Sorted by date Results 1 - 15 of 15
"Progress on the new facility site is steady and going well," PMC CEO Phil Hofstetter reported to the Hospital Board last week. "The new site is steadily being backfilled with rock from the city quarry with good progress." Workers encountered a substantial amount of bedrock when excavating the area for both the Wellness, Education & Resource Center (WERC) building and the Main Hospital and Long Term Care building. In order to position the two buildings and utilities as planned, blasting at the...
A brief regionwide blackout across Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg last week started with a spark. When a power pole in Ketchikan caught fire due to a failed insulator, the line was isolated so the fire could be extinguished - but removing the large load of Ketchikan's power from the grid overloaded two major hydroelectric facilities in Southeast, causing them to go offline and resulting in a complete loss of power in all three communities. Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg get much of...
May 2, 1924 – Herman Papke, rancher and homesteader on Wrangell Narrows just below Scow Bay, is doing wonders in propagation and crossing of species of small fruit, berries and vegetables. He has some apple and cherry trees which seem to be doing well. He has successfully raised loganberries and some of the finest raspberry bushes yet seen in Southeastern Alaska. The soil is dark loam with a blue clay subsoil and just enough sand admixture to let the air through. It was necessary to clear away trees and stumps and then to run deep drainage d...
"...Don't say the C word..." Cris Morrison remembers telling her husband "...It's a blockage..." It was 2018, and she had been dealing with severe constipation for the second month in a row. "I didn't know that it had to do with cancer. I just became constipated..." Her symptoms escalated to incredible pain, and after an overnight stay at Petersburg Medical Center, Morrison was medivaced to Anchorage for emergency surgery to install a colostomy bag for the bowels to empty into and take a sample...
The state House needed an auctioneer last week. Instead, it wasted three hours in a meaningless bidding war as the Republican-led majority told Alaskans they cared far more than anyone else about supporting education and ensuring state-funded alternatives for correspondence school students and their families. That meant they didn’t want to move too quickly to fix the constitutional problem of state money going to private and religious school programs. Let the millions continue to flow and wait for the Alaska Supreme Court to hear the appeal o...
Let’s keep Petersburg schools - and Alaska - great To the Editor: Through no one’s fault but my own, I got busy with work and forgot to run down and attend the #RedforEd march for education. So I wanted to thank the Pilot and KFSK for covering the event as well as local school board and statewide education issues. Public school is what we make it, and in the near decade I’ve lived here I’ve seen people pour their hearts into making our schools great. I don’t have kids in the district, but as a Borough taxpayer I believe strongly in funding o...
Letter to the Editor: Support teachers to keep Petersburg competitive Contract negotiations between the Petersburg School District and the Associated Teachers of Petersburg began in January. The current contract, which is set to expire at the end of this school year, allowed for a 1% increase across the certified salary schedule in each of the last three years. This was in line with similar increases in previous contracts. As we all know, the last three years have brought significantly steeper inflation - roughly 15% in Alaska. We have all...
April 24 – The 3rd Street pump station alarm activated. Water Wastewater (W/WW) was notified and responded. An officer spoke to an individual on 2nd Street concerning a civil issue. Found property was returned to its owner. An officer assisted a citizen. Concerned children called the Petersburg Police Department (PPD) to request assistance for an individual on South 2nd Street. An officer responded and spoke with the children. An officer responded to a parking complaint on Scow Bay Loop Road and found the vehicle had left the area. An o...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported last week that commercial fishermen caught a total of 66.6 million salmon in Southeast Alaska during 2023, including both naturally returning and hatchery-produced salmon of all five species. Last April, Fish and Game estimated that Southeast Alaska commercial fishermen would take just about 31.6 million fish in 2023. The actual commercial harvest more than doubled that projection; fishermen's 2023 catch topped the department's estimate by 35 million fish. The high 2023 catch beat out 2021, the...
One hundred and one local youth performed in Mitkof Dance Troupe's spring recital Myths & Legends on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon in the Wright Auditorium. MDT teachers have been considering the theme for quite awhile and were thrilled with the line up of mythological creatures, including garden gnomes, fairies, amazons, werewolves, genies and griffins. Kelsey Lambe said, "I thought the costumes were on point this year!" "I think it was one of the most fun shows to produce! We [teachers]...
Petersburg's Viking Swim Club's small team made a big showing last weekend at the Alaska Swimming State Championships in Anchorage. In their last major event of the short course season, Petersburg's 13 swimmers competed against the best in the state, coming out of the weekend with championship titles in 12 separate events and winning the Highest Points Per Swimmer title as a team. "It's incredibly exciting to see our growth, to see our swimmers going toe to toe with the best in the state and...
Petersburg High School’s baseball team fought their way through a series full of action during their three games against Juneau-Douglas High School last weekend. Each game had a wildly different story, but the Vikings were able to find a burst of consistency in their first game on Sunday, allowing them to pick up their first win of the season. “We’ve been saying it all year to the boys that if you play a clean game of baseball, you’re going to give yourself a really good chance of winning the game. It showed and they were dialed in,” said head...
The Norwegian bunad is a traditional costume worn on special occasions such as confirmations, graduations, weddings, and Norway's National Day – Syttende mai or May 17th, when parades of people in bunadan celebrate throughout the country. Bunadan are based on the old folk costumes of farming societies in Norway. Every region has its own unique design with embroidery, colors and patterns differing from village to village so that each person's bunad becomes an indication and celebration of the r...
