WATERFORD — Retired carpenter Sam Maruca is leaving Wednesday on his sixth mission trip to an Alaskan Eskimo village to build houses.

The job in Crooked Creek is to replace homes swept away last March by an ice flow on the Kuskokwim River in the southwestern part of the state. The ice flow caused a wall of water 30 feet high to sweep away 79 percent of the village, Maruca said.

The river is the second largest in the state.

The team of 10 to 20 volunteers must build eight two- or three-bedroom houses before the end of October. The ranch-style homes will be 1,000-square-feet and stand on a floating foundation 4 feet off the ground. The walls will have foam sprayed in for insulation.

The work is being done under the auspices of Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian disaster relief program organized and led by the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham.

Volunteers must pay their way to the site, but their room and board is paid by Samaritan’s Purse. Maruca said the volunteers will fly to Anchorage and then go by small planes to the village.

Maruca started volunteering his carpenter skills in 2007 in Hooper Bay on the west coast of Alaska. A team built eight houses and a teen center, and a church to replace one that burned there.

His second trip was to the  city of Kenai in southern Alaska where the team built a dinning hall at a kids camp. In the years following he joined teams building churches in Unalakleet and Marshall, both in western Alaska.

In July, Maruca was part of a team that rebuilt eight cabins and a recreational facility in Port Alsworth on Lake Clark in southern Alaska. Samaritan’s Purse will use it as a retreat center for wounded veterans and their families. Maruca said the facility will probably be available sometime next year.

Maruca described the villages where the teams have worked as very rustic. There is no plumbing in the homes and the local dump has two sides: One for trash and the other for the buckets used in the homes for toilets, he said.

People go to a central building to bring water to their homes and to take showers and do their laundry, he said. There is a village generator which supplies electricity, but it’s turned off at night.

An elected tribal chief and tribal council make up the local government. The state brings in teachers for the school, he said.

There are some opportunities for employment in the gold and copper mines and in logging and fishing, he said.

Maruca, whose wife, Ruth, a retired nurse, has also been on several short mission trips, said he’s looking forward to this next challenge and helping the Yupik people in Crooked Creek rebuild their lives.

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