KCAW - Sitka

A Sitka man is facing fifteen felony counts on sex-related crimes.

Brandon J. Snyder, 33, was indicted Friday on six counts of sexual abuse of a minor and seven counts of indecent viewing or photography.

Snyder was dismissed on Monday from his position at the Sitka Tribe of Alaska as the Home to School liaison for the tribe’s language and education department. He’s held the position since last winter. His job involved him in activities with the Sitka Boys and Girls Club.

Tribal Chairman Mike Baines released a letter on behalf of Sitka Tribe of Alaska, saying, “STA will not permit any person to use a position of trust to prey upon anyone, most especially a child who is a tribal citizen.”

The letter adds that STA is taking extra precautions to ensure all potential employees are screened and receive background checks. Snyder cleared all background checks at the time of his employment.

Baines said that STA has been meeting with the Sitka Police Department and Sitkans Against Family Violence.

“Our staff and counselor are pretty traumatized emotionally, but everyone seems committed to pulling through this,” Baines wrote.

Children or families affected by these allegations should contact the Sitka Police Department or SAFV at 747-3370.

Read the full letter from Sitka Tribal Chairman Mike Baines here.

Among all the expertise imported by Sitka to aid in the recovery operation at the Kramer Avenue slide, one man finds this disaster hits very close to home.

Thomas Richardson is a battalion chief with the Seattle Fire Department. Seventeen months ago he stood over a similar scene in Oso, Washington.

“Yeah, it’s similar. Déjà vu, in fact. Both the techniques that they’re using and the conditions that they’re encountering are almost identical to what we had. Logs, broken trees, a mudflow in the middle with near quicksand-like conditions. And the techniques to do the searches are very similar to what we’ve done.”

The Oso slide was much larger. It covered about a square mile. In all, 43 people lost their lives in that event in March 2014.

Richardson does not consider himself an expert in landslide recovery. He says the Seattle Fire Department just applied the skills they had to a difficult situation. And Sitka is doing the same thing.

“Most people don’t have a lot of experience. We didn’t have any experience responding to landslides. We’ve had our usual small slides in the city that we’ve responded to in the past, that did damage to structures but didn’t entrap any people. Oso was by far the biggest one that any of us had ever encountered.”

Richardson will be in Sitka for two days while the clearing work continues. He’ll be observing the use of a special pump being flown in by the Coast Guard that is used for the removal of mud.

Search crews have recovered the final victim of the Aug. 18 Sitka landslide.

The body of 62-year-old William Stortz was found Tuesday afternoon.

Heavy equipment operators had been working at several locations identified by search dogs. A road was built up to the observation area at the south end of the slide, and a plywood boardwalk installed to improve the mobility of search crews on the ground. Searchers were under pressure to take advantage of two days of good weather before more rain arrives Thursday.

Now that all the victims have been found, city officials estimate at least another 30 days of work to clear Kramer Avenue.

Municipal administrator Mark Gorman was a longtime friend of William Stortz, who served as Sitka’s building official since 2011. In a press release, Gorman writes “William was hard-working, intelligent and a very kind man. Our family knew him and he was well-respected throughout Sitka.”

Stortz died in the Aug. 18 slide along with brothers Elmer and Ulises Diaz, who were painting a new house in the Kramer subdivision.

Catholic services for the Diaz brothers have been scheduled for 6 p.m. this Friday at Grace Harbor Church, which served as the unofficial headquarters of the recovery operation. A memorial for William Stortz will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday in the Odess Theater on the Sitka Fine Arts Campus.

An unexpected break in the weather allowed searchers to resume their work on the Kramer Avenue landslide in Sitka on Monday.

Thanks to extensive drainage work, much of the runoff from the weekend’s heavy rains was diverted from the recovery area. City representative Sara Peterson says that there was no movement in the slide during the two days that work had been suspended.

Peterson says that an estimated 50 personnel returned to the site on Monday, along with one search dog. Teams once again are focusing their full attention on recovering the remains of William Stortz, Sitka’s municipal building official, who was caught in last Tuesday’s slide while inspecting drainage.

Capital City Fire/Rescue is sending relief personnel this week under a mutual-aid program. Airlift Northwest is also contributing a staff member.

Because of the instability of the slope, recovery work may only occur in relatively dry weather.

 

Search teams in Sitka were racing the clock Friday as they worked to find the third victim of Tuesday’s landslide before the arrival of a new storm.

The National Weather Service is forecasting heavy rain and wind in Sitka this weekend.  Officials say the weather will make it unsafe for crews to work, as more rain could cause more slides.

Meanwhile, alsoo released the names of the two landslide victims whose bodies were recovered on Wednesday and Thursday. They were identified as Elmer and Ulises Diaz, ages 26 and 25. The two brothers were working on the Kramer Avenue house that was destroyed in Tuesday’s landslide.

Teams are still searching for the third man missing since Tuesday, 62-year-old William Stortz, Sitka’s building official.

Deputy Fire Chief Al Stevens, who is running the response, said recovery teams had “a very small window” in which to finish their work, “and it’s rapidly closing.”

“I intend to pull all crews out at approximately 8 o’clock tonight. If the rains come sooner, I’m going to pull them out sooner,” Stevens said. “We’re going to pull all equipment, all crews out, obviously for safety reasons. We will probably stand down all operations throughout the weekend, until we reassess the weather and it allows us to get back in there and do whatever it is we need to do.”

There were several dog teams on site from the Juneau-based search group SEADOGS. Dogs had called attention to an area on Thursday where officials hoped to find William Stortz. But Stevens said that as of Friday afternoon, dogs had also indicated several other sites, and crews are working at all of them. He said it isn’t easy going.

“As you can imagine, this is rather deep, with mud, water, logs,” Stevens said. “And you don’t just come in and scoop a big chunk out and call it good. You have to methodically and meticulously pull one piece out at a time, and we have spotters in there that have to look at what’s happening, and this is why it’s taking so long.”

The National Weather Service is predicting up to three inches of rain in the next 36 to 48 hours. But meteorologist Joel Curtis said that’s still significantly less intense than the storm on Tuesday that caused at least six landslides around town.

“We got 2.57 inches at the airport in six hours,” Curtis said. “So we figure along the ridge [where the landslide began] it was much, much more. And I’ve actually got someone with a rain gauge that says, hey, they got five inches. And I am guardedly trusting that reading that they got.”

Curtis said that because the rain is falling over a longer period of time, the risk of landslides this weekend might be limited.

Still, Department of Transportation geologist Mitch McDonald said there is “definitely still the risk” of more slides, and of more movement at the Kramer Avenue slide in particular.

“I would stay away from the area, if the rain intensity occurs as it’s predicted,” McDonald said. “That’s what I personally would do.”

The city has issued a voluntary evacuation request for Kramer Avenue and the neighborhoods below it, including Sand Dollar and Whale Watch Drives. Those residents were evacuated immediately after the landslide, before being allowed to return home on Wednesday.  An evacuation order remains in effect for Jacobs Circle.

A temporary shelter at Grace Harbor Church will be open for residents displaced by the voluntary evacuation.

The City has also called an emergency Assembly meeting for 8 p.m. Friday to consider a local disaster declaration ordinance.

Officials have released the names of the two landslide victims recovered on Wednesday and Thursday. They have been identified as brothers Elmer and Ulises Diaz, ages 26 and 25, who were working on one of the houses on Kramer Avenue at the time of the slide.

Teams are continuing to search today for William Stortz, 62, a Sitka building official missing since Tuesday’s landslide.

Officials are hoping to finish recovery efforts today, before more rain arrives tonight. Weather forecasts are calling for significant rainfall and wind through the weekend. In a press release this morning, the city said it expects the weather will force the halt of all operations over the weekend, for the safety of the crews.

A memorial fund established for the Diaz family has raised over $12,000 by Friday morning.