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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...
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...
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...
Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom is withdrawing from the race for the state’s lone U.S. House seat, she announced via social media on Friday, just three days after the primary election. With most of the votes counted, Dahlstrom is expected to finish third in the state’s top-four primary election, behind Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola and fellow Republican challenger Nick Begich. In a prepared statement published, Dahlstrom said she wanted to see Peltola voted out of office but “at this time, the best thing I can do to see that goal reali...
A ballot measure that could repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice election system is headed to a vote in November, the Alaska Supreme Court confirmed Thursday, Aug. 22. In a brief order, the court’s five members upheld a lower court decision that certified Ballot Measure 2, which would repeal the laws that created the state’s ranked-choice general election and open primary election system. The order came shortly after justices heard oral arguments in an appeal claiming that the Alaska Division of Elections improperly certified the measure. “Toda...
Saxman, a community of about 400 people just south of the city of Ketchikan, will build 14 affordable housing units over the next year. In partnership with the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Saxman will use $4.5 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds distributed through the Alaska Housing Finance Corp. to develop four apartment buildings — three fourplexes and one duplex — containing a total of 14 two-bedroom dwellings for low-income tenants. The units could be open for occupancy by the end of 2025. AHFC, a public corporation and independent sta...
Alaska Airlines is one step closer to acquiring Hawaiian Airlines after the U.S. Department of Justice chose not to challenge the $1 billion deal that the carriers say will create a company better able to serve travelers. The brands of both airlines would be preserved after the merger, which is rare in an industry where decades of acquisitions have left only four big carriers dominating the U.S. market. Alaska and Hawaiian say they have few overlapping routes and the intent of a tie-up is to allow the new airline to better compete with the...
The Petersburg Indian Association is now in the hospitality business with its purchase of the 45-room Tides Inn hotel and Highliner Car Rental from a longtime Petersburg family. “My sisters and I are very pleased with the conclusion of the sale of the Tides Inn and Highliner Car Rental to the Petersburg Indian Association,” Dave Ohmer said in a written statement. “The Ohmer family started doing business in Petersburg in 1916, and it is wonderful to now be selling the Tides Inn and Highliner to an organization whose families were here long...
Alaska communications and aviation entities, together with federal and state officials, convened in a summit in Yakutat led by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to collaborate on solutions to reduce weather-related travel delays and boost aviation safety in the state. “We have 130 weather recording stations in Alaska and at any given time 50% are partially or entirely out of service,” Murkowski said on Aug. 15. The senator, a third-generation Alaskan born and raised in Ketchikan, and later Wrangell, is out to resolve this issue, which has resulted in...
At the height of the food stamp backlog last November, pro bono attorneys and other volunteers at Alaska Legal Services got more than 600 requests in one month from Alaskans seeking a fair hearing to get their overdue food benefits. So the 97 requests that came in this July didn’t feel like anything the group couldn’t handle, said Leigh Dickey, the nonprofit’s advocacy director. But the number is still alarming, she said, and it’s double the past month’s requests. Dickey said the state’s Division of Public Assistance is still dogged by t...
Alaska teens are more likely to be depressed and have suicidal thoughts than were teens a decade ago, and some mental health problems have increased notably among girls, according to results from the state’s most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Administered in 2023 to nearly 1,200 high school students around the state, the survey found numerous negative trends. Of the respondents, 19% reported attempting suicide at least once over the past year, compared to 8.7% in the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The number who reported they had c...
Alaska’s congressional delegation is making a renewed pitch to the Biden administration for binding protections against potential environmental damage from British Columbia mines near Canadian headwaters of Southeast Alaska rivers. Their concerns were heightened after the June 24 heap leach pad failure at the Eagle Gold Mine near the village of Mayo in the Yukon, the delegation said in a prepared statement Aug. 16. “Without unified action from the executive branch, Canadian mining activity in this region will increasingly endanger U.S. com...
By James Brooks Alaska Beacon A three-judge panel at 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a lower-court decision that could have temporarily halted troll fishing for salmon in Southeast Alaska. The appellate court decision, announced Aug. 16, clears the way for the region’s troll fishery to continue. It had been threatened by a lawsuit from the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy, an environmental group. The group filed suit in 2020, arguing that National Marine Fisheries Service rules applied to the fishery were inadequate w...
Two humpback whales found dead in Southeast Alaska in July showed evidence of being struck by ships, according to a federal fisheries agency. The whales were found in Icy Strait, a popular destination for fishermen, sightseeing and cruise ship tourists that surrounds the communities of Hoonah, Gustavus and Elfin Cove. The National Marine Fisheries Services, also known as NOAA Fisheries, said a young, male humpback whale was reported floating on July 3. After it washed ashore near Elfin Cove, a necropsy found injuries consistent with a ship stri...
Formline carved paddles, beaded slippers, and a small totem were among the items returned to Kake in early August by a Quaker woman whose ancestor taught in the mission school there in the early 1900s. Joel Jackson, the tribal council president for the Organized Village of Kake, said it is nice to have the objects home. “That wasn’t meant for somebody else to display in their home as an artform or whatever. That’s sacred to us.” He said the village is working on repatriating other objects that are held privately or in museums across the cou...
A commercial icebreaker being purchased by the U.S. Coast Guard will be officially homeported in Juneau, the culmination of a years-long effort to acquire and homeport such a vessel in Alaska waters, officials announced Aug. 14. The Aiviq, a 360-foot-long U.S.-registered vessel launched in 2012 for offshore oil field work — which has been eyed by Alaska’s congressional delegation for many years since it was pulled out of Arctic waters — is expected to “reach initial operational capability in two years,” according to a press release issued by...
SEATTLE - The U.S. government has acknowledged, for the first time, the harmful role it has played over the past century in building and operating dams in the Pacific Northwest - dams that devastated Native American tribes by inundating their villages and decimating salmon runs while bringing electricity, irrigation and jobs to nearby communities. In a new report, the Biden administration said those cultural, spiritual and economic damages continue to pain the tribes, which consider salmon part...
All but seven of the 56 books the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District removed from school libraries must be reshelved, pending a trial next year, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason on Aug. 6. The banned books, including well-known titles like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” were removed from schools last year without individual consideration of their content after parents and community members complained of “LGBTQ themes” or sexually explicit con...
"Every room has water in it and mud," Debora Gerrish said at her home on Emily Way in Juneau's Mendenhall Valley, several hours after the Mendenhall River had receded from record flooding on Aug. 6. "Everything on the floor is destroyed. I'm trying to save my grandmother's hope chest from 1913." A similar glacial outburst flood last year only filled the ditches on her street, though it did knock down several residences along the river. But this year's flood saw the river crest more than a foot...
Expectations were low this year for the pink salmon runs that power Prince William Sound’s commercial fishing industry. But no one expected them to be as bad as they’ve been. With just a few weeks left in the season, the sound’s seine fleet has harvested just one-fourth the number of pinks that it would have caught by now in a typical year. The small runs have forced managers to close fishing for longer periods than usual. And even during openers, fishermen are reporting abysmal harvests. Some have quit early. Others are thinking about new j...