Preparing for Breakup | Life Below Zero

This is kind of an exciting time of year for me. My blood gets pumping a little bit 'cause it's breakup, and breakup to me is like New Year's to most people. So I start my calendar year the day the river breaks up, and looking at the river, breakup is going to happen real quick here.

So I got all my food, dry good food type supplies here, and the next step I got to do is I got to get going on uh getting some boats together. Create an arc for me and the dogs in case we flood. I'm always nervous after the flood in 2009; you never know what this river is going to do. It can be your best friend or it can kick your ass.

In 2009, Andy Bassage experienced one of the most devastating breakups of the Yukon River in recorded history. The resulting flood cost invaluable equipment and machinery and took the life of a member of his dog team. Having spent years rebuilding his livelihood, it's critical for Andy to take every precaution against the impending breakup in order to protect his home and the lives of himself and his sled dogs.

My next job is I got to get my army boats turned over, get them stern to stern, and then connect them up to each other. That'll make about a 40-foot long barge; that's the ark. It's really important to create a safety net at breakup here, so I'm going to have to get some boats put together, get it set up for dogs, have some food in there, some water in there, 'cause you never know out here at breakup time.

This could be what we call a slush out, where the river just breaks up and goes out nice and easy, or it could be an ass kicker. And if it's an ass kicker, I might be in a boat for 24 hours waiting for the water to go back down. Although it creates a lot of extra work for me, it's a whole lot more work if I don't do this prep.

In 2009, the water level came up from river level to flooding this property in probably less than 15 minutes—20 feet of water rise in 15 minutes. You don't have a whole lot of time to react. Right now, my mind is all wrapped around priorities: take care of the material things around here that will get ruined in a flood, and then the second top priority is the safety for me and the dogs in the boat.

"Come on, come on, Coug! Yeah, come on, Brigas! Come on, Brig! Come on, Brig! Yay! Good job in the boat! Good job in the boat!"

So what'll happen is I can clip them in and they're secure. "Come here, Jack! There you go, buddy!" So I can go through and just secure dogs in like this; then everybody's under control.

"Okay, the flood's over! Flood's over! Go play! Okay, everybody out of the boat! Let's go! Come on, let's go on to the next job!"