Alaska Science Forum

October 20, 2011

Alaska buildings without us

Article #2086

by by Ned Rozell

A concrete foundation is all that remains of Shaktoolik’s old school, abandoned after the village moved to a new site about 70 years ago.

Photo by Aaron Cooke

In Alan Weisman’s book, “The World Without Us,” the author ponders “a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow.”

In his great thought experiment, Weisman travels around the world to explore that
question, revealing that cockroaches and bedbugs would not fare well without
our sloppiness and warmth, and that Theodore Roosevelt’s granite face will
stare down from Mount Rushmore for the next 7.2 million years.

Weisman devotes a chapter to buildings, going into detail on their natural, gradual
destruction. It all begins with water, Weisman writes, quoting a farmer who
said a sure way to destroy a barn is to cut an 18-inch hole in its roof.

Posed with the question of the fate of Alaska structures without us, researchers with
the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks agreed that the liquid
stuff of life is the most powerful agent of demise.

“All it takes is water draining into the building for the failures to start,” said
product testing director Colin Craven, who noted the spectacular, gradual death
of a neglected Fairbanks hotel, accompanied by “amazing blooms of mold and
moss.”

“The water and air carry all the destruction potential we need by bringing
microorganisms, by causing dissolution of minerals and corrosion,” he said. “Of
course, humans usually accelerate the process, as abandoned mines and military
facilities get vandalized quickly before the elements have their chance.
Without that, it would be a lot slower and more interesting.”

The research center’s Ilya Benesch has witnessed the slower and more interesting
fade of a mining building in Poorman, Alaska, which benefitted from a
still-intact tin roof. Built in the early 1900s, the structure, about 70 miles
south of Ruby, was still in decent shape about 75 years later.

“Inside, tools were still on the shelves, (as were) duplicate and triplicate spare parts
and rebuild sets for a lot of the equipment they used,” he said. “The biggest
issue was bears and porcupines that broke in and started making a mess of
things.”

Most other structures, even those in the dry and cold interior of Alaska, where
decomposition is on hold for half the year, don’t fare so well.

“The old town of Chatanika (about 25 miles north of Fairbanks) was vibrant and
occupied up into the 1930s and there is almost nothing left,” said Robbin
Garber-Slaght, the center’s product testing lab engineer. “The camp that
covered the whole hill is gone.”

She and others at the center noted that in an extreme climate like ours, water eats
a building from the inside as well as the outside.

The problem would start as soon as power stations run out of coal or diesel or
natural gas and there’s no one there to feed them. Dropping temperatures within
buildings would then freeze pipes, water tanks and bottles of apple juice. The
expansion of those frozen liquids liberates them from containers, and there the
problems start, said research engineer Bruno Grunau.

“The spring thaw would ease these liquids right onto the floor of your home,
hastening rot of the structure, and beginning the gently accelerating path
toward decomposition,” he said.

The longevity of Alaska buildings depends largely upon the materials builders used,
said Aaron Cooke, an architectural designer.

“Organic stuff goes first,” he said. “Metals rust second, and ceramics last the
longest. Except for maybe stainless steel.

“In Shaktoolik, which is prone to violent storms, the old village school (circa
1940) had its wooden body obliterated,” he said. “The concrete foundation
remains.”

Some people think concrete is less enduring in the north, but it holds up for a long
time when a building is not heated, Cooke said.

“As soon as they go cold, they can't damage the ground anymore (by warming the
permafrost), which means that they can't damage themselves (by wrecking their
foundations). Ironically, there are some buildings in the high arctic that
would last far longer without us in them.”