Sorted by date Results 9201 - 9225 of 10720
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Two adult Alaskans died from the flu in the past week, according to state health officials. The deaths are the first to be reported during Alaska’s 2013-14 influenza season and the first since new rules requiring health care facilities to report adult flu deaths to the state took effect in late December. Before, Alaska only tracked deaths among children. The state has not been notified of any child deaths so far this flu season. “People think, ‘Oh it’s just the flu,’” said Dr. Brian Yablon, a state epidemiolog...
A Sitka-based contractor working with the Alaska Community Development Corporation will conduct hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of winter preparations on local homes. A six-man crew from Alaska SafeTech industries will work in, outside, and on top of local houses to prepare them for the winter. Between 30 and 35 local residents have already elected to have their houses weatherized and have registered ahead of time, according to SafeTech president Ron Waldron. The crew arrived and began...
PETERSBURG – The Petersburg Borough Sanitation Department has set Feb. 4 to be the start date of the new comingled voluntary recycling program. Residents who want to participate must call Public Works at 772-4430 to sign up. Once that’s done, sanitation staff will drop off blue bags, free of charge, at residences and businesses during the week of Jan. 20. Current residents who already practice curbside recycling will be automatically transferred into the new program. After the initial rollout of the recycling program, free bags will be availab...
SEATTLE (AP) — With the planet’s polar regions changing faster than ever before in human history, the University of Washington is launching a new initiative to boost research in the Arctic and prepare students for a world where melting ice is opening new opportunities - and posing new threats. Under the Future of Ice program, the university will hire eight scientists and faculty members and offer the country’s first Arctic studies minor outside of Alaska. The inaugural course, which starts this month, filled up in less than two weeks. “The...
PETERSBURG – Matt Lichtenstein, recent KFSK news director and now full-time troller fisherman, just earned $5000 in crowd funding after the Petersburg Economic Development Council (PEDC) implemented a new program earlier this month. PEDC partnered with the international non-profit Kiva Zip to offer a micro-financing option for local entrepreneurs and small businesses. “In our case, PEDC acts as a trustee for Kiva Zip so we’re kind of their on the ground person and we endorse a borrower,” said Liz Cabrera, PEDC director. Lichtenstein announced h...
Lawrence Bahovec spent a significant portion of his birthday watching football in his bathrobe and waiting for his granddaughters to call. The occasion was subdued for a 97-year-old fisherman who spent decades wresting his living from local waters. Bahovec was born in 1917 in Chicago, near the end of World War I. His father was a fisherman and carried the family name from Yugoslavia. After fishing in Western Washington for a few years, the family relocated to Wrangell. While his father was out...
The Wrangell Ports & Harbors commission voted 4-0 three times Tuesday night. Commissioners unanimously approved a no-bid professional services contract with Juneau’s Corvus Design. The vote means, pending approval by the borough assembly, port officials would repurpose approximately $11,372 of state money for the construction of floats and upland improvements for Heritage Harbor. About $24,000 would remain from those funds, any unused portion of which will be lost by June 30, if the assembly approved the contract, commissioners said. The c...
The Chief Shakes House rededication was easily the biggest event of 2013 in Wrangell. However, the year was filled with events and news stories big and small. On the first edition of 2014, the Sentinel pauses to recollect the stories throughout the year. January An electrical fire damaged the fish tank at the Nolan Center, causing it to be removed. A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off of Craig Jan. 4, rattling windows and nerves in town. The quake caused no major damage in town, but...
The Wrangell girls’ basketball team racked up a single win and two losses in Ketchikan this weekend at the Clarke Cochrane Holiday Classic. “The tournament went well for a lot of my players,” said head coach Edna Abella-Nore. “For every girl except one, none of them had played at a big tournament before. There was a lot of nerves.” The tournament opened Friday with a lopsided 53-11 loss to Chugiak. The team scored a single point through two quarters then added eight more in the third, including a 3-pointer by Wrangell baller Kaydee Howell an...
In the Sentinel 100, 75, 50 and 25 years ago. January 1, 1914: Talk about your masquerades, you should have been at the Red Men's masquerade last night, everyone in town was there but you, and costumes, never such a variety before, it was the biggest masquerade ever held in Wrangell, and the music, say, it was great, not the cost of it, just the music. Everybody and his brother turned out, it was a variety show as well as a dance. The rink was crammed and everyone was just bubbling over with mirth. That 15 lb. ham was a great magnet, worst look...
Mobile phone service for Wrangell AT&T customers was sporadically available and then unavailable starting Christmas night. The outage lasted until Friday afternoon. Customers in and around town, many of whom use smart phones, said voice and data were limited to the range of the device’s Wifi adapters. A statement issued by AT&T acknowledged the outage and blamed inclement weather. “Some AT&T Alascom customers in the towns of Ketchikan, Lena Point, Juneau, and surrounding areas may have experienced a disruption in service recently as dense fog...
Local bar patrons might have to go a bit further to get that nicotine fix on the weekends. Rayme’s Bar plans to be non-smoking as of Jan. 1, and that means Rayme’s will become the first dedicated bar without smoking in Wrangell. The Stikine Inn’s dining room and lounge also contains a bar, which has been smoke-free for years, but the other mainstay alcohol establishments will remain smoker friendly for the time being. The switchover means another haven lost for the tobacco cloud crowd, though bar owner Sam “Reme” Privett III says he’s simp...
For the second straight year, the Salvation Army’s local kettle campaign beat expectations. The news this year might be whose expectations they beat. Local Captains Ronnie and Debbie Davis said contributions – most of which were deposited through the metal slot in the top of this perennial red kettle – totaled $3,611. That topped the local goal of $2,500 by more than a grand, but Wrangell also defied state and national trends, Ronnie Davis said. “In the division, which is the state of Alaska, we’re down by nine percent, but our kettles w...
The Wrangell High team brought three straight losses home from the Clarke Cochrane Invitational this weekend. Wolves fans can take solace in the fact that the team has shown improvement in critical areas, even if the scoreboard lists the smaller number on the Wolves' side, said head coach Ray Stokes. Competition at the tournament also involved larger schools, Stokes added. "We lost all three of our games, but it was really pretty good competition," he said. "We're young and inexperienced, and...
Sentinel writer The hospital board voted 6-0 to renew the contract of CEO Marla Sanger. Sanger has been the Medical Center CEO since Nov. 5, 2012, after the departure of former CEO Noel Rea and a recall election led to a period fraught with political instability for the Wrangell Medical Center Board of Directors. On her first day, Sanger was the Center’s fourth CEO in less than a year. The WMC board terminated Noel Rea in June 2012 after being recalled in a contentious election. Interim CEO Kendall Sawa departed for another job in Washington s...
Despite uncertainty over the continued existence of the Thomas Bay Power Authority, commissioners voted 5-1 Dec. 19 to renew the commission’s travel and liability insurance for another year. The uncertainty stems from the possibility the TBPA in its present form may be placed on idle status as a result of negotiations between the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, and representatives for the Petersburg and Wrangell borough assemblies, set to begin after both assemblies authorized negotiation. Commissioners initially asked whether a six-month r...
Tots flocked into the American Legion Hall to see the Big Man Saturday. For the third year in a row, the post hosted a holiday get-together and gift giveaway at the hall, though several changes this year were designed to make things easier for organizers and especially parents. The Big Man, in this case, is Santa Claus. The party comes with its annual set of challenges and rewards, said Marilyn Mork, who helped organize the annual holiday hootenanny. That includes a scramble to make sure every...
JUNEAU (AP) — A state court judge has given final approval to Alaska’s new redistricting map, clearing the way for its use in upcoming elections. Still unsettled, though, is who is considered the prevailing party for purposes of winning legal fees. The Alaska Redistricting Board had asked Superior Court Judge Michael McConahy to enter a final judgment in the case, noting that no appeals had been filed. McConahy had earlier given his approval to the plan and on Friday entered final judgment, finding the plant to be constitutional. McConahy als...
Petersburg Power and Light Superintendent and Southeast Alaska Power Agency board member Joe Nelson made a motion to suspend the Petersburg-Kake Intertie Project last week. Nelson made the motion after SEAPA CEO Trey Acteson reported to the board about future funding challenges associated with the project. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough, the City of Ketchikan and the City of Saxman all listed the Swan Lake Reservoir at the top of their capital project lists. Governor Sean Parnell’s fiscal year 2015 capital project list doesn’t include the pro...
Bernard Conrad Iversen, 89, died on August 31, 2013 in Portland, Ore. with his family surrounding him. He had been through a difficult year, losing his son Peter in an airplane crash last October, 2012 and shortly thereafter his wife Doris died in late November, just days before their 66th wedding anniversary and her 88th birthday. His sister, Millie Iversen Grant, passed in June of this year in Anchorage. Barney had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer last fall, but through it all, he...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously voted to go ahead with negotiations with Wrangell, Ketchikan and the Southeast Alaska Power Agency to provide a conversion plan for the transfer of operations and maintenance of the Tyee Hyrdo Facility from the Thomas Bay Power Authority to SEAPA. The vote comes after the Wrangell Assembly drafted a resolution earlier this month that, in part, accepts SEAPA CEO Trey Acteson’s August 19 offer to take over operations at TBPA. As part of the conversion plan and Acteson’s offer, the resolution states tha...
Want to know at a glance how many fishing boats call the Kenai Peninsula Borough home? It’s 1,089. Or what percentage of Wrangellites fish for a living? Just over 15 percent. Or how many skippers plus crew fish out of Juneau? That number is 705. To help policy makers and the public become better informed about how the seafood industry fits into the state’s economy, the United Fishermen of Alaska has compiled Fishing Fact sheets for 26 communities, plus statewide tallies for Alaska and Washington. A big misconception the well documented UFA dat...