Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Atka, AK

Atka is a small incorporated city on the east side of Atka Island in the Aleutians West Census Area, about 1,100 air miles from Anchorage and 90 air miles east of Adak, served by ZIP code 99547.

The 2020 census counted 53 people in Atka, down from 61 in 2010, living in 14 households, and the city had 38 housing units, of which 63.2 percent were vacant.

Nearly the entire population is Aleut (Unangan): 94.3 percent of residents identified as American Indian and Alaska Native in the 2020 census, and the Aleut language is still spoken in about one-fourth of homes.

Atka Island has been occupied by the Unangax̂ people for at least 2,000 years, and archaeological evidence indicates that the present village site may have had human use since prehistoric times.

First contact with Russians came in 1747, and Atka became an important trade site and safe harbor for Russians; the island later hosted the Russian-American Company's western office from 1799 to 1867.

Atka first appeared on the 1880 census as the unincorporated Aleut village of Nazan, with 236 residents, of whom 220 were Aleut, and it returned as Atka in 1890 with 132 residents.

The townsite was settled in the 1860s, and after the sea otter hunting era ended in the late 1800s the village had no viable cash economy until reindeer were introduced to the island in 1914.

In June 1942, after Japan attacked Dutch Harbor and seized Attu and Kiska, the U.S. military evacuated Atka's residents and burned the village to keep it from enemy use, and the villagers spent the war housed in the defunct herring plant at Killisnoo, near Angoon in Southeast Alaska.

The community was rebuilt by the U.S. Navy after the war and residents were allowed to return, and many Attu villagers released from imprisonment in Japan in 1945 relocated to Atka.

Atka was made a census-designated place in 1980 and formally incorporated as a second-class city in 1988.