"earthquake"

Concrete near the front of Gruening Middle School sustained major damage from Friday’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake, and there was a possible gas leak near the cafeteria.

Recouping losses to homes and property in the wake of a disaster involves multiple steps with insurance companies, as well as state and federal relief agencies.

The federal government has kicked in the first $5 million to help Alaska deal with the immediate effects of the earthquake. But the big money will have to come from Congress.

Here’s a look inside the Alaska Department of Transportation as it changed hands in the midst of its earthquake response.

With their primary backup site also closed by the earthquake, the air traffic controllers from the tower at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport went with Plan C: guiding in planes at the world’s fifth-busiest cargo hub from the cab of a pickup truck, at one end of the north-south runway.

Homeowners’ insurance doesn’t usually cover earthquake damage, but standard policies often extend to events that immediately follow an earthquake, like if a water pipe broke and flooded your home.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District said Houston Middle School will likely be closed for the rest of the year because of extensive damage from Friday’s earthquake.

Some outages still remain, but those are few and far between. The area’s three power providers are still assessing damage from the quake, which triggered outages for most of Anchorage on Friday.

Tom Sulczynski was driving that red GMC that became an icon of Friday’s earthquake in Anchorage.

As of Saturday morning, the state Department of Transportation had documented over 40 damaged sites. Drivers are advised to add significant time to their commute if they plan on traveling through those areas.