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On Thursday, May 30, SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Wrangell Medical Center (WMC) from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. at 232 Wood Street in Wrangell. Located adjacent to the Alaska Island Community Services (AICS) Medical Clinic, the new WMC will include a critical access hospital and long-term care facility. The decision to build a new medical center is in concert with SEARHC's intent to enhance and expand healthcare services in...
Fire, smoke, and sirens could all be seen and heard at the Wrangell airport last Tuesday afternoon. While there was no real emergency, the situation was meant to simulate one. A disaster drill was held on the airport's runway. According to Airport Manager Willie Bloom, the drill is a triennial event in Wrangell and is required by the FAA. He said the drill is meant to be an opportunity for the Department of Transportation, the Wrangell Fire Department, and the city's medical services be better...
Charles P. Berg, 88, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, passed away peacefully at Abrazo West Medical Center on April 9, 2019. He was born in Pierpoint, South Dakota on March 2, 1931 and spent his youth in Seward, Alaska and Wrangell, Alaska. His parents, Claude and Geraldine were teachers. He graduated from Wrangell High School in 1949 and played varsity basketball for the Wrangell Wolves. Charlie met his wife, Helen Angerman, during high school and they were married on September 17, 1954 in...
The Tlingit and Haida Regional Housing Authority held a two-hour training session at the Nolan Center last Wednesday evening, April 24. The THRHA works across Southeast Alaska to create affordable housing, offers opportunities for home repairs, and even helps people learn about money management. Representatives from the organization came to Wrangell last week to offer training on financial planning and preventative home maintenance. The budgeting portion of the training session was handled by...
Hospice of Wrangell operates a loan closet from which people all around town are able to borrow medical equipment, such as walkers, wheel chairs, shower benches, and other items. Hospice President Alice Rooney explained that the loan closet stores many of its items in the attic of the AICS Clinic on Wood Street. With the construction of Wrangell's new hospital beginning, however, the clinic's storage space will be renovated and the loan closet's items needed to be moved. "So those items had to...
Work began to clear land for Wrangell's new hospital last week. Kendall Nielsen, with Dawson Construction, said that they began cutting down trees on April 4, and will continue to clear and level land next to the AICS Clinic through the rest of the month. The land will be ready to pour the foundation by the second week of May, he added. The new hospital has been an ongoing project in Wrangell for several years. Construction of a new hospital was part of the deal made by the Southeast Alaska...
The Wrangell School Board reviewed the school district's "report card to the public" in their recent meeting on Monday, April 15. The report card, released by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, collected and presented data on the performance of school districts across the state for the 2017-2018 school year. The report card examined items such as attendance and graduation rates, academic progress, teacher quality, and many other factors. According to the report card. Everg...
The Wrangell Borough Assembly recognized the Lady Wolves high school basketball team during their meeting on Tuesday evening for their hard work over the recent season. Mayor Steve Prysunka, in reading a proclamation congratulating the team, pointed out that the Lady Wolves took first place in regionals, defeating Metlakatla, for the first time in 25 years, and that numerous team members had received several awards and accolades over the course of the season. "I, Stephen Prysunka, mayor of the...
Aminda Skan, the daughter of former Wrangell resident Mercedes Angerman, is a second-year pharmacy student with Doctor of Pharmacy program that is jointly organized by the Idaho State University and the University of Alaska Anchorage. She received her bachelor's degree in biological science from UAA in May 2017. Her doctorate program has ISU's name on it, but as she explained in an email, it allows her to remain in Alaska to achieve her degree. Recently, through her work to increase the number...
Robert Rang came on as the Wrangell Medical Center's administrator in October of 2015. The hospital was only the latest step in a three-decade career. Rang said he started his career as a CNA, and he kept on slowly rising up in the business. He was working in Kodiak when he first heard about this job being available in Wrangell, he said. "The opportunity opened up, it was something I was very interested in. Small town life is what my wife and I enjoy, along with all the other activities that...
The Wrangell Borough Assembly discussed a proposed noise ordinance once again during their meeting onTuesday. The ordinance has been the source of some controversy around town, some seeing it as the result of two feuding neighbors, or that the regulations proposed by the ordinance are unrealistic. When the ordinance was brought up for discussion in the last meeting, on March 12, there was a very large public turnout to speak their minds on the topic. During that meeting, the assembly proposed various amendments to the ordinance. Previously,...
For the second straight month, Wrangell Medical Center’s (WMC) Long-Term Care sits atop the state rankings for nursing home quality, based on an average of 11 quality measures used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). With scores of 4.49 and 3.37 in December 2018 and January 2019, respectively, WMC scored below the CMS national target of 6.0 and well below the state composite scores of 8.5 in December 8.42 in January, besting the 17 other qualified nursing homes in Alaska. “We have a great team at WMC,” said WMC Admin...
February 13, 1919 All of America is expected to be singing during the week beginning Sunday, February 16, and ending Saturday, February 22. The movement is endorsed by United States Commissioner of Education Claxton; leading state, city, and county superintendents: music supervisors; and leaders of community singing throughout the United States. The objects are “to awaken and develop a love for singing and to make America a singing nation and through the medium of songs of the right sort to inspire us to higher ideals and to unite us as a p...
Guardian Flight has resumed their air medical transport service in six base locations across Alaska following a 63-hour search for an overdue Guardian King Air 200 medical life flight near Kake. While services have resumed in Anchorage, Deadhorse, Dillingham, Fairbanks, Ketchikan and Sitka, Guardian Flight base locations in Kotzebue and Juneau will reopen sometime in the future, according Guardian Flight senior vice president of operations Randy Lyman in a prepared statement. "Guardian Flight...
February 6, 1919 We are enjoying a very mild winter, and up to the present have not had any weather below zero. The snowfall has been light; only a depth of eight inches along the river in this vicinity. Also, very little ice is on the Stikine. The trappers are catching very few furs. In fact, trappers say that prospects this winter are the worst that they remember in this district. There is a lot of illness among the Natives at present, and the medical missionary has 22 patients under his care. He said that it resembled Spanish influenza, but...
Valentine's Day is always a popular holiday among those who enjoy eating chocolate. Chocolate and the holiday for love and romance have long been connected. In Wrangell, however, there is another special chocolate-related event in February that chocoholics can look forward to. The Chocolate Lovers Festival will be taking place this Sat., Feb. 9, at the Downtown Pavilion. JoDee Howell, Activities Director with the Wrangell Medical Center, is organizing the festival this year. She said that the...
The borough assembly held a short special meeting last Friday night, Jan. 11. The purpose of the meeting was to approve of two tail insurance policies for the Wrangell Medical Center. Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen explained that tail insurance is designed to cover something that happened in the past, but had consequences that only become apparent in the future. “So rather than insuring operations that ‘are’, you’re insuring things that occurred in the past,” she said. “So if someone should file a claim against operations, or a decision, o...
The Wrangell borough assembly met last Tuesday night to hear an update on the transition of the Wrangell Medical Center to SEARHC control. The regional healthcare consortium took over the medical center late last year and is in the process of building a new hospital in Wrangell. In the meantime, the WMC will be run by SEARHC until the new hospital is ready to receive patients, reportedly in 2021. Dan Neumeister, with SEARHC, said the transition has been very smooth for the hospital’s employees. There have also been some technological and i...
April The Department of Transportation is finally able to get started on a major Wrangell road repaving project. Perforated by potholes, the borough’s Evergreen Avenue will be resurfaced and repaired, with pedestrian improvements and other fixes. The major project has been on hold for half a decade, surviving rounds of budget cuts to capital funding elsewhere in the state along the way. Two local right of way issues which had lately been holding up the project were wrapped up in February, allowing the project to move along. Speaking at a p...
The past year has been a busy one for the community of Wrangell, and also one full of changes. Elections have come and gone, the school district saw a new superintendent and two new principals, a high school swimming and diving team was organized, and a new reporter came to town. A new organization was formed, BRAVE, to help bring people together to enhance life in the community for Wrangell’s younger population. Other organizations like the Senior Center and Nolan Center saw new faces, as well. There were lots of physical changes to W...
City officials, Wrangell Medical Center staff, SEARHC representatives, and many community members were present at the Nolan Center as the "future of healthcare" in Wrangell was celebrated. The party, which took place on the evening of Dec. 13, commemorated the SEARHC takeover of the medical center. SEARHC, a health consortium that serves Southeast Alaska, agreed to a four year lease of the medical center and to construct a brand new hospital. The new facility, which will be added to the AICS...
December 19, 1918 Reappearance of epidemic of influenza now threatened in many parts of the country. The Surgeon General of the United States Public Health, however, has issued a warning. The epidemic persists widely. Everywhere the epidemic and other abnormal conditions created by war has left millions of people particularly susceptible to disease. Risks are aggravated by the fact that medical and sanitary facilities have been depleted to meet war needs and cannot be restored to normal for some time nor without concerted effort. In view of...
A little over a month ago, the Alaska Supreme Court made a ruling that found a part of the municipal code of the Borough of Kenai Peninsula to be unconstitutional. The code required an invocation be given before an assembly meeting could take place. The court found that it was illegal to require an invocation in the municipal code. This became a hot topic of debate in Wrangell, which also has an invocation as a part of its code. A proposed amendment to the borough’s municipal code, which would remove the invocation from future meeting a...
Jimmie "Jim" Wayne Thompson, passed away peacefully on July 5, 2018 at the Wrangell Medical Center. His health had declined over the last several years after suffering from several small strokes, and one substantial one in 2011 while he was visiting his mother in Texas. After spending several weeks in rehab, he was able to return back to his home in Wrangell where unfortunately his health continued to decline. He was born to Leon and Lorene Thompson, November 17, 1937 in Montague County, Texas....
Long time resident Jim (James) E. Smith, 69, passed away on Nov. 1, 2018 at the Wrangell Medical Center, while surrounded by his loved ones. An obituary will follow....