saving serum and free the community from the grip of diphtheria, The Associated Press reported.
Among the events celebrating the centennial of the 1925 “Great Race of Mercy” are lectures, a dog-food drive and a reenactment of the final leg of the relay, all organized by the Nome Kennel Club.
Remembering the mushers and dogs for ‘heroic effort’ “There’s a lot of fluff around celebrations like this, but we wanted to remember the mushers and their dogs who have been at the center of this heroic effort and ... spotlight mushing as a still-viable thing for the state of Alaska,” said Diana Haecker, a kennel club board member and co-owner of Alaska’s oldest newspaper, the Nome Nugget.
“People just dropped whatever they were doing," she said. "These mushers got their teams ready and went, even though it was really cold and challenging conditions on the trail.”
Other communities are also marking the anniversary — including the village of Nenana, where the relay began, and Cleveland, Ohio, where the serum run's most famous participant, a husky mix named Balto, is stuffed and displayed at a museum.
Jonathan Hayes, a Maine resident who has been working to preserve the genetic line of sled dogs driven on the run by famed musher Leonhard Seppala, is recreating the trip. Hayes left Nenana on Monday with 16 Seppala Siberian sled dogs, registered descendants of Seppala's team.
The historic trek to neutralize the diphtheria epidemic in Nome Diphtheria is an airborne disease that causes a thick, suffocating film to develop at the back of the throat; it was once a leading cause of death for children. The antitoxin used to treat it was developed in 1890, and a vaccine in 1923; it is now exceedingly rare in the U.S.
Nome, western Alaska’s largest community, had about 1,400 residents a century ago. Its most recent supply ship had arrived the previous fall, before the Bering Sea froze, without any doses of the antitoxin. Those the local doctor, Curtis Welch, had were outdated, but he wasn't worried. He hadn’t seen a case of diphtheria in the 18 years he had practiced in the area.
Within months, that changed. In a telegram, Welch pleaded with the U.S. Public Health Service to send serum: "An epidemic of diphtheria is almost inevitable here.”
The first death was a 3-year-old boy on Jan. 20, 1925, followed the next day by a 7-year-old girl. By the end of the month, there were more than 20 confirmed cases. The city was placed under quarantine.
West Coast hospitals had antitoxin doses, but it would take time to get them to Seattle and then onto a ship for Seward, an ice-free port south of Anchorage. In the meantime, enough for 30 people was found at an Anchorage hospital.
It still had to get to Nome. Airplanes with open-air cockpits were ruled out as unsuited for the weather. There were no roads or trains that reached Nome.
Instead, officials shipped the serum by rail to Nenana in interior Alaska, some 675 miles (1,086 kilometers) from Nome via the frozen Yukon River and mail trails.
Thanks to Alaska’s new telegraph lines and the spread of radio, the nation followed along, captivated, as 20 mushers — many of them Alaska Natives — with more than 150 dogs relayed the serum to Nome. They battled deep snow, whiteouts so severe they couldn’t see the dogs in front of them, and life-threatening temperatures that plunged at times to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 51 degrees Celsius).
The antitoxin was transported in glass vials covered with padded quilts. Not a single vial broke.
Seppala, a Norwegian settler, left from Nome to meet the supply near the halfway point and begin the journey back. His team, led by his dog Togo, traveled more than 250 miles (320 kilometers) of the relay, including a treacherous stretch across frozen Norton Sound.
After about 5 1/2 days, the serum reached its destination on Feb. 2, 1925. A banner front-page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle proclaimed: “Dogs victors over blizzard in battle to succor stricken Nome.”
The official record listed five deaths and 29 illnesses. It’s likely the toll was higher; Alaska Natives were not accurately tracked.
Balto gains fame as unlikely dog to bring serum to Nome Seppala and Togo missed the limelight that went to his assistant, Gunnar Kaasen, who drove the dog team led by Balto into Nome. Balto was another of Seppala’s dogs, but was used to only haul freight after he was deemed too slow to be on a competitive team.
Balto was immortalized in movies and with statues in New York's Central Park and one in Anchorage intended as a tribute to all sled dogs. He received a bone-shaped key to the city of Los Angeles, where legendary movie actress Mary Pickford placed a wreath around his neck.
But he and several team members were eventually sold and kept in squalid conditions at a dime museum in Los Angeles. After learning of their plight, an Ohio businessman spearheaded an effort to raise money to bring them to Cleveland. After dying in 1933, Balto was mounted and placed on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
Iditarod pays homage to the serum run Today, the most famous mushing event in the world is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which is not based on the serum run but on the Iditarod Trail, a supply route from Seward to Nome. Iditarod organizers are nevertheless marking the serum run's centennial, with a series of articles on its website and by selling replicas of the medallions each serum run musher received a century ago, race spokesperson Shannon Noonan said in an email. This year's Iditarod starts March 1.
“The Serum Run demonstrated the critical role sled dogs played in the survival and communication of remote Alaskan communities, while the Iditarod has evolved into a celebration of that tradition and Alaska’s pioneering spirit,” Noonan said.



Scientists Predict Major Quake in Chile’s Mineral-Rich North 

Bikers observe a bridge that collapsed in an earthquake in Concepcion some 100 km (62 miles) south of the epicenter, February 27, 2010. (Reuters)
Bikers observe a bridge that collapsed in an earthquake in Concepcion some 100 km (62 miles) south of the epicenter, February 27, 2010. (Reuters)
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Scientists Predict Major Quake in Chile’s Mineral-Rich North 

Bikers observe a bridge that collapsed in an earthquake in Concepcion some 100 km (62 miles) south of the epicenter, February 27, 2010. (Reuters)
Bikers observe a bridge that collapsed in an earthquake in Concepcion some 100 km (62 miles) south of the epicenter, February 27, 2010. (Reuters)

Fifteen years ago on February 27, a devastating 8.8 magnitude quake struck southern Chile off the coast of Concepcion, shaking the ground for four minutes and unleashing a tsunami that left 550 dead.

It was the deadliest natural disaster in the country since the 1960 9.5 magnitude quake, the strongest ever recorded in the world. Now scientists are expecting a big earthquake in the country's mineral-rich north.

Chile is the world's largest copper producer and second-largest lithium producer. The country's largest copper mines are located in the north as well as all of its lithium production.

"Every 10 years there's a big event," said Felipe Leyton, a seismologist at the University of Chile, adding that there are areas of the country that build up a lot of geological stress through fault lines.

"This lets you see the potential for a big earthquake that lets us say in the short term, in seismic and geological terms, we're expecting a big earthquake in the northern part of the country."

Chile, a long and skinny country spanning 4,300 km (2,672 miles) in length with an average width of 180 km (112 miles), has the Andes mountain range running all along its western border.

Chile is located on the seismically active Ring of Fire that surrounds the Pacific Ocean. Its mountains and earthquakes are the product of the Nazca and South American tectonic plates crashing into each other all along the length of Chile.

Dr. Mohama Ayaz, a geologist and geospatial engineer at the University of Santiago of Chile, says GPS technology lets scientists monitor plate movement for any variation and anticipate possible seismic events.

"We obviously can't say exactly when, but we can anticipate them," Ayaz said. "Earthquakes are the result of built-up stress and that stress depends on the last time since the last seismic event."

Ayaz noted there has not been a large release in the north of the country like there was in the southern part of the country in 2010.

"So what we're expecting in the short term, is an earthquake in the north, we can't say when, but we can wait for it," Ayaz said.