Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma and other local officials were in Washington, D.C., last week to ask for federal help for the community after its deadly landslide.
“In terms of impact, the community is scared, I think, and rightfully so,” Villarma said in an interview with Anchorage TV station KTUU.
“We’ve lost six of our community members of a town of 2,096. … That’s proportionate in Juneau of over 80 people. In Anchorage, that’s 800. ... It’s very personal.”
The borough team met Nov. 28 with U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who attended middle school in Wrangell in the 1960s.
“She provided several resources to address the disaster and our response as well as some other (potential resources) in terms of capital projects that affect our public safety,” Villarma said.
The senator is working with the Department of Interior and U.S. Geological Survey to assist the town as it looks at monitoring efforts to better anticipate or predict future landslides, he said.
Alaska’s other U.S. senator, Dan Sullivan, helped arrange meetings for the Wrangell contingent with officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Forest Service, Villarma said.
As Wrangell, and every other town in Southeast, is in a national forest, with people often living at the bottom of mountainsides of Forest Service land, the borough manager said he quizzed agency officials about their mission for land management.
In a follow-up to last week’s meetings in Washington, borough officials and the assembly are scheduled to meet with Janelle Crocker, acting regional forester for the Forest Service in Alaska, at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 12, at City Hall. No action will be taken; the meeting is open to the public.
Borough officials also met with Rep. Mary Peltola while they were in Washington on Nov. 28-29.
Villarma said Wrangell needs a lot of federal and state aid to bolster the town’s safety — not just in the aftermath of the Nov. 20 landslide. The community continues to seek funding to rebuild and strengthen its decades-old water reservoir dams, and repair and rebuild its rot-damaged Public Safety Building. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report in 2006 said the upper and lower dams are among the most high-risk in the state in an earthquake.
Replacing the dams and rebuilding the Public Safety Building could total in the neighborhood of $50 million.
In addition to seeking federal assistance, Villarma said he has been talking with the governor and his chief of staff to push for including funding in next year’s state budget, which the governor is required to release by Dec. 15.
Villarma was joined on the Washington trip by Economic Development Director Kate Thomas, Public Works Director Tom Wetor and Matt Henson, the community’s marketing and community development coordinator.
Many of the residents who live in the area of the Nov. 20 landslide at 11-Mile Zimovia Highway — or farther out the road — are at retirement age, and their homes may be worth less due to their proximity to the landslide. Villarma hopes to see if there’s any way to aid those residents.
The community will come back stronger, he said, even though it may not seem that way now.
If a federal emergency is declared for Wrangell, available funding could be used for installing and maintaining monitoring sensors in potentially risky hillside areas.
The details of any monitoring systems are uncertain, but Villarma said the team is much more hopeful after last week’s visits with the state’s congressional delegation and with officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation and FEMA.
The Sentinel contributed reporting to this news story.
To see the entire KTUU story, go to: https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2023/11/29/wrangell-leaders-request-federal-help-after-natural-disaster-devastates-small-community/
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