Dear friends, thanks for all the prayers and offers of assistance today.

At 8:29 this morning, a 7.0 earthquake struck 7 miles north of Anchorage, 25 miles below the earth’s surface.  It went on for quite some time.  I’m happy to report that for such a strong earthquake, we have yet to hear of any serious personal harm, and early reports reveal limited damage to our church structures.

On the feast of St. Andrew, the one church to suffer some structure damage is St. Andrew in Eagle River.  Also, a house at St. Patrick’s parish in Anchorage is likely damaged to the point it will need to be demolished.  Most of the rest of us just have a lot of cleaning up to do.

I have encouraged our pastors to have engineers check our public buildings to make sure they are safe for public use.  We will also have an engineer review our chancery building as well.  While we hope to have the chancery open next Monday, our staff will have the freedom to remain at home with children who will be out of school till mid week, and to put their own homes and lives back in order.

Locally, there has been some severe damage to roadways, closing the main highway north and south of Anchorage until mid-afternoon. The highway is back open with detours in both directions this evening.

I’ll try to post again later this weekend with an update.

Please keep those prayers coming for any who have been displaced today.

Peace,

+pde

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