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With repair of the damaged GCI fiber optic cable expected sometime in the next week, a lot of Sitkans are relying on Starlink thanks to help from the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. Sitka lost internet service Aug. 29 when an undersea cable broke. “Our teams have successfully restored basic mobile voice and text services using alternative technology,” GCI reported Sept. 3. “However, customers are unable to use mobile data, internet and UConn TV services.” The telecommunications provider said a fiber repair...
Ketchikan’s police chief has resigned under an agreement that dismisses criminal charges against him stemming from a 2022 off-duty altercation in a restaurant that injured another man. Jeffrey Walls, 48, signed the agreement with state prosecutors on Aug. 27. He stepped down as chief effective Sept. 10. Walls was hired as Ketchikan police chief in 2021. Before that, he worked at the New Orleans Police Department for 24 years. He was accused of injuring a man during an encounter at the Salmon Falls resort restaurant in September 2022. Walls a...
Assembly Member David Powell has filed to run for mayor, taking on incumbent Patty Gilbert in the Oct. 1 municipal election. Gilbert is running for a second two-year term as mayor. Powell is in his ninth year on the assembly. In another contested race on the ballot, Chris Buness is seeking a second three-year term on the port commission, with Tony Guggenbickler, Eric Yancey and Antonio Silva also on the ballot. The top two vote-getters will each win a three-year term. Guggenbickler has never held elected office in Wrangell, though he served...
Voters will decide Oct. 1 whether the borough should borrow $3 million to repair the Public Safety Building, and also whether to amend the municipal charter so that assembly members could eventually receive compensation. The charter currently prohibits compensation for the mayor and assembly members; the Oct. 1 vote could change that. The assembly voted Aug. 27 to place both questions on the municipal election ballot. The bond proposition passed unanimously, while the compensation ordinance passed 6-1. Assembly Member Bob Dalrymple was the...
Private contractors, state and municipal crews worked long days last week to restore power, remove downed trees and clear truckloads of mud and debris that flowed down the hillside above Ketchikan. Crews focused on reopening streets and drains in case more heavy rain falls on the community. "We want to approach it methodically and make sure we do it safely ... there is a phasing-in of people moving back to their homes," City of Ketchikan Public Works Director Seth Brakke said Aug. 30. "There's...
Ann Hegney will be the school district's new counselor this year, but not until she can catch a state ferry to town. The school board approved her hire on Aug. 19, but due to a lack of car deck space on the weekly ferry from Bellingham, Washington, she will not arrive in Wrangell until Sept. 15. From there, she will have a quick turnaround: Her first day of work is the very next morning. She is driving cross country from upstate New York and plans to stop in Wyoming and Montana for some...
The borough is asking a military training program to help assess and clear out a sunken barge and tug offshore the former sawmill property near 6-Mile. It’s unclear how long the vessels have been stuck on the bottom but it’s likely been 25 or 30 years, according to current and past borough officials. Though the vessels do not impede access by the scrap metal salvage barge operator that has a five-year lease on the borough-owned property, the sunken vessels could become a problem if Wrangell is able to attract a long-term user or buyer for the...
Jackson Pool loves solving problems. As Wrangell's new finance director, he is excited to do just that. He joined the borough last week after working as an accountant for the Ketchikan Gateway Borough for just over a year. His hire ends a run of nine months without a finance director for Wrangell. Borough Manager Mason Villarma has been doing both jobs since last November. Pool's hire is a relief for Villarma; not only will the borough manager now be able to direct all his attention toward his...
If you’ve enjoyed City Park’s newly refurbished pavilion this summer, you might be twice as happy now. The borough recently approved a construction contract for a new pavilion in City Park, and the best part: Wrangell hardly has to pay anything for it. The new pavilion replaces the structure that was destroyed in a November 2021 windstorm. It will be built exactly where the old one stood, a couple hundred feet south of the pavilion upgraded this summer. Following the storm, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management all...
Damage to the outfall line, a plastic pipe that moves Wrangell’s treated sewage 1,200 feet out to sea, caused a temporary backup in the wastewater treatment plant on Aug. 30. To prevent wastewater overflow at the plant, borough workers dug up and cut the line on the beach. The short-term solution resulted in treated sewage deposited directly on the beach between City Park and the Mariners’ Memorial at Heritage Harbor. Wrangell’s primary treatment plant removes all solid waste before it is discharged. The borough on Sept. 3 announced the immed...
The borough has started a newsletter, the first in a series of initiatives to provide more information for the public, particularly focused on promoting economic growth. The second initiative will be monthly informal discussions titled “Our Town, Our Future.” The “economic coffee chats” will be held the third Friday every month, starting Oct. 18, said Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director. The meetings will be held at a different location each month, she said, with the first location undecided as of last week. The series will...
After five years, Wrangell High School will have a new elevator, at last. The new elevator will be installed next summer after the borough assembly approved a construction contract last week. Demolition will begin toward the end of the current school year, and Capital Projects Director Amber Al-Haddad hopes construction will be completed by the time students walk in on the first day of school in August 2025. After an oil leak was discovered at the bottom of the existing elevator’s hydraulic ram in March 2020, the school shut down the e...
GCI said Saturday that a ship is coming from Seattle to make repairs to a damaged section of undersea fiber optic cable that has caused the loss of GCI cell phone and internet service in Sitka. Service, which was cut Thursday, Aug. 29, is not expected to be back up until next week. GCI said the repair ship is expected to be at the site of the undersea cable break, about 30 miles from Sitka, by Friday, Sept. 6, and that repairs could take three to seven days. In the meantime, the public is getting help from Starlink satellite communication...
A state geologist walking the landslide area on Sunday morning heard whimpering noises from a collapsed home. He called Ketchikan firefighters, who responded and pulled out two dogs from the debris, reuniting them with their owners. "After an emotional week of recovering from the aftermath of the Third Avenue landslide, Ketchikan - and most specifically, James and Bill Montiver - got some very good news," the city's emergency operations center announced on Sunday. "During the landslide the Monti...
Participants in a transboundary mining conference in Juneau last week said recent natural and industrial disasters show why their heightened concerns are justified. “I think that people are realizing that more and more this is an emergency situation,” Wrangell’s Esther Aaltséen Reese, president of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission, said in an interview Aug. 28. “We can’t just keep coming to these meetings and saying the same thing.” The third annual Transboundary Mining Conference began two days after a major landsl...
Disposing of large, derelict vessels abandoned in Petersburg’s harbors comes at a cost. The borough assembly has authorized the transfer of $240,000 from the harbor department reserves to the derelict boat disposal budget category to pay for disposal of two large derelict boats. The assembly also amended the code to make clear that boat owners are responsible for disposal costs. “It’s incredibly expensive,” Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht said at the Aug. 19 assembly meeting. “Literally, to take two boats apart and scrap them and handle an...
Turnout in this year’s state primary election is on pace to be the third lowest in the past 50 years, according to preliminary figures published Aug. 27 by the Alaska Division of Elections. Through that evening, 106,208 votes had been counted from just over 17.5% of all registered voters. The turnout rate in Wrangell was similar. Four years ago, Alaskans approved a new elections system that includes an open primary election in which candidates from all parties compete in the same race for each statewide office. The top four vote-getters a...
A decade after sea star wasting disease arrived in Sitka Sound, researchers are investigating the relationship between sea urchins, kelp forests and sunflower stars. Scientists still don’t know much about the disease, which causes several species of sea stars, such as sunflower stars, to lose their limbs before dissolving. “Sea star” is the name marine scientists now use with reference to the five-limbed marine invertebrate instead of the common term “starfish,” because it is not actually a fish. Around Sitka, sea star wasting disease i...
Workers breached the final dams on a key section of the Klamath River on Aug. 28, clearing the way for salmon to swim freely through a major watershed near the California-Oregon border for the first time in more than a century as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion. Crews used excavators to remove rock dams that have been diverting water upstream of two dams, Iron Gate and Copco No. 1, both of which were already almost completely removed. With each scoop, more and more river water was able to flow through the...
BOONE, N.C. — Excavators claw at the remains of Shulls Mill Dam on the Watauga River, pulling concrete apart piece by piece and gradually opening a waterway kept in check for nearly two centuries. Removal of this privately owned hydropower dam in western North Carolina will be a boon for rafters, kayakers and tubers by allowing the river to flow freely for nearly 80 miles. But maybe the biggest beneficiary will be a strange, ancient creature known as the eastern hellbender salamander. Sometimes called a snot otter or Allegheny alligator, i...
The Southeast Alaska sport fishery is on track to exceed its king salmon allocation for the summer by 14,000 fish, prompting the state to close the region to sportfishing for kings. The closure went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday, Aug. 26. “King salmon may not be retained or possessed, and any king salmon caught must be released immediately and returned to the water unharmed,” according to the Department of Fish and Game announcement late Friday, Aug. 23. The king salmon sport fishery will reopen on Oct. 1 for the winter season. “While the (...
Staff at three borough offices saw a need and got together to do something about it. Their answer is to provide after-school activities three days a week over the next three months. “There’s always been the need for after-school care in the community … to fill that gap for parents and children,” said Sarah Scambler, director of the Irene Ingle Public Library. The activities will be free; no advance registration required. The program is open to children 7 through 13 years old, though younger children are welcome, but they must be accompa...
A landslide tore down a slope about a mile north of downtown Ketchikan, killing one person and injuring three on Sunday. The landslide hit around 4 p.m., and a mandatory evacuation order remained in place Monday for homes on several streets in the slide area near the waterfront. A dozen people stayed at an emergency shelter established at Ketchikan High School on Sunday night, emergency officials said. Others stayed with family or friends. Schools were closed Monday, which would have been the...
The Alaska Department of Transportation installed a ridgetop weather station near 11-Mile earlier this month. The station will allow scientists and DOT officials to further monitor the area affected by the November 2023 landslides. Standing 18 feet tall, the structure will report data such as air temperature, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and snow depth. Notably, it is the only snow depth monitor on the island other than the airport weather station, according to Pat Dryer, an...
It's not often the U.S. Forest Service gets to open up a new public-use cabin in Southeast, and they had a special visitor to cut the ribbon: U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Alaska's senior senator participated in the event Aug. 19 at the Anan Bay cabin. After a tree fell in February 2023, crushing the cabin, the Forest Service decided it would use the need to replace the structure as an opportunity to give it some upgrades as well. The new red cedar cabin boasts a large, covered deck in addition to...
