Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Cold Bay, AK

Cold Bay is a city in Aleutians East Borough, Alaska, and one of the main commercial centers of the Alaska Peninsula, home to Cold Bay Airport.

The 2020 census counted just 50 people in Cold Bay, down from 108 in 2010, living in 21 households, with a median age of 43.5 years.

Cold Bay, known in Aleut as Udaamagax and in Sugpiaq as Pualu, uses the motto Wildlife, fishing, hunting, and a world of opportunity.

Cold Bay first appeared on the 1890 census as the unincorporated area of Thin Point, including two canneries and a salting station with 231 residents, became a census-designated place in 1980, and was incorporated as a city in January 1982.

Cold Bay's significance to American history began in World War II, when General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. ordered the creation of Fort Randall, an airbase on the shores of Cold Bay, in 1942 as part of the expansion of American assets in the Aleutians.

Fort Randall and Otter Point served as a base for the 11th Air Force protecting Dutch Harbor, then the only deep-water port in the Aleutians, and P-40 fighters stationed at Cold Bay repulsed the initial Japanese attack during the Midway campaign, after which forces there grew to 20,000 troops whose quonset huts still stand around the community.

In the spring and summer of 1945 Cold Bay was the site of Project Hula, the largest and most ambitious transfer program of World War II, in which the United States transferred dozens of ships and craft to the Soviet Union and trained Soviet personnel to operate them ahead of the Soviet entry into the war against Japan.

After the war the airfield passed to civil authorities as a refueling and emergency landing location for great-circle flights from the west coast of the United States to East Asia, and Cold Bay is still occasionally used for emergency landings and as a hub for traffic from Anchorage and Seattle to small surrounding communities.

Cold Bay holds the record as the most overcast community in America and is considered the cloudiest place in the United States, averaging 304 days of heavy overcast a year, with recorded temperatures ranging only from 78 degrees Fahrenheit down to minus 13.

Cold Bay is a highly transient community whose residents, drawn largely by Wildlife Refuge, Weather Service, or air traffic jobs, rarely stay more than a year.