KUAC - Fairbanks

Cool temperatures during April have delayed breakup and greenup, and that in turn will delay Alaska farmers from getting their crops in the ground. That means farmers are facing the likelihood of a below-average harvest, for the third year in a row.

It also means that when Delta Junction farmer Scott Mugrage sets out every morning to feed his livestock, he has to throttle-up when he steers his tractor into the muddy field, some of which are still submerged, to scatter hay for hungry cows and calves.

Mugrage grows hay and feed for his 600 head of cattle, and he sells the rest to livestock owners around the state. But he worries he may not have any surplus this year, because cooler-than-average temperatures last month kept his fields mostly covered with snow until the last week or so. And he says unless it warms up quickly, it’ll take at least a couple more weeks before the meltwater soaks in and the mud dries enough to begin planting hay and barley.

“We’re a long way from planting this year,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “You know, the next step is going to be getting enough heat in that soil to sprout any crop, to start with.”

Delta-area UAF Cooperative Extension Service agent Phil Kaspari says the presence of all that snow and slush on fields in the area means farmers aren’t going to be able to get those plants in the ground anytime soon.

“We normally like to be in the field really making good progress around May 10^th,” he said. But this year, “that isn’t going to happen.”

Kaspari says grains like barley should be planted by May 25 to mature enough for a good harvest. And also because that’s the cutoff date for farmers to be eligible for a full crop-insurance payout, if the growing season turns out poorly — again.

“Last year, with all the snow we had, a lot of guys didn’t get started until the 22^nd, 23^rd,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “And we had that late-July frost and then that early-August frost.”

Mugrage says farmers were already dealing with problems left over from the pandemic, like a sluggish supply chain and high fuel and fertilizer costs. He says if cool weather persists and farmers fall farther behind on planting, they face the prospect of a third consecutive year of potentially poor harvest.

“When we have these late plantings, we hope we have an extended late fall or something,” he said. “But we really haven’t had those either!”

A late spring warmup doesn’t mean the growing season will extend later into the fall, says Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. But he says this summer’s long-term forecasts suggest it’ll be warmer than usual in the Interior.

“The odds tilt to significantly above-normal,” he said in a Tuesday interview.

Thoman says forecasts call for near-normal rainfall through August.

He understands why farmers would like temperatures to warm up as quickly as possible. But he says gradual warming is better, to reduce the chances of flooding.

“With the deep snowpack, with the very cold April, were we to have temperatures in the 70s — which at this time of year is entirely possible — that would be a real recipe for serious breakup flooding,” he said.

Mugrage is president of the Alaska Farm Bureau, and he says farmers around the state are dealing with the same problem. He says he’s encouraged by higher temperatures over the past few days in the Interior that’ve melted most of the snow on his fields. And he’s glad to hear the warmer-than-usual summer forecast.

“We can still get there this year,” he said. “I mean, we may be late, but maybe we’ll have a fall that will make a bountiful crop.”

That’s a hope shared by all of Alaska’s farmers and livestock producers. Meanwhile, there’s livestock to be fed, and Mugrage says he’ll continue to use last year’s harvest to keep his cows contented.

Investigators are working the site where two 11th Airborne Division Apache helicopters collided and crashed in the Interior on April 27, killing three soldiers and injuring a fourth.

Eleventh Airborne Division media relations chief John Pennell says an investigation team from the Army’s Combat Readiness Center out of Ft. Novosel, Alabama began work at the crash site, which is about 50 miles east of Healy, on Monday.

Pennell says onboard flight recorders have been recovered from the wreckage.

“Each helicopter had a black box, that much like with commercial airliners, it records a loop of continuous information during the flight,” he said. “They were able to recover the black boxes from both helicopters and they’ve got those back at Ft. Wainwright now.”

An 11th Airborne Division release says the 30-minute recording loop captures aircraft altitude, attitude, air speed and heading, among other information.

Pennell says additional investigators at the crash site are “taking measurements and looking at the debris from the crashed aircraft and trying to piece together what they think might have happened.”

Pennell says the crash occurred as the two helicopters were returning from training to Fort Wainwright from an aerial gunnery range in the Donnelly Training Area southeast of Fairbanks. There were no known weather or visibility issues.

“I can’t tell you whether it was clear blue skies or cloudy or anything like that, but there were no particular weather warnings for that area at that time,” he said.

Pennell says the wreckage will eventually be transported out of the remote location by helicopter, but he can’t say much more about the investigation.

“The investigation will take as long as the investigation takes, and once its completed then the team from the Army Safety Center will brief the command as to what they found,” he said.

The Army grounded non-critical flying Friday in response to the Alaska helicopter crash and a previous one in Kentucky that killed 9. All active units are required to complete additional training during the pause, which is scheduled to end Friday.

In Alaska, Pennell says the 11th Airborne is only flying as much as it has to for the investigation.

A private memorial service for the 3 soldiers killed in the crash — Christopher Robert Eramo, Stewart Duane Wayment, and Kyle D. McKenna — was held Thursday afternoon at Ft. Wainwright.

Pennell says the division has been shaken by the crash and loss.

“We’re just trying to step forward and do everything we can to support those folks who have been left behind, and figure out why, and then going forward try to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

Pennell says the soldier who was injured in the crash is out of the hospital and recovering at home.

The U.S. Attorney’s Alaska office has charged a Delta Junction couple with conspiracy and wire fraud for bilking investors out of more than $700,000 they thought would be used to develop a marijuana theme park in Salcha.

FBI investigators say Brian and Candy Corty used false and fraudulent claims to get 22 people around the country to invest a total of $722,000 in a project the Cortys referred to as a “marijuana theme park” they called “Bud and Breakfast.”

One of those people, a resident of New York City, invested $200,000 in the venture, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office affidavit. A North Carolina resident invested $25,000.

The affidavit says that from 2017 to 2020, the Cortys enticed those prospective investors to buy shares of their company, Ice Fog Holdings, to finance development of a marijuana cultivation, processing and retail facility at the site of the old Midway Lodge in Salcha, which the couple bought in 2018.

The affidavit says the Cortys told investors the attraction would “include glass ceilings so Ice Fog’s customers could lie in bed and watch the northern lights.”.

Fairbanks-based assistant U.S. attorney and lead prosecutor Ryan Tansey says they take investment fraud extremely seriously.

“Our office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, is going to use all the resources that we have to investigate and hold culpable parties accountable in cases like this,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

Brian Corty declined to comment about the case on tape Wednesday evening. But he said in a written response that, “An indictment is merely an allegation and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”

Corty allegedly told investors beginning in mid-2017 that he expected the company’s profits would grow quickly, from $3.8 million in the first year to more than $23 million after three years. And he said their investments would grow 30-fold.

But the project never came to fruition. Investigators say the Cortys and as-yet unnamed co-conspirators knew the business had no real revenue potential, and little to no prospect of obtaining a license from the state Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office.

They also said the Cortys used the money from investors for personal purposes.

According to a news release issued Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Alaska office, an FBI investigation into the case continues with assistance from the Alaska Department of Law.

The Cortys are scheduled to be arraigned on Monday at the federal courthouse in Fairbanks on charges that include three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Army officials have identified the three soldiers who died Thursday after the two helicopters they were flying collided in mid-air near Healy.

The victims are 39-year-old Chief Warrant Officer 3 Christopher Eramo of Oneonta, New York; 28-year-old Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kyle McKenna of Colorado Springs, Colorado; and 32-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Stewart Wayment of North Logan, Utah.

A fourth soldier who was injured in the crash and transported to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital is still undergoing treatment there. A news release issued Saturday by the 11th Airborne Division says the servicemember was in stable condition. Army officials haven’t yet released the soldier’s name.

11th Airborne spokesperson John Pennell said the soldiers were flying two AH-64 Apache helicopters with the Fort Wainwright-based 1st Attack Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment. He said the Apaches were returning Thursday afternoon from a training mission in the Donnelly Training Area near Fort Greely when they collided and crashed about 50 miles east of Healy.

“The terrain is extremely rugged, mountainous, deep snow, heavily forested. It required helicopter access with hoists, to get in there,” he said.

Pennell said there wasn’t much information available yet about other factors that may have contributed to the collision. But he said investigators were scheduled to fly in Saturday to the crash site.

“There is a safety investigation that will be ongoing by the Army’s Combat Readiness Center out of Ft. Novosel, Alabama,” he said. “Until they have made their determination, there’s just really no way that I can give you any kind of speculation.”

The Federal Aviation Administration has restricted air traffic within 25 nautical miles of the crash site through May 4, to facilitate the investigation.

Thursday’s crash is the second this year involving 11th Airborne Apache helicopters in Alaska. In February, two soldiers with the 11th Airborne Battalion were injured when the Apache they were in crashed soon after takeoff from the Talkeetna Airport, where they’d stopped to refuel on the way back from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.

In March, nine soldiers were killed in Kentucky when the Blackhawk helicopter they were in crashed during a routine nighttime training exercise.

In response to the crashes, the Army on Friday grounded all its aviation units and ordered them to conduct training this week before they’d be allowed to fly again.

KUAC senior reporter/producer Dan Bross contributed to this story.

Three soldiers died and another was injured in a mid-air crash of two Army helicopters in Interior Alaska yesterday.

According to an 11^th Airborne Division release, the helicopters  — based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks — were returning from a training mission when they collided near Healy.

The release says two soldiers were declared dead at the scene and a third died on the way to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. The soldier injured in the crash is being treated at the hospital in Fairbanks.

The accident will be investigated by a team from the Army Combat Readiness Center, in Alabama. The Army says it will withhold the names of the victims until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.

In February, two soldiers were hurt after their For Wainwright-based Apache helicopter crashed in Talkeetna.

The Army has sent 90 Stryker vehicles from Fort Wainwright to Ukraine to help the nation defend itself. The fort still has a few Strykers around to help soldiers train to defend against attack with weapons of mass destruction.

The Army transferred 329 Strykers from Fort Wainwright to the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama last fall, then in January sent 90 of them to Ukraine as part of a military aid package.

“Those are the ones that have been utilized to support the Ukrainian effort,” says Ashley John, a spokesperson for the Army’s Ground Combat Systems Program Executive Office in Michigan. John said in an email Monday that the Strykers sent overseas were “part of the U.S. commitment to provide security assistance to Ukraine.”

In February, the U.S. sent about 30 Strykers to Bulgaria, a Balkan nation south of Ukraine.

11th Airborne Division commander Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler says the Stryker transfer to Ukraine was done after the Army decided last fall that the vehicles wouldn’t fit with the division’s directive to focus on defending the Arctic and training here.

“That was a decision made at the Army level, to divest of the Strykers and work on a force that’s more capable in the region and also training in that environment,” Eifler said in a news conference last month. He said the multi-wheeled, lightly armored vehicles were no longer suited for the division and its two newly reorganized brigades: a mainly infantry unit based at Fort Wainwright and an airborne unit at Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson.

But the Army decided to keep a few specially equipped Strykers in Alaska.

“Back in September, we divested ourselves of probably 99% of the Strykers that we had here at Wainwright. However, one unit did keep a small handful of them,” says Eve Baker, a Fort Wainwright spokesperson. She was referring to the 17th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. The unit specializes in training soldiers on how to respond to attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.

“So these Stryker vehicles have radiation-detection equipment and protective abilities, and they’re used Armywide in this type of unit,” she said in an interview last week

Baker says some of those Strykers and their crews took part in last month’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, or JPMRC, training exercise held on training areas around Fort Wainwright.

“So people may see them and be confused,” she said, “but we did divest ourselves of the vast majority of the Stryker vehicles.”

Meanwhile, Army officials are trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the Strykers.

“The Army is still considering several options on what they intend to do with the particular Strykers that came out of Alaska,” says Gen.Charles Flynn, who heads up the Army’s Pacific Command. Both he and Eifler talked about Strykers and the JPMRC exercise during a March 30 news conference at Fort Wainwright.

“Obviously they need to be upgraded,” Flynn said, “but there’s a wide range of options that the Headquarters Department of the Army is working their way through.”

Army officials say the Stryker is a versatile platform that supports 18 variations that include vehicles equipped with armaments like mortars or cannons, and others that transport soldiers and supplies and clear minefields. Flynn said the Army is modernized some Strykers to accommodate short-range air-defense and intelligence-collection systems.