Sorted by date Results 3261 - 3285 of 7980
Dialing a number within the 907 area code will soon require all 10 digits of a phone number — that’s the number along with the area code. Starting on Oct. 24, under a new federal requirement, it will be mandatory to dial all 10 numbers for calls within the same area code in more than six dozen area codes around the country. Although people can already dial all 10 digits to complete a call, the requirement won’t be hard-coded until the mandatory date. After Oct. 24, callers may not be able to complete a call by dialing only seven digits and c...
Devyn Johnson grew up playing sports in Wrangell. She didn't think about fitness until she was an adult – who, like a lot of people, gained the "Freshman 15" after high school, that bit of extra weight which comes after college starts, the responsibilities of adulthood creep in and high school gym class and sports are in the rearview mirror. So, she started to jog. A half mile at first, and then it stretched out from there into longer distances. Jogging turned into a love of working out. "I l...
Melissa Curttright has been a registered nurse for 16 years - the past two weeks in Wrangell. Like so many other hospital workers, the pandemic changed her plans. The 52-year-old RN from Oklahoma City said she saw 75% of her hospital's intensive-care unit staff leave, and then she took to the road. She's been traveling now for almost a year. Wrangell is her latest assignment through SnapNurse, an Atlanta-based nurse staffing agency, after Los Angeles. Alaska has contracted with an Atlanta...
Cases are starting to come down in Alaska after weeks of record-setting COVID-19 infections across the state. After averaging almost 1,250 new cases a day Sept. 21-27 — far above the numbers of the previous record of last December — the statewide average was just over 800 a day Oct. 5-11, according to the state’s COVID-19 data dashboard. That’s still significantly above the average of the past three months, when 560 new cases a day were reported. Alaska had low case counts in May, June and July, until infections increased with the spread...
Ann Hilburn began learning American Sign Language for an elective course in college, thinking it would benefit her aspirations of becoming a nurse. That class led her to change her career field entirely. "I had just fallen in love with sign language," she said. She's passing that love on to a dozen Wrangell High School students taking her class for their foreign language requirement. Hilburn is new to the district this year. It is a language unto itself, 17-year-old senior Caleb Garcia-Rangel...
A Delta Junction resident upset over the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, illegal immigration and the direction he thinks the country is headed is accused of threatening the lives of Alaska’s two U.S. senators in a series of profanity-laced voicemails that included saying he would hire an assassin to kill one. “Your life is worth $5,000, that’s all it’s worth,” the message left at the office of Sen. Lisa Murkowski said. “And as you let in these terrorists, assassins, guess what? I’m going to use them. I’m going to hire them.” Som...
JUNEAU (AP) — Two Alaska state senators have tested positive for COVID-19 and a third was not feeling well, Senate President Peter Micciche said Tuesday. The senators who tested positive are Republicans David Wilson, of Wasilla, and Lora Reinbold, of Eagle River, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Reinbold has been the Legislature’s loudest critic of masking, testing and vaccinations during the pandemic. Sen. Click Bishop, of Fairbanks, said he is feeling ill but has tested negative for COVID-19 and believes he has a cold or the flu, the ne...
FAIRBANKS (AP) — A bus that people sometimes embarked on deadly pilgrimages to Alaska’s backcountry to visit can now safely be viewed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks while it undergoes preservation work. The bus was moved to the university’s engineering facility last week while it’s being prepared for outdoor display at the Museum of the North, Fairbanks television station KTVF reported. The abandoned Fairbanks city bus became a shelter for hunters and others using the backcountry near Denali National Park and Preserve, but it became...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Several Republican state lawmakers are urging easier access for Alaskans to ivermectin amid the pandemic, though ivermectin is not authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for preventing or treating COVID-19. Senate Majority Leader Shelley Hughes, of Palmer, said she urged Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the state health commissioner to consider supplying Alaskans with vitamins and drugs, including ivermectin, “that some Alaskan physicians are prescribing but pharmacies aren’t filling.” Three Republican House members testifi...
JUNEAU (AP) — A federal judge last Friday sided with two psychiatrists who said they were wrongfully fired for political reasons when Gov. Mike Dunleavy took office in 2018. Anthony Blanford and John Bellville, who worked at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage, declined to submit resignation letters requested by the chair of Dunleavy’s transition team and later by his chief of staff, Tuckerman Babcock. Blanford and Bellville subsequently were fired. Attorneys for the men in court records argued that Babcock — in demanding resig...
By Jamie Hale The Oregonian/OregonLive After a private blessing and a prayer, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde invited gathered media to watch as an excavator tore into a wall of the old, abandoned paper mill at Willamette Falls, Oregon, that the tribe says has stood on its ancestral grounds for too long. The tribe held a symbolic demolition event at the old Blue Heron Paper Mill on Sept. 21, representing a small step toward removing the industrial site and returning it to Indigenous hands. Chris Mercier, vice chair of the Grand Ronde Tri...
There’s been an increase in rude, violent behavior in Anchorage schools, and the superintendent wants parents to help address it with their children. The bad behavior has included a fight at a high school that prompted a large police response, along with a TikTok challenge where students caused thousands of dollars in damage to school bathrooms, KTUU-TV reported. “Wrangell schools got off lightly” in September’s bout of TikTok-inspired vandalism, Bob Davis, assistant principal at the middle and high schools, said in a letter to parents last we...
As one of the rainiest cities in America, Ketchikan has learned to live with constant wet. A young couple is turning some of that water into a growing business. Literally. Ketchikan Ever Greens, run by Jess and Geoff Jans, focuses on growing, harvesting and delivering a cornucopia of vegetables - all grown through hydroponics methods in a custom-built vertical farm, housed in a metal shipping container. The Janses met in Ketchikan - Jess Jans' hometown - and left town to pursue other jobs...
The Island of Faith Lutheran Church was unable to conduct its traditional Alaska Day event last year and didn’t want to miss it a second year in a row. But COVID-19 is still a concern. So instead of inviting senior citizens to lunch at the church, volunteers will deliver halibut to the senior center, which will prepare the meals and deliver them to seniors. “We didn’t want to lose the tradition,” said Pastor Sue Bahleda. Before COVID-19, “we would host a soup luncheon here at the church,” she said. Elementary school students would sing the “A...
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Firefighters and numerous studies credit intensive forest thinning projects with helping save communities like those recently threatened near Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada, but dissent from some environmental advocacy groups is roiling the scientific community. States in the U.S. West and the federal government each year thin thousands of acres of dense timber and carve broad swaths through the forest near remote communities, all designed to slow the spread of...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Cruise ships are returning to San Francisco after a 19-month hiatus brought on by the pandemic in what's sure to be a boost to the city's economy, the mayor announced last Friday. The Majestic Princess sailed into the port of San Francisco on Monday, the first cruise ship to dock in the San Francisco Bay Area since March 2020 when the Grand Princess captured the world's attention and made the coronavirus real to millions in the United States. The ship was carrying people infected with the coronavirus, and thousands of p...
Though 87 absentee and early votes and questioned ballots will not be tallied until Thursday, the leaders after Tuesday’s municipal election appear likely to win on the final count. Borough assembly candidate David Powell led Don McConachie Sr. by 47 votes after Tuesday’s election. School board candidates Brittani Robbins and Angela Allen were ahead of their challengers by about 100 votes for two open seats. And Jessica Whitaker led Julia Ostrander by 44 votes — 215 to 171 — for a one-year school board term. Races for two other assembl...
Wrangell will share a tire cutter with other Southeast communities, intending to cut down on the thousands of tires stacked at the dump by making it easier to ship out the smaller pieces. The borough assembly last Tuesday approved a resolution to share the equipment with the Southeast Alaska Solid Waste Authority. The mobile unit can separate tires from rims and then, using a powerful cutting arm, chop up the rubber into smaller, more easily transportable chunks. The tires stacked at the...
The first rule of Tech Club is talk about Tech Club. Science teacher Heather Howe wants the students who attend Wrangell High's newly formed program to share what they're learning and doing to interest more kids in attending. The T3 Alliance -often referred to as Tech Club - is a program designed to supplement the U.S. Department of Education's Upward Bound program, which helps students increase their ability to complete a secondary education, whether college or a technical school. Not all membe...
Wrangell Medical Center this week welcomed eight temporary out-of-state health care workers assigned to the hospital under a state-financed program to bring as many as 473 professionals to help relieve staffing pressures across Alaska. The state is spending $87 million in federal money to bring in the workers, allocating them to 14 hospitals and care centers around the state, as many of the facilities are at or near capacity amid a surge in COVID-19 patients the past month. Some school districts also are included in the program for nurses. The...
Wrangell has begun its search for a new borough manager. On Friday, the assembly accepted the resignation of Lisa Von Bargen from the post, effective Oct. 29. “It is with sadness I submit my letter of resignation as borough manager for this amazing community. The strain of the past year and a half has helped me realize I need to take a pause and focus on the needs of my family and myself,” Von Bargen wrote in her resignation letter, dated Sept. 28. She has been on the job since July 2017, moving to Wrangell from Valdez, where she was com...
The state has activated emergency crisis protocols that allow 20 hospitals to ration care if needed as Alaska reports among the nation’s worst COVID-19 infection rates of recent weeks, straining the state’s limited health care system. The declaration last Saturday covers three facilities that had already announced emergency protocols, including the largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, and facilities across the state, including hospitals in Wrangell and Petersburg. Though Wrangell Medical Center is covered under the o...
There are no changes to moving first-class mail in and out of Wrangell — that will continue by air, according to a U.S. Postal Service official. But service out of state could be slower, depending on how far the mail is coming or going. And it will cost more to mail packages now through Christmas as the Postal Service tries to improve its finances. Through Dec. 25, customers will pay an additional 25 cents to $5 to ship a parcel through the Postal Service, depending on the level of delivery service they select and the distance the package w...
A story in the Sept. 23 issue of the Sentinel incorrectly reported that Ivy Patch Produce sells its goods to the Stikine Inn. Owner Katherine Ivy said she only sells to Zak’s Cafe and individual consumers. A story in the Sept. 30 Sentinel reported that an oyster farm operation was established at Blashke Islands in 1990. It was established in 1983....
Tracy Churchill believes in "Keeping it Authentic." That's the tagline the graphic designer uses to celebrate the uniqueness of Wrangell, the community that inspired her Compass Line brand and led to the opening of a gift shop by the same name. "We wanted to initially do some designs to sell in the other shops, and then decided at that time we might as well try to just carry some things nobody else has in town," Churchill said. The space at 321 Front St. became available in 2017, and the...