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- [00:08]
Gillian Nicolazzo
It's not that there aren't any up there, it's just that they haven't been mapped yet.
- [00:11]
Casey Grove
An inventory of landslides in Alaska goes live in an effort to understand the risk and prepare for more in the future. From Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Thursday, September 18th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, a lawsuit over the state's backlog for food assistance applications rolls on. There are a number of states where.
- [00:33]
Saima Akhtar
There has been litigation and there has been a resolution that led to processing improvements.
- [00:37]
Casey Grove
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. Alaska's governor will not withdraw an executive order proposing to create a new state Department of Agriculture, according to a letter this week to leaders of the state House and Senate. The Alaska Beacon reports. Governor Mike Dunleavy's letter Monday comes after a joint House Senate panel voted to spend up to $100,000 on a lawsuit against the governor if he goes ahead with his proposal to create the department unilaterally. Alaska is one of only two states without a cabinet level state Department of Agriculture. Legislators have spoken favorably about the idea of creating one, but a majority of the House and Senate want to authorize that new department through law, not by the governor's executive order. In March, the legislature voted 32 to 28 to reject an administrative order that would have created the Department of Agriculture by splitting off part of the Natural Resources Department. Shortly before the vote, lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced new legislation to create the department. Neither the House bill nor the Senate bill advanced to a final vote, and either could be taken up during the next regular legislative session, which begins in January. When Dunleavy called linemakers into special session in August, he reissued the executive order. Leaders of the state House and Senate declined to accept the order as valid, saying that the Alaska Constitution does not grant the governor the power to issue an order during a special session. Lawmakers also say they believe it is not legal to reintroduce a previously rejected order. A landslide triggered by heavy rain and wind took down trees next to an apartment building in downtown Juneau late last night. Although this slide didn't damage homes or hurt anyone, people living in the building are calling it a near miss. As KTOO's Clarice Larson reports, the street where it happened has a history of landslides.
- [02:37]
Clarice Larson
On Thursday afternoon, Dave Bonilla stood outside the Strasbaugh Apartments on Gastineau Avenue, smoking a cigarette and gazing at a gash in the mountainside adjacent to the building. He's lived there for more than five years. The night before, a torrent of soil, rocks and large trees slid down Mount Roberts, barely missing the building. Vanilla says he really didn't know what had happened.
- [02:59]
Ian Hartman
I have no idea. I was asleep and it came down, I guess woke everybody else in the building up, but I was out.
- [03:09]
Clarice Larson
Monica Johnson also lives there with her husband and two young children. She was at work listening to the police scanner when the landslide struck.
- [03:17]
Saima Akhtar
And I hear on the Dispatch saying that 265 just reported that a tree and some boulders came down and hit the apartment building next to their house. So I'm looking at Google Maps going, oh my gosh, it's on Gastineau Street.
- [03:33]
Clarice Larson
All of the residents living there were safely evacuated at about 11pm but this isn't the first time they've had to evacuate the building. A landslide occurred in the same spot just last summer. You can still see the scar on the mountainside. Juneau and Gasineau Avenue in particular are prone to landslides. The street is in a severe landslide hazard hazard zone, according to maps the City Commissioned in 2022, but didn't adopt. Gasineau Avenue has a long history of landslides. In 2022, a landslide hit three homes and knocked out power on the street. In 1936, Juneau's deadliest landslide killed 15 people and buried parts of downtown in thick mud. And back in 1920, a landslide destroyed 16 buildings on Gasineau Avenue and South Franklin street, killing four people. Looking at the mountain, Johnson says Wednesday night's landslide has her family looking for a more secure place to live.
- [04:27]
Saima Akhtar
All of this, this has happened to us several times and anything can come down like those two trees on the side. They kind of creep me out because if those were to fall, they could, you know, smash right into our building.
- [04:40]
Clarice Larson
Ryan o' Shaughnessy is the emergency programs manager at the City and Borough of Juneau. After the landslide, he went to the building with first responders from Capital City Fire and Rescue to assess the damage to building.
- [04:51]
Chris Hyde
They looked up the slide and identified a bunch of loose material further up the slide path. So some, some more trees with exposed.
- [05:01]
Casey Grove
Root wads up the slide path.
- [05:02]
Clarice Larson
O' Shaughnessy says that because more rainfall was expected overnight, he was concerned it could cause more soil and trees to slide downhill. That's when the city decided to evacuate the building, he says. The city planned to open an emergency shelter, but the owner of the building booked hotel rooms for the 15 displaced residents instead of. The city lifted that evacuation order around 10am Thursday. O' Shaughnessy returned to the building in the morning to assess the damage.
- [05:28]
Chris Hyde
Very, very little, if any damage to the building at all.
- [05:32]
Clarice Larson
Last year's landslide caused more damage. Johnson says a tree smashed the electrical box and damaged the foundation. Her family was displaced for more than two months while the building was being repaired. O' Shaughnessy says there isn't a way to predict landslides in southeast Alaska yet. But when emergency responders and planners can assess the site and see an imminent threat, they issue evacuation orders to keep people safe. With help from Alex Solomon, I'm Clarice Larson in Juneau.
- [05:59]
Casey Grove
And for years, a national database that tracks and maps landslides has had a major hole Alaska. But that's about to change. The state released an inventory this week that pinpoints where thousands of slides have happened in the past. As Avery Elfelt reports for the Alaska Desk, the goal is to better understand the risk and prepare for the future.
- [06:19]
Avery Elfelt
Gillian Nicolazzo has spent the last several years pouring over more than 1,000 geologic reports that date back to the 1950s or even earlier.
- [06:27]
Gillian Nicolazzo
First step was to go through basically any published report that looked like it might have a landslide.
- [06:35]
Avery Elfelt
Her goal? To create Alaska's first statewide map of where landslides have occurred in the past for the state Department of Natural Resources. Now that final product is available to the public. Nicolazo says it's a crucial tool that will help communities, researchers and government agencies examine previous landslides and extrapolating if there.
- [06:56]
Gillian Nicolazzo
Are certain slope angles with certain soil types or rock types that are more susceptible than others.
- [07:01]
Avery Elfelt
The information comes from already published reports that were unrelated to landslides by the state agency and the U.S. geological Survey. They were largely created using aerial imagery. Nicolazzo helped identify landslides in each report, categorize every slide and compile the information in one spot.
- [07:18]
Gillian Nicolazzo
It's a good step. One, I think, gets it all in one place where it's easy to find and then people can start getting creative.
- [07:24]
Avery Elfelt
The new online map makes clear that Alaska is highly susceptible to landslides. It also highlights that certain types of landslides are more common in particular areas than in others. If you zoom in on southeast Alaska, for instance, hundreds of blue dots appear throughout the region. Those blue dots signify places where so called debris flows have taken place.
- [07:43]
Gillian Nicolazzo
That sort of fits with what we know because they have steep terrain and a lot of water running through. So it makes sense that they would have a lot of flow related to water.
- [07:52]
Avery Elfelt
But something else that jumps out is that major swaths of the state at least appear to have no slides at all, including on the North Slope. Nicolazo says it looks that way for one main reason.
- [08:02]
Gillian Nicolazzo
It's not that there aren't any up there, it's just that they haven't been mapped yet.
- [08:05]
Avery Elfelt
Ideally, Nicolazo says, that will change as the state maps more areas where state or federal agencies haven't previously focused. Overall, she says, the database is an important step forward. Several years ago, the USGS compiled its own National Landslide Inventory using data from states, but until now, Alaska didn't have much to contribute. The new database will feed into the nationwide version and start to fill in the Alaska sized gap. Reporting in Haines, I'm Avery Elphelt.
- [08:37]
Casey Grove
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, warm water around Sitka brings a rare opportunity to fish for tuna.
- [08:43]
RJ Miller
Well, you're trolling at 7 to 10 knots. They grab the lines and the reels just start screaming.
- [08:51]
Casey Grove
That's ahead. Stay with us. A cruise ship passenger died Tuesday in Juneau after falling off a steep mountainside on Mount Roberts near downtown. Search and rescue responders used drones to locate the body of 32 year old Texas resident Britton Poole, according to a dispatch yesterday from Alaska State troopers. His body was recovered by troopers and Juneau Mountain Rescue after he and another man reportedly fell from the Mount Roberts Trail and slid down the mountainside. The other man suffered minor injuries. Both men were passengers on a cruise ship visiting Juneau for the day, according to troopers. Poole's body is being sent to the state medical examiner's office and his next of kin have been notified. Poole is the second cruise ship passenger to die from a fall on Mount Roberts this year, and at least five people have died in the backcountry around Juneau this summer. Lawyers are trading arguments in a case challenging the state's failure to process applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on time. The case dates back to 2023. The number of Alaskans caught in the SNAP backlog has dropped by roughly 75% since plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit. But the backlog still hovers around 4,000 as the state's struggle to process applications on time has continued. Saima Akhtar, with the national center for Law and Economic justice, is an attorney for the plaintiffs. She says they're asking the court to rule that Alaska's SNAP system violates low income Alaskans rights. She says lawsuits like this have helped in other states. There are a number of states where.
- [10:24]
Saima Akhtar
There has been litigation and there has been a resolution that led to processing improvements.
- [10:29]
Casey Grove
Akhtar and her team obtained a preliminary injunction in the case last year that requires the state to report on its progress as it works to catch up on the backlog. It's possible that could be converted to a permanent injunction. State attorneys have filed a variety of arguments asking the court to decide the case in their favor. In one filing, state attorneys say that a recent U.S. supreme Court case means that private individuals should not have a right to sue over the state's failure to meet deadlines in federal law. In others, state attorneys say many of the issues highlighted in the suit have been resolved. A Department of Law spokesperson says attorneys are reviewing the recent filings. A decision is not expected for months. In the meantime, Octar says people struggling to access SNAP or other benefits can contact Alaska Legal Services for help. Well, an unusually warm August and early September near Sitka raised water temperatures to over 60 degrees, and those warm waters attracted an unusual fish to the area, tuna. As KCAW's Catherine Rose reports, anglers had historic luck bringing home the fish that usually swim farther south.
- [11:37]
Jason Ohn
Growing up, going fishing was a scary prospect for Jason Own.
- [11:41]
I had a kind of a bad experience on a fishing trip when I was a kid and got a hook stuck in my hand and that, you know, ever since that day, I've been very scared to pick up the rod and reel.
- [11:52]
That changed when he moved to Sitka around two years ago and took up spear fishing.
- [11:58]
You know, after work almost every day, I'd pick up the spear gun, don a wetsuit and hop into the ocean and spend as much time as I could, you know, in the water.
- [12:06]
Ohn was busy studying to get into medical school in late August when he heard that a couple of days tuna were spotted in a harbor in downtown Sitka. The highly unusual sighting was enough to pry him away from his books. At the harbor, he watched as folks tried to catch the fish, but they weren't biting and fishermen on the dock were getting frustrated. One hollered, someone should just go in the water and spear that thing.
- [12:32]
And then I mentioned that I had my spear gun in my car and all of a sudden I was, you know, everyone was egging me on to go in the water and give it a, give it a shot.
- [12:40]
He went down to the shoreline and waded in there. He waited suspended underwater for over half.
- [12:47]
An hour, was honestly just so enamored by how cool that thing was. It was obviously very shimmery and tuna just built for the water, built for the ocean.
- [13:01]
Then, Ohnn said the tuna seemed to notice him and startled, it turned in the water. He landed a clean shot and the front page of the local Paper for the unusual catch, a 30 inch long, 15 to 20 pound skipjack tuna. Ohne's experience was an early indicator of what became an unprecedented tuna harvest in Sitka. Bridget Ferris is a research biologist with NOAA Fisheries. In an email, she told KCAW that tuna do show up in the Gulf of Alaska, but it's not monitored by NOAA to know if it's a rare encounter. There are two stocks of skipjack tuna in the Pacific Ocean. 2025 has brought warm waters to Alaska, and strong warm currents across the North Pacific have provided a route for tuna from one of those stocks to make their way to Southeast. Ferris says albacore are more common in Alaska, but still infrequent. She says they can handle a broader temperature range than skipjack. As luck would have it, a group of local fishermen were about to find that out.
- [14:07]
RJ Miller
R.J. miller. Born and raised in Sitka and never been tuna fishing in my life up until a week ago.
- [14:14]
Jason Ohn
RJ Miller runs a local charter fishing business. Last summer, he heard about an angler who caught two albacore off the coast of Cape Edgecam over 20 nautical miles from Sitka, and he's been on the lookout for them ever since. This year, he was guiding a charter trip and one of the crew snagged something really fast and strong, likely a tuna.
- [14:36]
RJ Miller
At that point, we're beyond excited, irrationally excited.
- [14:41]
Jason Ohn
But it was a hard sell to convince visiting charter fishermen to go for tuna when they journey to Alaska for something more Alaskan, like, you guys want.
- [14:51]
RJ Miller
To try for tuna? And they're like, no, we want a salmon fish. Okay, okay, it's your trip, you guys.
- [14:55]
Jason Ohn
So he started doing more research and learning from other local fishermen. And on a Thursday morning in early September, a group of them agreed to go out on the hunt for tuna. The group brought home 45 albacore tuna that day. Like Ohne, Miller marveled at their strength and speed.
- [15:15]
RJ Miller
Well, you're trolling at 7 to 10 knots. They grab the lines and the reels just start screaming.
- [15:22]
Jason Ohn
Their bounty brought more fishermen out to try their luck. Alaska Department of Fish and Game area sportfish management biologist Troy Tydenko estimates that a couple hundred have been caught so far.
- [15:35]
RJ Miller
And in fact, I kind of think this is one of the first time that they've been really successfully targeted offshore in Sitka.
- [15:42]
Jason Ohn
There's no limit to how many tuna sport fishermen can catch in Alaska as long as they have a permit. But the tuna boom in Sitka prompted the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to issue an advisory about commercial fishing, which is also legal but far more regulated. Miller says while he's only recently become a tuna fisherman, he's trying to share everything he's learned with fellow Sitkins.
- [16:07]
RJ Miller
I hope that everybody in Sitka can go out and get their hands on one of these, not only for how absolutely delicious they are, but the thrill of the chase and the thrill of the fight.
- [16:18]
Jason Ohn
More than anything, though, the experience has piqued his curiosity.
- [16:22]
RJ Miller
Feels like Pandora's box is what's really out there. If albacore are out there, what's eating the albacore?
- [16:28]
Jason Ohn
Miller hopes to find out. Reporting in Sitka, I'm Kathryn Rose.
- [16:34]
Casey Grove
The brown bears in Katmai national park and Preserve have been packing on the pounds this summer, and starting Tuesday you can vote online for the chunkiest bear in the annual Fat Bear Week competition. The name of the event says it all, says Katmai Park Ranger Sarah Bruce.
- [16:48]
Gillian Nicolazzo
We celebrate how fat the bears get. Fat equals survival. A fat bear is a healthy bear, so it's a celebration of both how hard the bears work in order to feed themselves for an entire year in the span of just a couple of months.
- [17:05]
Casey Grove
Fat Bear Week started as a one day celebration over a decade ago, but has grown into an international phenomenon. Over a million people from more than 100 countries voted in the bracket style competition last year. Bruce calls the Face off the park's hallmark event.
- [17:20]
Gillian Nicolazzo
Fat Bear Week brings the park into the living room of anybody who wants to enjoy this place. Even just this past week we had a Bear Cam fan who visited the park from New Zealand.
- [17:34]
Casey Grove
Bruce is originally from Maryland and she's hooked, too. She says it's stunning to watch the bears transform as they feast on fish in the Bristol Bay watershed, home to the world's largest sockeye salmon run.
- [17:45]
Gillian Nicolazzo
It really is quite a sight to see. These bears go from 5, 6, 700 pounds when they come out of the den to over a thousand pounds by the end of the season.
- [17:55]
Casey Grove
Park rangers are still finalizing this year's 12 Chunky competitors, but Bruce says there may be some familiar faces like Potentially Grazer, the reigning champion, along with Chunk, last year's runner up. Online voting in the challenge opens Tuesday and runs through September 30th. But if you want to get in on the action early, Fat Bear Week also has a junior division where the plumpest cub advances to the main bracket. Voting for the juniors started today at explore.org and closes tomorrow. A book of historical photographs showing Anchorage's humble beginnings and its growth to becoming Alaska's largest city hit bookstore shelves this Summer. The first photos in the book, titled Images of America, Anchorage are actually from before most settlers moved into the area, which is the ancestral homeland of the Denina Athabaskan people. But as the city became more established, it expanded from railroad camp to military community, pipeline construction, boomtown, and eventually a sea and air shipping hub. University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Ian Hartman compiled the photos, most of which come from the Anchorage Museum's collections in conjunction with the Cook Inlet Historical Society. And while the city has seen a lot of change, Hartman says Anchorage's relatively short history made the project easier.
- [19:14]
Ian Hartman
Anchorage is such a young city, and so when we're talking about the photographic history of Anchorage, I mean, we can pretty much encompass the time from the old, you know, railroad tent camp city to the present. And so when someone picks up this book and who has been in Anchorage for a while, or maybe they're new to Anchorage, but they have a little bit of familiarity with its history, my hope is that it'll resonate with them, of course. But it's also really kind of trying to demonstrate that we live in this vibrant town that has this really fascinating history, and that if you only have a half hour or an hour or two hours or you want to pick it up on your flight to Seattle or something like that, you can kind of thumb through it and get a sense of maybe the. The highlights of Anchorage's history over the last hundred years.
- [19:58]
Chris Hyde
Yeah, I mean, I would definitely say that just as an Anchorage resident, you know, that was my experience with it. It's just fascinating. Just the thing where you're, like, recognizing landmarks that are still. They still look the same. Like the mountains look the same. Or the corner of Spenard and Fireweed. You know, I used to drive through there all the time. So that was one.
- [20:17]
Ian Hartman
Yeah.
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Chris Hyde
Or Arctic Valley, I think it was called something. It was a Fort Rich military recreation area at the time. But the mountains, you know, the skyline.
- [20:27]
Casey Grove
Yeah.
- [20:27]
Chris Hyde
And it's like, oh, I know what that looks like.
- [20:28]
Ian Hartman
Yeah.
- [20:29]
Chris Hyde
One thing and something I had never read about was the first building, you know, that was located in Anchorage, the first, like, structure, I guess, made by, you know, folks settling the area. I thought that was super interesting because we think of, you know, downtown, and I think people have heard the. The history of the railroad coming in and the railroad camp down there by Ship Creek. But that's not the case with this building.
- [20:54]
Ian Hartman
That's exactly right. So what you see here, there's a few of These images of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church. And so one of the things I was trying to kind of grapple with again, as I just plotted the narrative of this is like, okay, the easy thing to do here would be to kind of start with the railroad camp, but that's not quite right. And so I thought it was important to kind of ground the book in sort of a recognition of Denina land, of the role of the nine in the area, and to sort of some extent, sort of the recognition of the fact that there is this sort of Russian Orthodox presence not all that strong in this part of south central Alaska. The Russian Orthodox had a much greater influence in other places, but their impact is still kind of scene in the area. And so the Orthodox church that is in the native village of Aklutna is, I think, a good way to maybe just kind of ground this broader history to both the colonial presence of the Russians, but kind of even more importantly than that, the Denina presence, which is kind of threaded throughout the book, but opens it in a real explicit way.
- [22:01]
Chris Hyde
There's a lot of photos of, you know, just Anchorage devastated by the Good Friday earthquake.
- [22:07]
Ian Hartman
Right.
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Chris Hyde
The one I marked here that really stood out to me is Max photos. And maybe I'll ask you to tell me what you see in that photo. But the thing that stood out to me is that he's smiling in the face of this devastation.
- [22:22]
Ian Hartman
Yeah, he is. And so this is one of these ones where you get sort of wrapped up in the destruction of the earthquake. And there are all kinds of images that demonstrate that. And you can talk to the people who've been in Anchorage for a long time and have these vivid memories of the earthshot shaking for, what was it, over four minutes. But, you know, people also had a sense of humor. And so in this particular image, you've got a gentleman outside of Max photos, and it says, closed due to early breakup business moved to 7th and Sea. And he's kind of pumping his fist and he's got a smile on his face. And, you know, Alaskans obviously associate breakup with the spring and associate breakup with, you know, the melting of the ice and everything else. But here you see the. The early breakup is. The guy's Photoshop is literally broken up. I mean, the whole thing is kind of in a state of disrepair, but he sees the humor in it, and he kind of understands that it's appropriate to the time being in March and coming up on April. And so even in the midst of this devastation, you find sort of, in typical fashion, Alaskans being good sports and trying to make the most of a really Awful situation. So part of this chapter, too, is just to kind of, you know, demonstrate the devastation of the earthquake, but also kind of demonstrate how quickly people kind of get back up on their feet.
- [23:44]
Chris Hyde
There's a photo in here from the 70s, from the pipeline boom. It's of a rodeo, I guess it was at West High School, which was just Anchorage High School at the time.
- [23:52]
Ian Hartman
Yes.
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Chris Hyde
I mean, it looks like what you would think. It's a guy on a horse, you know, that's bucking. Tell me why.
- [23:57]
Ian Hartman
Yeah, so if you think of the context here. So this is from the summer of 1960, 1977, right at the time, of course, that the oil boom is really coming up on its peak. I mean, you think of 70s era Alaska, you think the pipeline, you think of oil, you think of, obviously, the full weight of the money coming into the state, but also the demographic changes. Part of the transformation, of course, is the state's economy. And it's this new sort of recognition that Alaska is going to be a petro state for the most part.
- [24:30]
RJ Miller
And.
- [24:30]
Ian Hartman
But it's also kind of a recognition that along with that comes this really huge demographic change where you've got all these folks coming up from the American South, Texas, Oklahoma, primarily. And so they bring their culture with them. It ties into this broader context of oil. But it also is a little bit of an oddball photo because it seems out of place until you do sort of reckon with that broader context of the oil boom.
- [24:54]
Casey Grove
That was Ian Hartman, a history professor at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, who, working with the Cook Inlet Historical Society, put together the book Images of Anchorage. And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. We had reports tonight from Clarice Larson and Eric Stone in Juneau, Avery Elphelt in Haines, Catherine Rose in Sitka, and Ava White in Anchorage. Our audio engineer is Chris Hyde, and I'm Casey Grove. Good night.