Sorted by date Results 2452 - 2476 of 7954
A mass casualty exercise June 7 was the first one held at the Wrangell Medical Center in its 16-month-old facility. The drill, which simulated a plane crash, was used to see where improvements could be made in the emergency operations plan. It involved about 70 staff members from the hospital, EMTs and volunteer firefighters. Eleven community volunteers of various ages were made up to resemble victims with head wounds, lacerations and other traumas requiring stabilization, medevac or blood...
The Race to Alaska launched a flotilla north to Ketchikan from Port Townsend, Washington, on Monday. The 750-mile wind- and human-powered race has two starts: 5 a.m. Monday for the first leg, which organizers call the “The Proving Ground,” and noon Thursday for the second leg, which organizers call “To the Bitter End.” R2AK advertising is notoriously humorous and full of hyperbole. One description of the race on its website explains the event as: “It’s like the Iditarod, on a boat, with a chance of drowning, being run down by a freighter,...
An Anchorage Superior Court judge is considering when and if it is legal for a state legislator to ban a constituent from the lawmaker’s legislative Facebook page. On June 8, Judge Thomas Matthews heard oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by an Eagle River woman against Sen. Lora Reinbold, an Eagle River Republican. After hearing arguments, Matthews took the case under advisement, with a decision to be issued soon. Bobbie McDow, the plaintiff, is asking for an injunction against Reinbold, plus financial damages and attorney fees. The verdict co...
The state’s COVID-19 public health emergency order put in place 15 months ago will be rescinded on July 1, announced Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Commissioner Adam Crum. “The COVID situation has mellowed out to where our systems are in place, our hospitals know how to deal with this, our health care providers have tools they need, because a lot of the treatments are actually commercially available or they’re able to order themselves directly,” Crum said at a press conference on June 6. “And so, because of that, I am going to...
Repairs to damaged mooring dolphins at the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal will take longer and cost more than originally expected, now estimated at over $2 million, dock officials said. Until repairs are made, only one ship, not two, can use the dock at a time. The dolphin off the north end of the Sitka Sound dock was damaged May 9 when it was struck by the Radiance of the Seas as it was maneuvering nearby. The damage reduced the number of available docking spaces from two to one, said Chris McGraw, manager of the privately owned cruise terminal....
JUNEAU (AP) — Alaska House Majority Leader Chris Tuck said he will not seek reelection this year, citing a redistricting map that put him in House and Senate districts where he would have had to run against friends and fellow Democratic lawmakers. Tuck joins Senate President Peter Micciche, a Soldotna Republican, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Begich, an Anchorage Democrat, in deciding not to seek reelection. Tuck had filed to run for an Anchorage House seat for which Rep. Andy Josephson also filed. Tuck withdrew on June 8. If Tuck had run f...
Just as Alaska’s tourism season heats up, Princess Cruises said it will close one of its five lodges in the state this summer because of staffing shortages. The Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge will close this Friday, according to a statement provided June 6 by Negin Kamali, a spokeswoman with Princess Cruises. The lodge had opened on May 19 for the first time in more than two years, after the COVID-19 pandemic halted major cruise sailings to Southcentral Alaska until this summer. Located a 3½-hour drive northeast of Anchorage in Co...
KETCHIKAN (AP) — The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly has overwhelmingly reversed the mayor’s veto of grant funding to a group that provides support to the LGBTQ+ community. The assembly voted 6-1 on June 6 to override Mayor Rodney Dial’s veto of $1,638 in grant funding to the Ketchikan Pride Alliance, the Ketchikan Daily News reported. Dial defended his veto during a presentation in attempts to persuade the assembly to let the veto stand. He said the group was an advocacy organization promoting activism. Assembly Member Judith McQue...
The recent news that the longtime Alaska Marine Highway System ferry Malaspina will be officially retired and will remain in Ketchikan's Ward Cove as a privately owned and operated museum and a training vessel is good news to its fans who had feared that the "Mal" would suffer the same fate as its sistership, the Taku, which was sold in 2018 and scrapped in India. The Malaspina, along with the Taku and the Matanuska, were the first mainline ferries in the fleet, all going online in 1963. They...
After a swarm of small earthquakes beneath Mount Edgecumbe caught the attention of the Alaska Volcano Observatory in April, a crew of scientists has installed seismic and GPS sensors on the mountain to monitor any further activity. While the Alaska Volcano Observatory determined in early May that Mount Edgecumbe is now an active volcano, geophysicist Max Kaufman and research technician Max Enders both have reaffirmed that there is no imminent threat of eruption. The two were in Sitka for three days late last month and installed the sensory...
On a sunny afternoon, Ketchikan International Airport got a surprise visit from some unusual guests. At about noon on June 7, five U.S. Navy F-18 Super Hornets touched down at the airport for about two hours to refuel on their way north to Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks. Lt. Cmdr. Brandon Hempler, one of the Hornet pilots, spoke with the Daily News by phone after the jets touched down at Eielson, where they will participate in RED FLAG-Alaska, a joint training exercise that takes place over the course of about 10 days. They’ll remain a...
Wrangell is one of nine Alaska communities operating under old federal permit waivers from costly secondary treatment for its sewage water discharge, and officials expect the upcoming permit reissuance will require the community to disinfect its wastewater before piping it into Zimovia Strait. “Everyone says the same thing … disinfection is coming,” Tom Wetor, the borough’s Public Works director, said last Friday. “It’s been reiterated to us multiple times.” Construction and installation of a disinfection system could cost around $2 million, s...
After 56 years of service in the Alaska Marine Highway System fleet and almost three years tied up at a Ketchikan dock, unused and in need of costly repairs, the Malaspina is headed to another career as a privately owned floating museum and employee housing. Plans also call for using the ship as a classroom for maritime industry jobs. The state last week accepted $128,250 for the 408-foot-long passenger and vehicle ferry from the recently formed Ketchikan company M/V Malaspina. The company is a...
The borough has listed the former Wrangell Medical Center for sale to the highest bidder until June 30, at a minimum bid of $830,000, the value assigned by an April appraisal. The hospital has been vacant since health care provider SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium moved into its new building in February 2021. The borough has been spending close to $100,000 a year to heat and insure the empty structure, and the assembly has decided to sell the surplus property. The lot is 1.95 acres, o...
It was the fundraiser that almost wasn't until one ambitious teen decide to set another goal. Each year, the chamber of commerce uses the Fourth of July royalty contest to raise money to pay for the following year's events. Nobody had entered this year's competition until Tyson Messmer stepped up mid-May to help. Messmer, who graduated high school this year, will attend the University of Miami in Florida. Though the school awarded him a scholarship, he still needs to raise money for his schoolin...
A new totem pole in Juneau is 22 feet tall, almost 4 feet wide at the base and about 7 to 8 feet wide where Raven and Eagle are carved. You have to walk around it completely to see all of the elements. Unlike most poles that are carved on one side, the Sealaska Cultural Values totem pole is carved all the way around, a full 360 degrees. According to Sealaska Heritage Institute, there are only three others like it, all in Canada. Now, there's one in Alaska. "They're pretty rare, done within...
Closing on the borough’s $2.6 million purchase of the 39-acre former sawmill property at 6 Mile has been delayed until June 20, Borough Manager Jeff Good said June 1, the day the sale was supposed to close. The sale is delayed until the seller can resolve a contractor lien on the property. William “Shorty” Tonsgard Jr., owner of Channel Construction, a scrap metal collection company that runs a barge south for disposal or recycling, on March 18 filed a $701,654 lien against Kelso, Washington-based DB AK Enterprises, owned by Betty Buhle...
Don’t let this be the one that got away. The Wrangell King Salmon Derby gets underway on June 15 and runs through July 3. At stake is $7,900 in cash prizes. The heaviest king salmon will get the biggest prize, as first place in the derby wins $3,000; second place wins $2,000; and third place wins $1,000. If two people land fish that weigh the same, the person who gets it weighed first will win. There will also be a $500 prize for the biggest fish caught on opening day, a $500 prize for the biggest caught on Father’s Day, two $250 random wei...
Hunters no longer need to hunt the web or search for printed copies and anglers no longer need to fish for necessary information, especially when they're in the field. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently launched an app for mobile phones running on Apple or Android operating systems. It gives users instant access to their licenses, permits, tags and information like regulations and boundaries. Since launching the app in late May, there have been 14,000 downloads of the app on the...
Work on an outdoor deck at Chief Shakes Hot Springs up the Stikine River has been delayed until next spring, after federal funds the Forest Service expected for the project have yet to arrive. The site, which consists of two hot tubs — one indoor and one outdoor — was supposed to get a facelift this month, favoring a higher river and tide levels for easier access at this time of the year. The project, which had been estimated at $190,000, received $81,200 from the Great American Outdoors Act — or so the Forest Service had been told, Distr...
A new report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides the most comprehensive look so far at the disproportionate toll COVID-19 is taking on Alaska Native and American Indian people living in Alaska. Overall, Alaska Native and American Indian people have made up just about a fifth of the state’s population but nearly a third of all deaths, the report found. Between the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and last December, Indigenous Alaskans were hospitalized with the virus and died from it at rates three times t...
When Christi Slaven's kids were tiny, she set her typewriter down on the breakfast bar in her parents' house and wrote a novel. She burned all 300 pages when she was done. "It was terrible," Slaven said. But she felt better afterward, because she was "going nuts" taking care of her two young daughters. Writing gave her a creative outlet. Her daughter, Kelly Ellis, who lives and works in Wrangell, remembers that time. "I was little, 2, 3, 4?" Ellis recalled. "She had a typewriter, and she had a k...
In a May 31 budget work session to consider borough finances for the fiscal year that starts July 1, Finance Director Mason Villarma advised the assembly that the borough is working toward accepting credit card payments for property and sales taxes but will charge a fee to accept the cards. “We are still finalizing our process and we may establish fees at a certain dollar threshold,” Villarma said last Friday. “We will be sure to give folks ample notice,” he added. “This will not apply to utility or moorage credit card payments,” Villarma wr...
JUNEAU (AP) —Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office has issued a consulting contract to a former Dunleavy campaign manager who later served as a staffer to the governor for up to $50,000 in part to advise the administration on what legal fights to pursue against the federal government. The contract with Strategic Synergies was signed in April and released by Dunleavy’s office last month. Brett Huber is listed on the contract as the firm’s sole owner. The contract runs through Oct. 24. Alaska has long had a contentious relationship with the federal...
All of the nearly 11,000 Alaska households that applied for financial aid under a state-administered, federally funded program — including 40 in Wrangell — will receive some level of assistance toward mortgage payments and utilities bills. The Alaska Housing Finance Corp., which is running the $50 million pandemic-aid program, announced last week it had completed its initial reviews of the applications, determining their income eligibility for assistance, and now will evaluate individual homeowner’s financial needs. Depending on each appli...
