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Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand comes from alyeska Pipeline Service Company maintaining
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and operating the 800 mile Trans Alaska
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Pipeline for nearly 50 years. It's hard to like, prepare yourself for it.
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You're just kind of in this constant state of distress.
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A reorganization of the U.S. forest Service means uncertainty for some Alaska staff. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Tuesday, April 7th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, some Anchorage residents are now getting behavioral health care and addiction treatment while living in city owned tiny homes.
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Oftentimes, having a behavioral health issue is
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part of what's keeping them unsheltered.
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Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. The Anchorage Forestry Sciences Lab is set to close and the future of the Pacific Northwest Research Station Lab in Juneau is uncertain since the U.S. forest Service began a national restructuring last week. The agency announced last Tuesday that its headquarters will move from Washington, D.C. to Utah. The existing regional structure will be switched to a state structure, and dozens of forest research labs will close. But there are still many unknowns that the agency says will be addressed over the next year. The Forest Service hasn't decided yet whether to close Juneau's Pacific Northwest Research Station Lab, according to a letter that Chief of the Forest Service Tom Schultz emailed to staff there. The letter says, regardless, you should expect changes to the organizational structure, your reporting chain, the composition of your work unit, and potentially your position description as functions are consolidated and end quote. Eric Antrim manages bridge inspections in Alaska's national forests and serves as the recording secretary for his union, the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 251. He says the Forest Service shared a little bit of information, but not enough to know what to do next.
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You don't know what's coming, you know, so it's hard to like, prepare yourself for it. You're just kind of this constant state of.
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Antrim says this reorganization, following the reduction in force last year that slashed Alaska's Forest Service workforce by about a third, will diminish the agency's ability to carry out its mission to care for the land and serve people, according to the agency's press release. Research stations that remain will fall under a single research organization located in Fort Collins, Colorado. A spokesperson at the National Forest Service press office says in an email that they do not know how many relocations will occur outside of those already announced for staff in the Washington, D.C. area. Alaska's national forests, the Chugach and the Tongass, were formerly arranged under Region 10, which covered Alaska only, according to the agency Juneau will continue to serve as Alaska's Forest Service headquarters under state reorganization. Steve Gutierrez is a national business representative with the National Federation of Federal Employees. Although employees have been told they will retain roles at the Forest Service, he says this reorganization could have the same impact as a reduction in force, or rif.
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It's like an unofficial RIF because you're forcing people to move and if people can't relocate, they ultimately have to resign.
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Gutierrez says the agency has a duty to bargain with those represented by the union, which he says should happen in the coming months. Homeless numbers in Anchorage have remained roughly the same for the last few years, and officials say many people who have been homeless for a long time need addiction treatment or behavioral health care. Now a new muni owned treatment center is getting some people that care while housing them in their own individual micro units. As Alaska Public Media's Hannah Flor reports, it's not just new housing, but a new municipal approach to solving long term homelessness.
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In Anchorage, Summer Bond shows off a newly built tiny home. It's about 100 square feet in size,
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so you get a bed, towel set, hygiene kit, a fridge, a microwave and then it's not in here yet, but we plan to add a tv.
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Bond is in charge of getting people settled in at Willow Commons. It's a new municipal addiction treatment program that includes 32 brand new micro units. City officials say if you're homeless, it can be hard to consistently show up for outpatient care. But now people without housing can live in one of the units and get behavioral health care during the day. Thea Agnew Benman is with the mayor's office. She's excited about the program. She's been working on it for over a year. She says behavioral healthcare is a key piece of the city's homeless response.
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What we find is that when people remain unsheltered for a very long, extended
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period, oftentimes having a behavioral health issue is part of what's keeping them unsheltered. Anchorage Recovery center is a drug and alcohol rehab organization that's contracting with the municipality to run the program. Bond is with the organization. She says the program isn't hard to get into. Basic requirements include a need for addiction treatment and homelessness. If there are units available, people get in the same day. When the program opened in late March, it filled up almost immediately. But right now there's only one person on the wait list. Willow Commons is a closed campus. Residents can't leave until a certain stage in their treatment. No visitors are allowed either. Same goes for drugs and alcohol. The site is staffed 24 7, Bond says, partly because when people live together in close proximity, sometimes things can get a little complicated. That happens at the other programs. Anchorage Recovery center runs, too.
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We've been able to solve most of the issues and it just comes with the new territory, right? Change is hard. Recovery is hard. It comes with it.
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The program is voluntary and doesn't have a set timeline. That depends on the needs of each resident. Then, once they're ready to graduate from the program, Anchorage Recovery center makes sure they're transitioning into safe housing and have stable income. But Bond says it doesn't stop there.
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We check in on them after they've discharged. How are you doing? Where you at? Relapse is a part of recovery, so we always have our doors open. They can come back.
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The city funded the development of the project with more than a million dollars left over from an opioid settlement that got the first two dozen micro units built. Then the city built eight more with grant money. Aynu Beman says it's a test case. They'll be learning from the project and she hopes other organizations do too, and then build their own.
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I would love lots of different types of organizations here in Anchorage to decide like hey, we could chip in and
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this is doable and we'll take the plunge, agnew Bedman says. To help house and support Anchorage's homeless population. It's going to take all different approaches from the community, not just the mayor's office. In Anchorage, I'm Hannah Fluor.
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Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, a traditional cuspuck making class brings together styles and cultures from across Western Alaska.
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It's something that is like personal to you, but also it's not something that should be commercialized because it is so precious.
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An Anchorage man is dead after a van struck him late last month in midtown Anchorage. Police say it was about 10:45am on March 28 when officers were alerted to a pedestrian that was hit by a vehicle on Old Seward highway between Tudor Road and East 40th Avenue. Office officers determined 42 year old Nicholas Smith was walking in the road when a Chevy Express van hit him. Smith was transported to a local hospital. Police say they were told Friday that Smith died from injuries caused by the collision. Police say the driver of the van had stayed at the scene and cooperated with officers. No charges have been filed related to the incident. This is the third fatal vehicle versus Pedestrian collision in Anchorage this year. Last year, vehicles killed 15 pedestrians in Anchorage, the same number as in 2024. Both years marked the city's highest pedestrian death toll in more than a decade. The state of Alaska is collecting input from Juneau residents hit by glacial outburst flooding in 2024 to help decide how a federal grant for $6 million will be spent. That flood, which occurred before the city put up a temporary levee along the river, inundated nearly 300 homes in the Mendenhall Valley overnight, forcing people to evacuate through the ice cold water. Floodwater destroyed people's belongings, along with flooring, drywall and some home foundations. The U.S. department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, allocated the funding in January after the state submitted a plan outlining the recovery and mitigation needs remaining in the community. Brandon McNaughton is the state of Alaska's program coordinator for the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief program. At a public meeting at the Mendenhall Valley Library on Thursday, he said he's surveying people to see what sorts of projects the money should pay for.
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Been talking to folks here so far I think the number one has been like homeowner recovery, and that includes homeowner repair, potentially lifting foundations.
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To be eligible for homeowner recovery, residents must verify disaster related damage, according to the state's plan. The funds can also go toward things like relocations and buyouts, repairing or protecting community infrastructure and and projects to mitigate future floods. McNaughton says these are last resort funds and they're not meant to be duplicative. So he says the funds usually can't add on to existing projects the federal government has already allocated money to.
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All of their avenues of funding are supposed to be exhausted before we use these. So if that's already ongoing through other funding like we probably wouldn't be able to fund it.
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As of Thursday, the state has received nearly 60 survey responses. McNaughton says his office is accepting responses through April 20th. Then the state will submit a list of projects to HUD for approval this summer. He says he hopes to start distributing the funds within a year. Coast Guard Base Kodiak is still humming along more than 50 days into a partial federal government shutdown. But as KMXT's Davis Hovey reports, it's not quite business as usual.
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Signs of the prolonged shutdown are cropping up at the largest Coast Guard base in the country. There's a hiring freeze on all but a few specific positions on Base Kodiak. The local Coast Guard exchange has partially cut its store hours short, websites are going unmanaged, and the last time the base's Facebook feed was updated was February 26th. It says due to the lapse in federal funding, information on this social media site will not be actively managed. And quote over an image with the base's motto, rock Solid Support in an email, a Coast Guard headquarters spokesperson says the longer the shutdown lasts, the more difficult it will become for the Coast Guard to maintain mission readiness.
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Every day the shutdown drags on moves us closer to a tipping point. And we know through experience it will take us about two and a half days to recover from every day we
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are in a shutdown.
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That's Admiral Thomas Allen, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, testifying to Congress last month. He says that for nearly half of this fiscal year, the Coast Guard has been without the necessary funding to pay its people and operate. For now, the Coast Guard's focus is on essential missions like search and rescue, maritime safety and security, and environmental response. Chris Burke is an inventory specialist for the Coast Guard Air Station, Kodiak's aviation materiel office. It's a civilian job, but one the Coast Guard says supports essential functions and that Burke has to keep showing up for even when the agency doesn't have the money to pay him.
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I'm working without pay, not furloughed.
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I'm still working every day, but I'm
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just not being paid.
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Other civilian employees whose jobs do not support essential functions were furloughed. The funding for Burke's position and many others across the entire Department of Homeland Security has been frozen since February 14th because Congress is in a budgeting stalemate. It's now the longest government shutdown on record.
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If this continues on, I might have to look for other work.
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From the outside looking in, it seems
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very much business as usual when they're still expected to work, and yet they have not gotten paid for the duration of this shutdown.
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Morgan Wambolt is married to an active duty member and is the president of the Coast Guard Spouses association of Kodiak. She says active duty members are still getting paid, although the timing of each paycheck is uncertain.
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However, I know from speaking with some
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of these people who haven't gotten paid, it's stressful. You know, it's stressful.
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Prices are going up, whether that be
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gas, groceries, any of those types of things.
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They want to leave island, get off
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island, go travel, and now it's looking
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at the budget again.
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The Coast Guard also has a mutual assistance program and various entities like the Chief Petty Officers association that are providing financial and food assistance to members. During the shutdown. Burke, the civilian employee, got his last full paycheck on February 13, he says. Thankfully, his wife works a full time job, and before his civilian job, he retired from the active duty side of the coast guard after 25 years of service.
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I have my retirement check coming. My spouse works. We're financially pretty set getting by month to month.
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But other civilian employees cannot count on other paychecks in their households. The earliest the shutdown could end is expected to be after the US House of Representatives returns from a break the week of April 13. A bill to reopen and fund the Department of Homeland Security awaits. Congressional lawmakers reporting in Kodiak. I'm Davis Hovey.
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Dark and starry night skies won't disappear entirely from Fairbanks as days get longer this spring and summer. That's because the University of Alaska Fairbanks is set to unveil the interior's first planetarium at a grand opening scheduled for April 25. The newly built facility connects to the University of Alaska Museum of the North. It's now the largest of the handful of planetariums in Alaska, according to planetarium director Omega Smith. She says the 36 foot dome will be a great tool to share science with visitors.
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It's not just a way to learn about sciences and learn about space astronomy and beyond. It is a way to actually feel it, to be immersed by it, to really get some inspiration, smith says.
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People can check out the planetarium for free on opening day when they'll be running a few short teaser shows per hour, she says. Admission to the 65 seat planetarium normally will be paid and ticketed, Smith says. They'll have shows both during the museum's hours and during after hours events, which won't be limited to astronomy and other sciences.
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There will also be entertainment events not
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just for science, but having music shows
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is a big thing in a planetarium, so that is something we'll probably be doing too.
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The idea to build a planetarium at the museum has been around for decades and but the University of Alaska Board of Regents approved the current project about two years ago. Construction got underway last summer and total project costs came in at about $9.5 million, according to a February construction progress report. The new planetarium is named after longtime Fairbankson's Walt and Marita Babula, who donated almost $7.5 million to the project. The Babulas said in a statement last year they were pleased to give back to a community that we love. They said the facility would provide important space, science education opportunities and spark the curiosity of Alaskans and visitors to the state. Brushkana Creek Based musher Jesse Holmes has back to back wins in the Iditarod Trail sled dog race and now he's got a four win streak in the challenging Kobuk 440. Kotz's Desiree Hagan caught Holmes finish in Kotzebue on Easter Sunday.
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It's about 6am Just before dawn. Overhead a faint line of aurora cuts the sky in half. And on the sea ice, 44 year old Jesse Holmes and his team of eight dogs are about to cross the finish line. This is Holmes fourth consecutive Kobuk 440 win and fifth overall.
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The trail conditions were excellent. You know the last few years have been pretty slow going and tough going and it was really nice.
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The 400 mile race runs through six northwest Arctic villages looping out and back to Kotzebue. Holmes says the sun shone and temperatures warmed. Unlike last year when mushers endured ground storms, whiteout conditions, sub zero temperatures and variable trail conditions, Holmes lead was small. Kotzebue musher Kevin Hansen finished about 20 minutes later. The 35 year old was about 10 miles behind for most of the race. Holmes said it kept him on his toes.
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This is the first time I won this race without taking extra rest, you know, in the last four years. So I think that's a real accolade to Kevin. He actually pushed me.
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Hanson, an Iditarod rookie this year and now seven time 4:40 finisher, said this race was his personal best. Just shows that we're improving and our
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team is strong and you know, we're right there running with Jesse Holmes who
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two time Iditarod champ and so we're feeling pretty good about it. It was over six hours before the next musher, Calvin Daugherty, would make it back to Kotzebue for a third place finish. The 23 year old rookie musher from Sterling and his father who was also in the race were both running teams from Iditarod champion Mitch Seaves Kennel. Overall, nine mushers finished, two scratched, both at the Selewick checkpoint. Veteran musher Jodi Potts Joseph from Eagle river said her dogs were still recovering from kennel cough. Jesse Downey, another veteran from Willow, said she decided to withdraw because her team wasn't eating. The race this year was held in honor of musher Roger Nordlam, a founder and its first champion in 1988. Nordlam was a Vietnam vet, bush pilot and gold miner who ran the Iditarod four times. Chad Nordlam, Roger's son, said it was a great honor. He just passed away a few months ago and it means a lot. He was a big part of this race in the beginning, helped set it up and taking place and setting records
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and we're really proud of everything he's done.
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Back on April 2nd, Roger's granddaughter, 14 year old Naomi Nordlum, dropped the flag to officially start the race.
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I'm really grateful that I got to help start the race in honor of him. He's a very big role model in
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all of our lives and it was just a great thing to do. More honors were announced at the mushers banquet after the race. Rookie Jennifer Nelson was the Red Lantern finisher. Race veterinarians picked Kevin Hansen for the Humanitarian Award for Exceptional Dog Care and The Mushers voted fourth place finisher Christy Barrington to win the Louie Nelson Sr. Sportsmanship Award. This year the race purse was $67,500. Kobuk 440 winner Jesse Holmes earned $14,000 and like all the other mushers, took home an assortment of handmade items from village checkpoints along the race route in Kotzebue. I'm Desiree Ha.
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Cussbucks are everywhere at the Chamai Dance Festival in Bethel. The traditional hoodie like garment is the unofficial uniform of the event. Bridging styles and native cultures from across the Yukon, Kuskokwim Delta and beyond. KYUK's Samantha Watson took a cusbuck making class at the festival and reports from behind the sewing machine.
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I don't know about you, but when I'm concentrating on sewing I go completely silent. Here's me behind the machine in Chemae's Gus Buck making class holed up in Bethel's high school art room with thread and fabric piled around me. Makes for great radio, right? Good thing instructor Nikki Corbett is a bit more of an enthusiastic sewer.
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Make the goose look really nice. Don't let your goose be like this.
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Makes a gooseneck shape with her hand. We'll trace our own hands like this to make the gusbuck hood so you
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make your gooseneck really nice and big and long.
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The Southwest Alaska Arts Group, which organizes the festival, helped bring the class to Chamai three years ago. It's sponsored by Alaska Native Heritage center and is free to attend for its 10 participants. It's become a staple on the festival's roster of cultural workshops that that complement the lineup of performances on the main stage.
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11 and a half. Stick your arm up. Yeah, I'd say 11 and a half because then when you put your arms out then you can go like this.
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Corbett leads sewing workshops around the state and beyond under her business sew, you pick. In the class, Corbett shows us how to make our patterns based on our own measurements. Sometimes that includes using the width of our thumbs or the curve of our wrist. We measure the space between our jaw and collarbones with our fingers to give the width of the gusbuck's neck hole. Corbett says the approach has one foot in the traditional way of gusbuck making, where you would use the flat of your hands and fists to measure across your body.
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But really the like pro style seamstresses, they will look at you and then they will make you one they already know.
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Gus books are nearly always hand made. They are the opposite of fast fashion and are often deeply personal. As I ask to my attendees about their gaspak, they can tell me the first and last name of the person who made theirs.
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It's something that is like personal to you, but also it's not something that should be commercialized because it is so precious and it's such like the kasbaq that I'm wearing is one that one of my grandmothers me.
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Corbett says the class is about making the garment, but it's also about the cultural experience. There's a lot of cultural variation too when it comes to Kasbuks across Arctic and subarctic communities. But some of those differences show up even within the Yukon Kuskokwim delta.
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You can really tell though which areas the kasbuks are made from. So a lot of Hawaiian prints are made from mccorracks people make, Corbett says.
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At Chemai, where nearly everyone is sporting some form of the garment, you can sometimes look at a gusbuk and guess where it might be from.
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St. Lawrence Island. They have a thicker trim on the bottom and so you can look at a gaspak, atikluk, silipak, mitsachulan, bitzachulan, which are interior is how they say it. You can look and see where they're from kind of in the designs in that way.
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In the workshop, we help each other measure, cut and sew our garments together. I add some inches to my waist to make a flouncy pink floral cuspk with a skirt. I've barely got time to trim the threads before it's time for a fashion show.
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This is our annual cusp parade.
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In Chimai tradition, people of all ages step up from the audience and show off their handmade attire on stage. Then Corbett introduces is our little group. We smile and wave like quiet children of a very proud parent.
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They all took their own measurements, dividing adding, subtracting. It was fun to be with everybody up there.
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Elizabeth Betts says she's made Gus bucks from patterns before, but over the past few chamaes, she's peaked her head into Corbett's class and been curious.
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This was great.
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I've always wanted to learn how to
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do it, you know, Nikki's way, you
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know, just, you know, measure and figure it out.
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I like that.
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Nikki's way is taught with her own set of Corbinisms, things she likes to say to guide us along. My favorite one comes out when we all take a group picture proudly wearing our new gusbucks beside the festival.
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Yay.
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Everybody say Juana. Chuck Norris.
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My gusbuck is my very first one, and it's been exciting to debut it on the bleachers of Chamai with Gus books. Like a first catch. Corbett says it's tradition to give it away. So if you know of anyone 5 foot 10 with very long arms, let me know. I'll be happy to pass it along. In Bethel, I'm Samantha Watson.
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And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. We had reports tonight from Alex Solomon and Juno, Hannah Flor and Wesley early in Anchorage, Davis Hovey in Kodiak, Patrick Gilchrist in Fairbanks, Desiree Hagan in Kotzebue, and Samantha Watson in Bethel. Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. Kirsten Dobroth is our producer, and I'm Casey Grove. Good night. This is statewide news on Alaska public media.