Jennifer Canfield, KTOO

Capital City Fire/Rescue responded to a fire at the Channel View Apartments on Gastineau Avenue Sunday afternoon. Assistant Fire Chief Ed Quinto said only one unit was burned. Quinto said he didn’t know if there was any damage to the building’s roof, but the unit’s front-facing windows were broken.

A woman and two children who are presumed to have been in the unit when the fire happened went to the emergency room at Bartlett Regional Hospital because of smoke inhalation. As of 8:30 p.m., the woman was in stable condition and the two children were being evaluated.

The cause of the fire is still unknown.

While residents suffered few physical injuries, most of the low-income apartments have severe water damage.

Will Noel does maintenance for the apartments. He said 17 of the building’s 22 units have water damage from the sprinkler system that went off during the fire.

Noel said he saw the woman who lives in the burned apartment as she was leaving for the hospital and that she said her outlet had caught on fire. The fire marshal hasn’t identified a cause yet.

Dennis Wharton lives on the fourth floor immediately beneath the apartment that caught fire. He and his friend Teresa Michaelson returned from the grocery store to find his apartment soaked. Wharton isn’t sure if his electronics are damaged and he won’t find out until he can get back into his apartment.

His carpet, clothes and furniture are all soggy. Water has soaked through the floors, the walls and the light fixtures.

“I’m lucky. I really feel lucky,” Wharton said. “There’s some stuff — pictures that I left out that could have (been ruined).”

Workers were on-site Sunday evening vacuuming and poking holes in water pockets forming behind the paint on the walls. David Phillips owns J&J Cleaning, the contractor hired to dry the building out. Despite the extensive damage, Phillips said Channel View can be made dry again.

“It just takes time and air,” Phillips said. “There’s no way to give an estimate right now. The Glory Hole took months. This is not one of those that’s going to be dried out in a week’s time.”
The Channel View Apartments are going to take quite a bit of work, Phillips said.

The apartment building clings to the hillside above downtown Juneau. The fifth floor, where the fire happened, is also the main floor. Some residents gathered in the lobby, waiting outside the office of the building manager who was working with each tenant to find them somewhere to stay for the night. The Red Cross was also at the scene.

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Capital City Fire/Rescue responded to a fire at the Channel View Apartments on Gastineau Avenue Sunday afternoon. Assistant Fire Chief Ed Quinto said only one unit was burned.

Quinto said he didn’t know if there was any damage to the building’s roof, but the unit’s front-facing windows were broken. He said the people who were in the unit at the time of the fire were transported to Bartlett Regional Hospital for possible smoke inhalation.

Quinto said the cause of the fire is still unknown.

A home intruder swung at a man with a crowbar after being confronted Friday.

According to a news release from the Juneau Police Department, a 50-year-old man discovered the intruder standing in his living room. When asked what he was doing, the intruder swung a crowbar at the man before fleeing on foot. The incident was reported to police at 6:51 a.m. Police didn’t name the resident.

No injuries or missing items were reported. Juneau police said the intruder entered the residence on the 4000 block of Diane Road by prying the garage door open.

Police searched the area for the suspect but were unable to find him. He’s described as a white adult male between 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall with a thin build. He was wearing a black ski mask and a gray and white long-sleeve flannel shirt.

On Wednesday, JPD received a report of a burglary on the 2800 block of Mendenhall Loop Road. The victim reported jewelry and a tablet were stolen while they were at work. JPD said the suspect entered the home by prying open the locked front door.

Investigations are ongoing in both cases. The department asks anyone with information to contact them.

Kristy Dillingham will be the new principal at Mendenhall River Community School beginning in August.

Dillingham previously taught health, physical education and science in Juneau at the middle and high school levels. According to a news release from the Juneau School District, Dillingham is currently the principal of a pre-K through eighth grade school in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The school district interviewed five candidates for the position Friday before announcing Dillingham’s appointment Saturday.

Dillingham has two education master’s degrees from the University of Alaska Southeast. She completed her undergraduate studies in recreational management at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Juneau’s arts council is sending a “diversity Bat-Signal” to the community, said artist Christy NaMee Eriksen. She’s a local business owner and member of the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council board.

“We’re hoping that some people who we’ve never spoken to before, who’ve never maybe even set foot in the (Juneau Arts and Culture Center) before will hear it and will hear this call for us to want to listen to them — listen to their stories, listen to their experiences — and will reach out to us so we can involve them in some of these community conversations,” Eriksen said.

The Juneau Arts and Humanities Council board recently formalized its commitment to diversity with a resolution, which commits the organization to three things:

• to serve the diverse communities of Juneau in a progressive and inclusive manner,
• to incorporate different facets of diversity in selections for board membership, staff positions, committee memberships and grant programs, and
• to establish a task force to recommend policies, procedures and programs “with the goal of establishing a culturally inclusive arts council.

The resolution isn’t an action plan, but Eriksen said the very first thing to do, and the easiest, is to look at the numbers. One way they’ve used their data in the past, she said, was to simply understand how many people attended an event and how much money it brought in. Now Eriksen says the council should look at that same data with a new lens.

“Let’s look at those participants. How did they find out about us? Are they new or are they returning? Are they representative of our diverse communities in Juneau? How many are low-income? How many bought low-income tickets or student tickets or people who asked for discounted tickets? And really analyze it with that in mind of really trying to determine, are we inclusive right now? Are we really reaching out and serving the communities that we say we are?”

Offering a more diverse selection of performances and programs is something another Juneau arts organization said it’s also focused on. Art Rotch, artistic director for Perseverance Theatre, says the council’s resolution is a step in the right direction. He said there is a need for decision-makers to be intentional about presenting art that imitates life.

He cited Perseverance’s recent production of “Our Voices Will Be Heard,” a play about childhood sexual abuse in a Southeast Alaska village, as an example. Rotch said Perseverance decided to hire Larissa Fasthorse, who is Lakota, to direct the play not because she was the most technically experienced candidate, but because she could bring authenticity to the production better than a non-Native director.

“We could pick apart the production and say, ‘Hey, you know if you found someone more experienced for this or more qualified for that it would have been better in certain ways.’ I think it was really good anyway, but what we got out of the team we had was something really true and that’s really important. And that’s a valid objective as well as aesthetics and quality, and that’s also with the caveat that judging quality is impossible to do without understanding where your feet are, what your lenses are,” Rotch said.

Juneau Arts and Humanities Council Executive Director Nancy DeCherney said diversity has always been a goal of the council, but they haven’t made enough progress.

“It’s a very difficult and very complicated subject and one which we all need to be thinking about,” DeCherney said. “I think in everyone’s life there’s progress to be made so I’m happy that this is out there and I really, really hope that people will take this opportunity to speak up.”

This renewed commitment to diversity comes as the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council is trying to move forward with plans to create the Willoughby Arts Complex.