KSTK - Wrangell

On Saturday, search and rescue teams in Wrangell recovered the body of a fourth victim from the debris of last week’s deadly landslide. Two people remain missing: Derek Heller, 12, and neighbor Otto Florschutz, 65.

Florschutz’s wife, Christina Florschutz, survived the slide and is recovering in Wrangell’s local hospital. She said she had just taken a shower upstairs in their home when the slide struck.

“And I heard this horrible noise, very loud noise and I recognized it — I’ve heard tornadoes, I’ve heard a mudslide before,” she said, speaking from her hospital bed Thursday. “I knew what was happening, but I didn’t have any warning. I heard the noise. And suddenly I’m like a piece of weightless popcorn being tossed around all over the places, slamming into things and everything.”

When she came to rest, Florschutz found herself under part of the house’s roof, but able to see trees. She was cold and suffering from leg cramps, but when she touched a plastic bag she realized what it contained: pieces of polar fleece she had collected from thrift stores for sewing projects.

“Right then and there, I knew I was going to live,” she said. “I was going to live; I was meant to live. God put that there for me so that I wouldn’t die from hypothermia.”

Florschutz said she was able to use a piece of polar fleece to protect her from the rain. She said that thinking about the third graders she works with as a teacher’s aide helped her survive.

Eventually, she heard thumping on the roof.

“I’m hollering out, ‘Hey, I’m over here,’ you know?” she said. “And bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump: I then realize, ‘Oh, it’s one of my dogs sitting up there wagging its tail.’”

She talked to the dog for a while and told it to bark if anyone approached, but by morning the dog was gone.

Eventually, Florschutz was able to wriggle free of the home’s wreckage. She said she used parts of the debris to cross the mud until rescuers spotted her.

“They got me to a place where I could walk a little ways, and they put me in this toasty warm truck,” she said. “That’s how I lived.”

After she heals from her injuries, Florschutz said, she can’t wait to get back to her students.

Listen to the full 42-minute interview with Christina Florschutz below:

Lucy Robinson was pulled in many directions at Wrangell’s community center on Thanksgiving morning. On top of collecting donations for the landslide evacuees, she was in the midst of giving volunteers roles for preparing the Thanksgiving community meal that was to be held in a few hours. But first, she took the volunteers down to the basement to bring food up and show landslide evacuees where supplies were, if they needed anything.

“We have a lot here, and if people need things I would rather them come here and shop here versus go downtown,” she said. “So please think of us and spread the word. If you know other people that need things, tell them to come shop here first. This is what this is for.”

The donations that recently came from Petersburg significantly boosted the donation supply for all folks and animals who need it, which included bins of clothes, dog food, cat carriers, sockeye salmon, plus more.

Jamie Roberts, who evacuated with her family from their home, searched in the basement through the bins to grab critical items that they can use while away from their home.

“From what I can gather a lot of this came over from our friends and neighbors in Petersburg,” she said. “They loaded up a boat and brought it our way, which is really helpful, because some of this stuff you can’t get in town. It’s not available. There’s lots of shirts and pants available, but try and find underwear from thrift stores.”

Through this tragedy, Roberts has felt gratitude for how her community came together to support everyone affected by the landslide.

“I just really want to say thanks to the community because we’ve had no shortage of people wanting to provide vehicles, lodging, food supplies,” she said.

Back upstairs in the gym, kids played on the bounce house that was set up and people of all ages, from single digits to decades older, dribbled the many basketballs on the court.

This year’s Thanksgiving might have looked different for many Wrangellites, but Robinson said she was somewhat surprised by what she heard the turnout for the community meal might look like.

“Initially I thought it was just going to be a couple of people and we would offer up the food that was donated over the past few days, but I’ve since heard that people are actually not going to have their Thanksgiving at their homes and they’re going to come and join us,” Robinson said. “I think people at this time just want to be together. In the face of tragedy it feels good to come together.”

Tammy Meisner, another volunteer who helped organize the Thanksgiving event, said that she and others set up a Facebook group called the Wrangell Strong Community Relief Group, for people who need assistance or want to help.

They also opened accounts at the two local grocery stores and are taking inventory on people who want to donate their Alaskan Airlines miles.

Meissner said that although no one’s cooking food at the community center, Thanksgiving will look more like a potluck style.

“People donated turkeys and are cooking turkeys,” she said. “We’ve (she and her husband) decided not to do a personal Thanksgiving. We’re gonna do that at a different time. We want to be here.”

During the community Thanksgiving meal, kids watched a holiday movie in the room where desserts were placed. In the basketball court across the hall, people sat at rows of fold up tables. A variety of food lined the edge of the stage from left to right, which included the basic Thanksgiving food along with pizza, mac and cheese and other delicious offerings.

Music blared, and at one point two local women danced to a holiday tune.

Rhonda Butler, an emergency operations specialist with the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, gathered food and sat down to talk. She came in from Juneau to assist with communication efforts for residents who are still out of service.

She was helping set up people with Starlink, the satellite system. She explained that she has a small generator that she plugs her satellite device into for emergency responses in remote locations.

“They can at least check in with their families to assure them that they’re safe and communicate with the town and the Wrangell Police Department, if they’re wanting to make the decision to come to town and relocate at the locations that are provided for sheltering here in town,” she said.

Butler mentioned that many people in the 75 homes on the other side of the landslide are tribal citizens. She’s thankful that she can assist them in whatever way they need.

“The long term effects of being isolated or having no access to go hunting, as it’s hunting season. That’s sort of the only means of feeding our tribal citizens, refrigerators and freezers for the winter,” she said. “We have the tribal citizens that are out there, cut off from their families right now. So it’s really important to the tribe that we’re here in responding in whatever capacity that we’re capable of.”

While people slowly trickled out of the community center, another volunteer left to deliver food at the firehouse for all the first responders. Thanksgiving in Wrangell may haven’t gone originally as planned for many, but the community came together, as best they could, to share a warm meal, music and conversation.

A landslide outside of Wrangell late Monday killed three people, destroyed three homes and left three people still missing, according to state and local officials.

Searchers found a girl dead in the slide in an initial search after the first calls for help, but that search was paused for a time due to unsafe conditions and the possibility of further landslides, according to Alaska State Troopers. On Tuesday, searchers found a woman alive and rushed her to a hospital.

Later Tuesday, a drone operator discovered the bodies of two adults, which were recovered from the debris, troopers said.

Two children and one adult remained missing Tuesday night.

Alaska State Trooper spokesperson Austin McDaniel said Tuesday that troopers and other local, state and federal crews are still looking for survivors.

“This is very much still a search and rescue operation,” McDaniel said. “We are approaching it with that in mind, and I know that all of our teams on the ground both volunteer are looking at it with the same with the same lens.”

The names of the girl who died, the survivor, and the missing have not been made public.

Search and rescue efforts resumed this afternoon after geologists determined parts of the slide area were stable. But state geologist Barrett Salisbury, with the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, said the rainy forecast means that stable areas could still shift more.

“It looks like there’s a lot of moisture in the next week,” he said. “And that’s not a great forecast for being in and around that area.”

The slide — which was about 500 feet wide where it crossed the road — also cut power to many homes and forced evacuations along the Zimovia Highway.

Local officials have urged between 20 and 30 people living near the landslide to evacuate the area with the help of the local fire department and water taxis. Evacuees are being housed in local hotels.

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service in Juneau told KSTK that just over three inches of rain fell in Wrangell during a 24-hour period beginning early Monday morning.

Salisbury said heavy rains can increase the already-present risk of landslides in Southeast Alaska.

“It’s virtually impossible to predict this kind of catastrophe,” he said. “But we do know that the risk of landslides — specifically this type of landslides known as a debris flow — the risk of a debris flow is present throughout Southeast Alaska where we have steep slopes. And we know that heavy rainfall or rapid snowmelt, or otherwise, putting lots of moisture into the soil makes those risks greater.”

Salisbury said people in the area should be on high alert for sounds of rumbling or cracking trees, new springs of water, or physical changes to houses or property like swelling ground or shifting porches or foundations.

Zimovia Highway has been closed to the public from 6-Mile on, with the exception of local access. There’s no timeline for when people who live beyond the landslide might be able to return home.

There’s also no update on when power might be restored for approximately 75 homes without between 9 Mile and the end of Wrangell’s highway.

Wrangell Public Schools are canceled tomorrow. Evergreen Elementary School will be open between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. to offer support services.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Tuesday morning that he had issued a verbal disaster declaration for the Wrangell landslide, adding that he and his wife were stunned by the damage.

“Rose and I are heartbroken by this disaster and we pray for the safety of all those on site and offer all the resources our state has available,” Dunleavy said.

Any missing persons unaccounted for in the slide area should be reported to Wrangell Police at 907-874-3304.

KSTK’s Colette Czarnecki and Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove contributed to this story.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

A small landslide Friday morning destroyed an area of Wrangell’s solid waste transfer station, according to borough officials. The burn pit will be closed until further notice.

Wrangell Public Works Director Tom Wetor explains that the pit where borough staff burn combustible waste is located near some steep cliffs.

“Some smaller rocks started coming down, so it was pretty apparent that something was going on there,” Wetor said. Then, at about 9:30 a.m. a larger slide happened. “Luckily, nobody was injured. But a pretty good amount of rock did come down and took out our entire burn racks, the concrete blocks and the steel racks and I-beams and everything that we have there, all of that was completely destroyed. Luckily, that was it.”

Wetor says staff have barricaded off the area on the north end of the solid waste transfer station and won’t be accepting most burnable materials for at least the next week.

“There is some concern with the stability of the cliffside there and some additional material that appears like it might be coming down also, so we have barricaded the area off,” Wetor says. “Right now things are pretty unstable there. And I think we need to give it some space and let it do its thing.”

He says the burn pit will likely have to be rebuilt in a different area.

“We’re going to try to salvage what materials we can try to rebuild what we can, and we’ll probably rebuild the burn pit more towards the closed landfill that’s there where the cliffside isn’t quite as high and the rock appears to be more stable than then what’s right above where the burn pit is now currently,” Wetor says. That’ll happen “once we’re able to safely get in there and start digging through the materials and see what we can salvage.”

The burn pit is one of the only ways Wrangell disposes of waste on-island. The vast majority of Wrangell’s solid waste is baled and shipped south in closed containers by barge and rail.

If parts of the pit are unsalvageable, a new burn pit could come at a steep cost. Wetor says the locally-sourced metal racks used to burn large materials – like construction waste or felled trees – cost around $10,000 apiece.

Wetor says if Wrangell residents are able to hold onto burnable materials for a little while, he’d encourage them to do so.

“It was a pretty big near miss there this morning,” Wetor says. “We’re gonna have to assess some of that hillside and ultimately, we’re going to try to rebuild and get acceptance of burnables back online as soon as we can.”

He says the solid waste transfer station will still accept small burnable materials like paper, cardboard, or very small amounts of yard debris while staff work to salvage the burn pit and resume normal service.

The Alaska Marine Highway’s route to Prince Rupert, British Columbia has languished in recent years, as pandemic restrictions, fleet issues, and low staffing kept the route between Southeast and Canada from running regularly.

But false information circulated on social media the first weekend in October caused panic about the route ending altogether.

The Alaska Department of Transportation, which oversees the Alaska Marine Highway, says the state ferry route to Prince Rupert, B.C. isn’t going anywhere.

“We haven’t discontinued Prince Rupert on a permanent basis,” says Sam Dapcevich, a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation. “We’re not going there right now primarily because we don’t have the crew resources to support sending the Kennicott there. But we are committed to reopening that port in the future when we have resources available to do so.”

A Facebook post written as a news release by a user named Robbie Marionson on Oct. 1 stated that staff and management at the Prince Rupert terminal were clearing out personal effects because the terminal was closing for good. It wasn’t a real news release. The post has since been deleted.

The post caused an uproar on the social media site and prompted official responses from Southeast state legislator Rep. Dan Ortiz and the Alaska Department of Transportation.

In short, it’s not true.

The Prince Rupert terminal is not closing for good. But it is unmanned right now. Dapcevich says that in recent months, the terminal had been maintained by part-time contractors, but their contract expired.

He says the marine highway system is working to sort out a new contract.

The fake press release stated the terminal was being shuttered because the Alaska Marine Highway management allowed a critical international safety certification to expire for the Kennicott. It’s one of the largest ferries in the state’s fleet, and one of two that’s able to dock in Canada. The other is the Matanuska, which is in major overhaul. Without enough crew for the Kennicott, both ferries have stayed tied up in Ketchikan for months.

Because the Prince Rupert terminal is an international stop, Alaska ferries that tie up there have to meet certain international standards, set by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Those SOLAS standards encompass a few requirements, including how the ship itself is built. That’s why only the Kennicott and Matanuska can serve the route — they’re the two Alaska ferries built to the proper standard.

Some Kennicott certificates that are required for international travel did expire in April. Those SOLAS certificates are overseen by the U.S. Coast Guard. But Dapcevich says that doesn’t mean the Kennicott’s SOLAS certification itself is expiring.

“The ship was built to SOLAS standards, and we maintain it and keep that safety standard in place,” Dapcevich says. “So there’s no license to expire or anything like that. The ship has its certification.”

Dapcevich says it’s standard practice to wait to renew SOLAS and other sailing certificates until a ship is out of the yard and back in service, since many of the certificates only last 12 months. A Coast Guard spokesperson confirmed that it’s common for ships to wait to request renewed certificates until out of the yard.

All in all, the post from Marionson contained elements of truth. The Prince Rupert terminal is unmanned because of an expired contract, but not because it’s being abandoned, the state says. The Kennicott is in the shipyard and doesn’t have updated certificates, but that’s standard practice for ships that aren’t in service. The weak service on the route has left people stranded in recent months, but the Alaska Department of Transportation continues to publicly state it intends to resume service to Prince Rupert in the future.

The marine highway’s website states the Kennicott is expected to return to service in mid-November, although that doesn’t necessarily include a Prince Rupert stop.

Marionson did not respond to a request for comment.

Looking at the ferry Columbia from the shore in Wrangell at about 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday, nothing seemed amiss. That is, except that the 418-foot ferry wasn’t supposed to be in Wrangell at all.

The Columbia should have left for Ketchikan at 6:15 a.m. that morning, but a small overnight fire in its bar delayed the ship. The Department of Transportation said Wednesday that 11 people were taken off the ferry to be medically evaluated after the fire.

Steven Harrison is a crew member on the Columbia. He said his fire response team heard a general alarm at 3:15 a.m.

“They said that it was not a drill, which is pretty obvious at 3:15,” he said. “We all donned our fire suits, put on our oxygen tanks and went on oxygen because the ship was filling up with smoke.”

By the time Harrison got to the fire, he said it had already been mostly extinguished by another crew member, but his team sprayed down the smoldering bar.

“There’s a lot of dirt and debris and ashes in the bar mixed with the ABC fire extinguisher stuff,” he said. “It’s gonna take us a while to clean up.”

Harrison said his six-person fire team was using supplemental oxygen, which helped them avoid the effects of smoke inhalation. But other crew and passengers felt the effects.

Shannon McCarthy is a spokesperson for Alaska’s Department of Transportation, which oversees the ferry system.

“The crew reacted pretty quickly, but out of an abundance of caution, they wanted to make sure that anyone that was nearby got seen for smoke inhalation,” she said.

McCarthy said 11 people total were evaluated: nine passengers and two crew members.

Emergency medical services in Wrangell transported the passengers and crew to the local hospital for treatment. All of the patients had been treated and released from the Wrangell Medical Center by early afternoon, according to a hospital spokesperson. And McCarthy confirmed Wednesday afternoon that all 11 re-boarded the ship and continued south.

Harrison said he thinks the fire didn’t cause any serious damage to the ship.

“We lost 10 cases of Alaska[n] white beer,” he said. “Honestly, that’s the extent of the damage.”

It’s not clear how the fire started. Harrison said the working theory is that an ice machine in the bar area started the fire.

“We’re assuming some sort of electrical malfunction, or maybe it was just too close to the cardboard cases of beer,” Harrison said.

The Columbia came back into regular service on the Alaska Marine Highway in mid-February, after being docked for three years as a cost-saving measure. The 49-year-old ship is the largest of the marine highway’s four mainline ferries, serving larger communities with cabins and berths for longer journeys.

The Columbia was briefly tied up for repairs earlier this summer, after crew noticed issues with one of its thrusters and leaking pipes in the ship’s fire suppression system. It’s not the only ferry that’s experienced mechanical issues recently — the Hubbard was waylaid by generator issues earlier this month.

The Alaska Marine Highway is running thin, with five of its nine ferries in service. The Kennicott, Tazlina and Matanuska are in layup at the boatyard in Ketchikan, and the Lituya is in overhaul until Thursday.

Harrison said he’s proud of the response of the Columbia crew and fire team.

“It proved to us that we actually could respond and do what we need to do in the amount of time that we needed to do it,” Harrison said. “It was a great drill. I mean, it was a live-fire drill, basically.”

The Columbia headed south out of Wrangell just after noon on Wednesday, after passengers and crew returned from receiving treatment. DOT doesn’t expect the fire to cause any delay to the ship’s schedule. It’s expected to arrive in Bellingham on Friday morning.