Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 135
WRANGELL — Groundwork for the Wrangell Mariners’ Memorial has come to a halt for winter, but progress has still been made recently. Jenn Miller-Yancey, with the Mariners’ Memorial board, reported that work is being done for the memorial’s walls, where plaques will one day be hung to commemorate Wrangell sailors who have passed away. “There will be four walls within the memorial, three walls meant to hold plaques that are 26 feet long, curved and vary in height from 42 inches to 8 feet,” Miller-Yancey wrote in an email. “There will be 1 wall at...
WRANGELL - Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska's chief medical officer, called in to a special meeting of the Wrangell Borough Assembly last Friday afternoon, Dec. 18, to give a brief update on the COVID-19 situation across the state. In her update she said that she is "cautiously optimistic" about the future, with vaccinations being rolled out and a slowdown in rising case numbers. "Across the state, as a whole, we're starting to see a tentative decline in the acceleration, which has been fantastic," she...
WRANGELL - Due to stormy weather Wrangell saw through the night and morning of Monday and Tuesday, according to Wrangell Municipal Light & Power, some trees fell onto power lines out Zimovia Highway and caused some outages on Dec. 1. A Facebook post from the City and Borough of Wrangell announced that power was lost between 9-mile and 13-mile of the highway. Rod Rhoades, WLM&P director, said that they received reports of two fallen trees out the road, at 11.5-mile and 11.75-mile. Rhoades said...
WRANGELL - The Wrangell Borough Assembly held a special meeting last Thursday night, Nov. 19, to discuss the Public Safety Building and its needed repairs. The Public Safety Building houses Wrangell's court, police department, fire department, and DMV. It was first built in 1987, and is in need of renovation in many areas. One such area was the main topic of discussion in the meeting: The need for a wall shoring project. A few months ago, structural instability was discovered in the Public...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released preliminary data on state salmon harvests for 2020. Information for Southeast Alaska shows that only half as many fish were hauled in this year compared to last year. 2020 data shows that 14,301,964 salmon were harvested this year, totaling a little over 74 million pounds. The estimated ex vessel value for this harvest is about $50 million. This is a major decrease from 2019 numbers, reported at about 32 million fish, 163 million pounds, and...
WRANGELL - The Coast Guard pulled a man out of the water last Sunday evening, Nov. 1. The incident occurred in Union Bay, near Meyers Chuck, south of Wrangell. Petty Officer Janessa Warschkow, with the Coast Guard, said that they were notified of a man in need of rescue at about 4:46 p.m. Warschkow said, in an email, that they were on-scene at 9 p.m. According to a Coast Guard press release, an air crew from Sitka and the cutter Anacapa were sent to conduct the search and rescue. A 70-year-old...
WRANGELL - The Wrangell Borough Assembly held a workshop last week, Oct. 20, to discuss the water treatment plant improvement project. This has been an ongoing project for some time now, and the workshop was to make sure new assembly members were up to speed on the current situation, and to share opinions on how it is going so far. Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad led much of the initial discussion, providing a history lesson on the project. Plans to renovate and improve Wrangell's...
WRANGELL - A lawsuit brought against the city by a Wrangell resident has come to a close, after Judge Kevin Miller dismissed the case. Kipha Valvoda brought a lawsuit against several former and current members of Wrangell's government in March of 2019. An amended complaint was filed by the plaintiff in April 2019, but the lawsuit originally began in March of that year. Valvoda claimed the borough used unfair hiring practices that kept him from finding employment with the city. He also claimed,...
The weather information transmitter at Cape Fanshaw has been repaired after being out of service for over a year. Cape Fanshaw is located north of Petersburg, along a point of mainland approximately 12 nautical miles north of Farrugut Bay. As of Oct. 6, NOAA and Coast Guard personnel confirmed that the transmitter was now operational. Kip Wadlow, Coast Guard spokesperson, said that the transmitter fell under the domain of NOAA. He later clarified on Oct. 6 that they had a memorandum of...
WRANGELL - Tuesday, Oct. 6, was election day for Wrangell. Polls closed at 8 p.m., with the preliminary count showing a total of 419 voters participating on election day. Wrangell voters chose the community's leadership in a variety of positions this year, as well as whether or not Wrangell should leave the Inter-Island Ferry Authority. Below are the preliminary election results. Preliminary winners are marked with an asterisk (*). Borough Mayor, one two-year term *Steve Prysunka, 304...
WRANGELL — The Public Safety Building has been a topic of much discussion and concern to city government. The building, which houses Wrangell’s police department, fire department, court, and DMV, is in disrepair. It was first constructed in 1987, according to Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad. Much of the discussion has been whether or not replacing the entire building would be cheaper than renovating it, and about the growing list of issues present in the building. Another pro...
WRANGELL - The Freeberg family moved to Wrangell in April of 2019. Kyle Freeberg moved here to take a position as the town's state wildlife trooper. He has a total of three years of experience as a state trooper, the previous two spent in Fairbanks. His year as state trooper in Wrangell involved enforcing state laws, educating the public about important hunting and fishing regulations, and as he said in a July 2019 interview, working to increase collaboration between himself and the community....
WRANGELL — In last week’s assembly meeting, Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen reported that the city had recently been informed by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation that they had surpassed allowable levels of HAA5 in the water supply. HAA5, or Haloacetic Acids, is a byproduct of organic material in the water being treated with chlorine during the disinfection process. “It is important to remember organic material is always present in the source water treated for Wrang...
The Wrangell School Board held a special meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 9, to continue their discussion of a formal reprimand and improvement plan for the superintendent. Late last August, Superintendent Debbe Lancaster and several district staff members went on a trip to Juneau to purchase supplies to prepare the district for the upcoming school year. This was in violation of a district travel ban during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as done without board approval. The planned use of CARES Act funding for some of the purchases was also...
WRANGELL - The Wrangell School Board held a special meeting Monday, Aug. 24, to discuss recent travel and purchases made by the superintendent and school staff. Last week, Superintendent Debbe Lancaster and three other members of the school district traveled to Juneau for a shopping trip. This was to acquire some key items related to reopening the schools and COVID-19 mitigation, she said. There were several reasons this was a topic of discussion for the board, among them being a lack of...
WRANGELL - Shea Siegert, campaign manager for Alaskans for Better Elections, recently spoke to the Wrangell Sentinel about their organization. With limited opportunities for in-person events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, they are trying to get the word out about their campaign in any way they can. Their campaign, he said, is to make some big changes to the way elections are run in the state of Alaska. "These are really important for Alaskans because we are facing some big problems with...
WRANGELL - Wrangell's annual coho and halibut derbies are just around the corner. The coho salmon derby begins tomorrow, Aug. 28, and will run until Sept. 7. The halibut derby, meanwhile, will take place from Sept. 4 to Sept. 7. Last year, in the 2019 fishing derbies, over 220 tickets were sold to participants. For those participating in the derbies, weigh-in stations will be located at the Chamber of Commerce office from Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., or the harbor master's office...
WRANGELL - In March, when the COVID-19 pandemic first began to impact Alaska, many local businesses and organizations in Wrangell shut down. While many groups saw the time as an opportunity to wait and see how the pandemic would change things in the community, the Wrangell Salvation Army took the opportunity to renovate and upgrade. Now that they and other local groups are as close to business-as-usual as they can be in this time, the Salvation Army wanted to remind people struggling through...
WRANGELL - Last week, four people died in a car wreck in Petersburg. Among them were two Wrangellites, Siguard and Helen Decker, 21-years-old and 19-years-old. Their deaths shook the community, which has come together in a variety of ways to express their grief and support for the Decker family. A GoFundMe page was put together by the United Fishermen of Alaska, to raise money in their memory. As of Tuesday morning, Aug. 4, $161,273 has been raised. "The initial $10,000 in funds raised will go...
WRANGELL - Three new cases of COVID-19 were announced in Wrangell over a period of four days this past week. This has brought the total number of cases of the virus in town up to 12. The first case in this string, case no. 10, was announced Friday, July 24. During the initial announcement, it was not known if this case was from a local or a nonresident. This information was updated the next day, July 25, with the announcement of case no. 11. Both cases 10 and 11 were confirmed to be Wrangell...
WRANGELL - The Wrangell Ranger District is beginning the planning process for a restoration of the Roosevelt Harbor area. The harbor, located on Zarembo Island west of Wrangell, is graded inadequately and has poor drainage. According to a document provided by District Ranger Clint Kolarich, this leaves the site and the harbor itself vulnerable to pollutants and erosion. A rough outline of the plan is to add base surface material to the existing grade of the existing Forest Service...
WRANGELL - "Concern" is a common theme in the COVID-19 pandemic. People are concerned about their health, their jobs, getting their kids back into school, and the economic prospects of their community, among other things. Wrangell resident Kassee Schlotzhauer wants to help ensure that getting enough to eat is not one such concern, through Wrangell's Subsistence Giving Project. "My family and me, we like to subsistence hunt, fish, gather for our family for the winters," she said. "This last year...
The cities of Wrangell, Petersburg, and Ketchikan all suffered a power outage in the early morning of July 4. Rod Rhoades, light and power director for Wrangell, said that the outage hit Wrangell at 3:05 a.m., but started in Ketchikan. All three communities are connected via the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, meaning they receive and share power from the same sources. While power has been restored, officials are still looking into the cause of the outage. All three cities lost power around 3...
WRANGELL - In early June, the Wrangell Sentinel received several emails regarding one of the city's police officers, Paul Jay Huerta. One of these emails linked to a news article and video, alleging that Huerta left his previous job in California for harassing a suspect. Recently, city officials informed the paper that Huerta was no longer employed by the Wrangell Police Department. However, the city has not provided information as to why he resigned. A July 9, 2018 article by the Desert Sun...
WRANGEL - Several local fishermen have been volunteering their time and energy, more so than usual, at Wrangell's sole operating seafood processor. With the decision by Trident Seafoods to not operate this summer, Sea Level Seafoods has been the only local option available for fishermen to process their catches. However, thanks to a number of factors brought on by COVID-19, Sea Level has been shorthanded. This has led to a number of fishermen volunteering to help process crab, as well as catch...
