KUAC - Fairbanks

Work is scheduled to resume this month on a bridge that will cross a slumping stretch of the road into Denali National Park. The $100 million bridge will span 475 feet across a landslide at Mile 45, in an area known as Pretty Rocks, where accelerated melting of a rock glacier has closed the road since August 2021.

During the summer of 2023, bridge project contractor Granite Construction built a work camp and staging areas, transported materials and equipment, and began site preparation that included blasting, excavation, slope stabilization and pioneering a temporary heavy equipment access route across the Pretty Rocks landslide.

Denali National Park engineer Steve Mandt called 2023 “a huge year for the project” at a recent virtual town hall event, during which he reviewed last season’s progress and previewed what’s to come.

Mandt said this spring’s work will complete excavation on the west side of the slide, followed by construction of bridge abutments, or foundations.

“These foundations are composed of these large precast concrete blocks,” Mandt said. “So each of those blocks is 15 feet long, 4 feet wide, 4 and a half feet thick. There’s 13 of those per abutment. Each one of those is about 40,000 pounds of concrete. So, this entire abutment is 52 feet long, 15 feet long and four-and-a-half feet thick, so it’s just a massive foundation that’s going to be supporting each end of the bridge.”

Mandt said the abutments will be secured into solid underlying rock on either side of the slide.

“Basically, it’s a hole drilled into rock into which a steel bar is inserted and then that’s grouted in place,” he said.

Mandt said the contractor will also begin installation this summer of thermosiphons, commonly used along the Trans-Alaska pipeline and some Alaska roads, to keep ice underlying rock and soil on the east side of the bridge from thawing.

“We all know that climate is changing and even recent trends in the park are showing just progressively warmer temperatures over time, so we want to make sure that the ice that is ultimately helping support the bridge…that ice remains frozen,” Mandt said. “So, the thermosiphon is the tool that’s going to be used to do that.”

This season’s work will also see construction of a platform on the east side abutment, and the first third of the actual bridge.

“So, on that launch platform this year the contractor is going to be erecting the first three bays of the bridge,” Mandt said. “So, the first three sort of triangles of the truss will be assembled and sitting on that launch platform at the end of this construction season.”

Mandt said the rest of the bridge bays will be constructed on site in 2025 and then the entire structure will be pushed from the east side out over the slide to a receiving structure extended from the west abutment.

“Progressively moved over to the west side and then once that’s done that launch nose, the temporary truss will be removed,” he said. “The truss will be lowered onto the foundation.”

Bridge deck and guard rail installation are slated for summer of 2026, after which the bridge will open for park service and private in-holder use. Park visitor buses are scheduled to begin driving across the Pretty Rocks Bridge in the spring of 2027.

Alaska and Canada have agreed to a seven-year moratorium on Yukon River chinook salmon fishing.

According to a release from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the in-river closure for one full king salmon life cycle is outlined in an agreement signed April 1 by the state agency and its Canadian counterpart. It halts the harvest of kings on the mainstem of the Yukon, as well as Canadian tributaries, in an attempt to recover the long-depressed stocks.

The agreement sets a 71,000 Canadian-origin chinook annual border passage target, and allows for consideration of limited subsistence harvest if the target is projected to be reached. It’s been seven years since that many kings crossed the border into Canada, and last year’s passage estimate was under 15,000.

Regardless of run size, the new agreement allows for consideration of limited chinook harvest for ceremonial and cultural purposes.

Another part of the agreement requires development of a Yukon River chinook salmon rebuilding plan.

Law enforcement officers can’t use binoculars or telephoto lenses when flying over Alaskans’ property unless they have a warrant, according to a Friday ruling by the Alaska Supreme Court.

The case involved a Fairbanks man who was arrested after Alaska State Troopers photographed his yard from the air. The case started in 2012, when troopers got a tip that John William McKelvey III was illegally growing marijuana on his property. After flying over the property and taking pictures with a telephoto lens, the troopers obtained a search warrant.

The validity of that search warrant is central to the case, but moreso whether the troopers’ use of aerial photography violates either the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or the Alaska Constitution’s right-to-privacy clause.

“It should have a significant impact on law enforcement going out and just roaming around looking at people’s properties without a reason.  It’s going to require that they first present to a judge the evidence they have to go out there, and obtain a warrant,” said Robert John, the Fairbanks attorney who argued the case for McKelvey.

The case was featured on the Supreme Court Live demonstration at a public assembly at Lathrop High School in November 2022. The Supreme Court has heard 15 prominent cases in front of high-school audiences since 2010.

Justice Dario Borgesan wrote the main decision for the court, saying Alaskans have a reasonable expectation that authorities will not examine their homes from aircraft with high-powered optics.

The opinion focused on using technology, but John says there was more.

“The opinion leaves open the question of whether flying over people’s property and trying to look at things with your naked eye (is constitutional),” he said.

Two justices, Chief Justice Peter Maassen and Justice Susan Carney, concurred with Borgeson — but wrote a separate opinion saying the court should have gone further, and that warrants should be required for any kind of looking from above. John says that view would likely include drones.

“(The court’s) actually kind of paving the way with protections right now before we get to the point that you’d have to make a decision about drones. It’s basically said, ‘We are not going to make our rights subservient to technology. Our rights prevail,’” John said.

The Alaska Beacon reported that Department of Public Safety communications director, Austin McDaniel wrote in an email message that the department doesn’t believe the ruling will impact its operations.

“DPS has had a small drone program in place for nearly 5 years and since day 1, we have operated under the same confines as the Supreme Court ruling outlined,” McDaniel said.

The ruling states the Alaska Constitution requires law enforcement to get a warrant before taking pictures of private property from the sky.

Read the full Alaska Supreme Court ruling in the case here.

The Iditarod has disqualified a musher from the upcoming running of the Last Great Race.

A release from the Iditarod Trail Committee says the race’s board held an emergency meeting on Monday and decided to disqualify Eddie Burke Jr. of Anchorage. It says the disqualification is pursuant to rule 53, which says that “All Iditarod mushers will be held to a high standard of personal and professional conduct.”

The release does not explain what Burke did to violate the rule, but Alaska court records show the 34-year-old musher is facing felony and misdemeanor assault charges for a May 2022 domestic violence incident in Anchorage.

Burke was the top rookie in last year’s Iditarod as well as the Yukon Quest Alaska 300 earlier this month.

Burke’s disqualification follows a message sent to Iditarod mushers saying that the race’s board had been informed about “a number of accusations being made within our community concerning violence and abuse against women.”

It does not name any mushers but goes on to say that the ITC board and personal conduct committee are “monitoring the situation closely.”

Alaska State Troopers and state Department of Transportation workers recovered the bodies of two people Friday found dead in a snowbound vehicle on the Steese Highway at Eagle Summit. According to a trooper dispatch, the two were reported to have left Fairbanks on Tuesday headed for Circle.

DOT spokesperson John Perreault says a road crew from an area maintenance station headed up Eagle Summit in stormy conditions Wednesday morning and found three vehicles. Two of the vehicles were still running, but a third was buried in the snow, and the crew got no response when they knocked on the windows or tried the doors.

Perreault says the crew left to help the two other vehicles off the summit and then returned to check the third again.

“They couldn’t see inside,” he said. “The windows were frosted and tinted, and so they cleared the passenger doors. They even tried to pry them open.”

Perreault says the crew came off the mountain about six hours after first locating the vehicle Wednesday morning.

A State Trooper dispatch says they responded that evening and broke a window to get in and found two people dead inside.

“Because the weather I’m told at that time was 60 mile an hour winds, the Trooper and the DOT personnel came down off the summit and had to wait for the weather to clear up. And the vehicle was recovered with the occupants Friday morning,” Perreault said.

The Trooper dispatch says the bodies were transported to Fairbanks for identification and would then go to the state medical examiner for autopsy, adding that no foul play is suspected.

Strong winds are common in the Eagle Summit area, and the DOT has gates to close the highway when conditions warrant. Perreault says a road crew did not lower the gates after completing work around 4:30 PM Tuesday.

“They were open Tuesday night because the pass was clear when our guys came off shift,” he said.

Perreault says the DOT closed the gates Wednesday morning, as conditions had significantly worsened.

“And so traffic had gone over Tuesday night before they had come back on shift to make a determination,” he said.

Perreault says the incident and response will undergo review.

“Anytime tragedies like this happen, we want to make sure that we did everything we could, and we’ll be sure to put those sort of decisions through a process of review and to make sure we’re enabling our staff to protect the public as best they can,” he said.

Perreault encourages drivers to check weather reports and Alaska 511 for conditions, and to let someone know where they’re headed and be prepared with sufficient fuel, emergency supplies and equipment.

The Army has released a report on its investigation into a mid-air helicopter crash in a remote mountainous area 60 miles south of Fort Wainwright that killed three soldiers last April.

The report released by the Army Combat Readiness Center is 385 pages long, but much of it, including details about the crash, is heavily redacted. The parts not blacked-out include findings the Army hadn’t previously disclosed, such as: the crash occurred as the two helicopters that collided and a dozen others were flying back to Fort Wainwright after a two-week training exercise.

“All 14 aircraft were AH-64Delta Apache helicopters,” says Jimmie Cummings, a spokesperson for the Alabama-based Combat Readiness Center.

Cummings couldn’t talk Thursday about redactions in the report, but clarified some of the information, like exactly where the crash happened.

“The mishap occurred 60 miles south of Ladd Army Airfield,” he said

That’s about 50 miles south of the Tanana River, near the confluence of the Wood River and Sheep Creek.

The report says the 14 Apaches took off from the Donnelly Training Area south of Fort Greely just after noon April 27th and headed west through the Alaska Range for flight to Nenana. From there, they intended to fly over Fairbanks International Airport en route to Ladd Field on Fort Wainwright.

Mid-air collision in mountain pass

The report says about 48 minutes into the flight, the formation turned right and headed north into a mountain pass. Army officials have said there were no weather advisories or visibility problems in the area.

The report says the two Apaches that crashed were traveling at about 82 mph about 250 feet above ground level. Then, 30 seconds after they executed the turn, the pilot of one of the Apaches slowed down and lost sight of the other, then tried to increase airspeed and hit the main rotor blades of the other aircraft. Both of the helicopters then crashed into the side of a mountain.

A crew member aboard one of the helicopters then transmitted a mayday call. But the report says “there were no mayday calls or radio transmissions” from the other Apache.

The three soldiers who died were assigned to the 1st Attack Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment: 39-year-old Chief Warrant Officer 3 Christopher Eramo, of New York; 28-year-old Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kyle McKenna, of Colorado, and 32-year-old Warrant Officer 1 Stewart Wayment, of Utah.

A fourth soldier who hasn’t been identified was injured and hospitalized.

Portions of the report on lessons learned and recommendations based on them were both redacted.

The Army released the report last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by KUAC.