Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 187
A power outage left Ketchikan and Wrangell without power for about an hour Friday afternoon. Lights and signs all along Front Street and throughout town abruptly shut off at about 4 pm. Power had been restored to most of the town by about 5 p.m. Lights remained on at businesses with back-up generators, most powered by either diesel fuel or propane. Petersburg reportedly suffered some temporary fluctuations about the same time, but never lost power entirely. Some businesses, like radio station KSTK, Alaska Island Community Services, and City Mar...
October 30, 1913: Martin Hofstad has been a busy man during the past two weeks getting the new General Merchandise Store of Martin and Richard Hofstad into shape for the opening the latter part of next week. The store is situated in the new Uhler Building and will carry a full stock of general merchandise. Both men are well known in Wrangell and are sure of their share of their patronage. October 28, 1938: The gas screw Etolin, fishpacker owned and operated by Capt. Manuel Loftus, was reported a total loss by flames last Saturday morning in Red...
A proposed 1.5 percent sales tax cut in the City and Borough of Wrangell has split the community ahead of an Oct. 1 vote. The borough administration sent out an informational flyer this week outlining the details of cuts approved with the budget May 28, sparking at least one accusation of advocacy against the cuts. Business owners and citizens have taken out an advertisement against the reduction in the Sentinel. Assembly members and citizens have spilled ink for and against the proposal in letters to the editor. The proposal’s author and a...
A fire destroyed the Allen mill site on Tuesday, July 30, leaving Mike Allen’s business venture a smoking heap of twisted metal and burnt lumber – and saw the largest response from the Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department in recent memory. According to WVFD Fire Chief Tim Buness the fire began in the early afternoon and saw a quick response given the distance to the fire from the Zimovia substation and the Fire Hall. “We received the call at 2:08 p.m. and twelve minutes later the first engin...
On Aug. 6 the City and Borough of Wrangell will have a new interim Borough Manager to fill the spot left by the departing Tim Rooney – and it’s a familiar face to everyone in town. The Borough Assembly appointed Jeff Jabusch, who currently sits as the finance director for the city, to the top municipal spot last week in a unanimous vote, though Assembly member Ernie Christian was not present. Jabusch, who previously served as acting manager when Rooney or other past managers were out of town, sa...
KSTK FM has a new general manager – and she is someone we have all loved on the air and behind the scenes at Wrangell’s community-supported radio station. In a news release on KSTK’s website, station board president Amber Al-Haddad welcomed Cindy Sweat as the new head of operations at the Coast Alaska affiliate. “We are very excited to bring Cindy into this important role,” Al-Haddad wrote. “While we conducted a national search for the position, we believe that Cindy’s passion for broadcasting...
Jerry E. Elliot, a resident of Wrangell, Alaska from 1969 to 1989, died at home June 14, 2013. He was born in Amboy, Minn. July 5, 1931. Jerry graduated from Central Valley High School outside Spokane, Wash. in 1949 and shortly thereafter joined the Navy serving 5 years in Korea and Japan. After discharge he went to work for Pacific NW Bell in the Columbia Basin area. He married wife Carol in 1956 and they had 2 daughters. In 1969 they moved the family to Wrangell where Jerry took over the...
Sentinel writer Mike Symons, the general manager of KSTK FM, has resigned his position as head of the station citing a wish to return to California. His position with the station will end on Tuesday, May 14. Symons was hired in 2012 and his 10-month tenure was marked by a consistent goal of reaching pledge levels in the bi-annual fundraising drive the station takes part in each year. Before volunteering at KSTK and being promoted to GM, Symons held down volunteer stints at KFSK in Petersburg...
To the Editor: My 77th Birthday came and went recently, and unfortunately I’ll never see it again. That’s how birthdays are; just another day. An example of Time passing. As a friend of mine said many years ago, over the rim of his glass (his portable horizon—-), “Wayne, do you realize that our lives are passing by at the rate of one minute per minute?” Clever observation. But this birthday was a unique blessing because a Wrangell Lady, one of my first friends, took a long time to assemble a book of birthday greetings from you folks at Home (Wr...
Sentinel writer When you look at a website, a business card, or just about any sign or graphical image you can imagine, you can expect to see information. That information is usually one-dimensional and does not extend beyond what you might see with your own eyes. A group of students from Wrangell High School are working to change that, however. An after-school “AVATAR” club led by WHS teacher Michele Galla has been working on developing a technology that will “augment” the reality of images...
A tersely worded letter from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office to Mayor David Jack is spelling out the Trust’s views on issues surrounding a timber sale near the former Wrangell Institute property. In the letter, Paul Slenkamp, who is a senior resource manager for the TLO, said that while his office and Alcan, the winner of the bid to log the area, will work to ensure viewsheds and water/wind quality, there are other issues which his office takes issue with related to recent public c...
An emotion-filled public comment session at the most recent Borough Assembly meeting brought to light concerns about a coming logging operation near the former Wrangell Institute property near 5.25 Mile Zimovia Highway. The issue first came to light during the March meeting of the Borough’s Planning and Zoning Commission. It was during that meeting that local residents, including Daryl Gross and the family of Mark Armstrong, spoke up against what they perceived as a plan to build a logging road from an Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority prope...
A specially outfitted ship with facilities to repair underwater fiber optic lines made its way up Zimovia Strait on Thursday, Jan. 10 to assist GCI in repairs to cables damaged during a 7.5 magnitude earthquake on Friday, Jan 4. The vessel, C/L Wave Venture, began its repair operations approximately 8 miles south of downtown with work on the line leading from Ketchikan to Wrangell, which was the first of two cables affected during the quake. The ship later moved north to a point just off Heritag...
A world traveling, multi-lingual expert in comparative religion and intra-professional relationships in the medical field is now calling Wrangell home as the news reporter for KSTK FM. Shady Grove Oliver, a graduate of Columbia University in New York City with a Master’s Degree in Narrative Medicine and undergraduate studies in foreign languages and comparative religion, began work at the community supported Alaska Public Radio Network station on Monday, Jan. 7. Oliver, who has spent a number o...
To the Editor: Being relatively new to Wrangell, it has been my pleasure to begin to know and understand this portion of Alaska. However reflecting upon this great and new to me area I must ask, why is there a web site called Work Place Alaska, when no employer seems to use it? Several jobs that I have applied to stated this lack of usage to the point of ignoring it altogether. We finally have a school that is warming up food in it's own kitchen to serve our students, hurrah for them, is it more then just defrosting and opening cans? I ask...
A new mayor, renovations to the Shakes Island Tribal House and Marine Service Center, and the ongoing Wrangell Medical Center debate – all of these stories were newsmakers in 2012. Let’s take a look back at some of the biggest stories in Wrangell over the past year. JANUARY A late night blaze destroyed a trailer and sent a woman to Wrangell Medical Center with severe burns on Dec. 22. The fire, which began at 10:30 p.m. in a small pull-behind trailer near the top of the park, severely inj...
Dawn Hutchinson – Stevens, 66, passed away on December 5, 2012 with family by her side. Dawn was born April 11, 1946 in Wrangell to Fanny Stepetin (Nauska) and Henry Bradley. Dawn picked up the nickname of Butchie as a young child and some still called her that. She was also proud of her Tlingit name - Glaintz. She graduated from Wrangell High School in 1964 and obtained a BA in Fine Arts from Washington State University in 1982, with a minor in Native American Studies. Dawn returned to W...
The fall pledge drive for KSTK FM, Wrangell’s non-profit community radio station, met its earning goal of $17,000 during the week of Sept. 22-27. The amount raised during the week-long drive was significantly greater than what the station brought in during the 2011 fall drive, which was close to $16,000. Station general manager Mike Symons said the drive, which is held every spring and fall, is necessary to augment the funding the station already receives via grant money and other funding sources. “We reached our goal by Saturday at 3 p.m.,” Sy...
KSTK FM has donated hundreds of audio recordings dating from the 1960s to the 1990s to Sealaska Heritage Institute. The collection donated by the station documents the history and events of the community of Wrangell through interviews and talk shows over the years, said SHI archivist and collections manager Zachary Jones. According to Jones, the recordings deal with topics of interest to both the Native community and Wrangell as a whole. “It’s especially great for Sealaska Heritage Institute because it documents a portion of the Native com...
Wrangell’s radio station, KSTK FM, brought their newest reporter on board this week with the addition of veteran journalist Ariel Van Cleve to the station’s staff. Van Cleve, who most recently worked as a reporter at KDLG FM in Dillingham, comes to the station with a background in broadcast journalism and holds a Masters in Public Affairs Broadcasting from the University of Illinois at Springfield. Prior to her time in Alaska, she worked as an intern at WCBU in Peoria, Ill. from 2004-07, as an...
It was a busy night at City Hall on Tuesday, Aug. 28 as the Borough Assembly met in three sessions to hold a public hearing, certify the Wrangell Medical Center Board of Directors special election results, and to meet in regular session on a number of items. The public hearing, which began the evening, was to hold a second reading of a proposed ordinance that would clarify oversight of the WMC board and their powers in operating the hospital. One proposed change would restrict the board to a...
KSTK General Manager Mike Symons, along with engineer John Matthews, stand with a brand new satellite dish to be installed for upgrading the station’s NPR feed....
A proposed resolution to support the development of new hatcheries in Wrangell and Petersburg – and the resignation of a member of the assembly were the main topics of discussion at the July 24 regular meeting of the Borough Assembly. Mike Symons, who has held Seat F on the assembly since 2010, formally tendered his resignation from the assembly after being tapped as the new General Manager and News Director at KSTK FM. Symons said his resignation was spurred on by the nature of his position as the head of the news department at the station. “I...
As current law stands, Wrangell has the highest municipal sales tax in the nation. An application by two Wrangellites to place a proposed taxation ordinance before the Borough Assembly could change that, however, by seeking to reduce Wrangell’s sales tax to 5.5 percent from its current 7 percent rate. The initial application for a suggested change to 5 percent, filed by Wrangell residents Ernie Christian and Rhonda Dawson, failed last week in part due to requirements covering initiative petitions under the Wrangell’s Municipal Code. Chr...
