Matt Miller

A Juneau house was damaged in a recent flood caused by road improvements. But the current owners don’t hold a grudge against construction crews and they hope to move back in after the house is repaired.

There’s a sign in front of Pam Varni and Bob Funk’s West Juneau house that reads Heen Ku Hit. Translated from Lingít, it means creek house or house by the water. But, for a few days, it was literally a house in the water.

Dehumidifiers run on the second floor and a musty smell permeates the entire house several days after the flood. Varni heads down to the first floor where the still wet carpet squishes underfoot.

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Varni said. “Sopping wet.”

Varni opens the door to the furnace room and coughs.

“Yeah, it’s just stinky in here. It’s just pretty bad,” she said.

Varni said she woke up before dawn on Sept. 2 with water levels rising in the creek that runs just feet from the front door. The water completely covered a footbridge and flooded the house’s first floor with more than three feet of water.

“Our furnace, I believe, is toast,” Varni said. “Our septic drain field is toast.”

Some clothes and downstairs furniture, including a brand new bed, were all likely ruined with water and backed-up sewage. But Varni is really worried about baby pictures that got soaked. She hopes they can be dried out and saved.

So, what happened?

As part of current improvements for the Douglas Highway, bridge and roundabout, construction crews were installing an insulated liner for a culvert that allows the creek to run under the highway and empty into Gastineau Channel. They placed some pumps and created a couple of dams on the upstream side of the culvert so the liner could cure overnight in dry conditions.

But heavy rain overwhelmed the pumps. Water spilled over the dams, filled up the culvert and plugged it up. That flooded the house and yard.

Varni and Funk both said they really don’t hold any animosity towards Secon or the subcontractors.

“Oh, no. No, no, definitely not,” Varni said.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. Maybe not quite that big,” Funk said. “You know, you just move on. It’s not like they were trying to do it.”

“I don’t think they realized just how much water comes down this creek,” Varni said. “When it’s, it really starts raining, you could hear the boulders going down.”

Contractors brought in more pumps and dug up the road in front of the house. A pair of excavators rammed in steel pilings from the channel side to unplug the culvert.

Insurance companies for both the couple and contractors are trying to figure out the damages.

Julie Olson of the main contractor Secon said it was an unfortunate incident and they’re grateful no one was hurt.

“(Varni and Funk) have just really been gracious and understanding,” Olson said. “And they’ve said they don’t blame us. They don’t think it’s our fault. I mean, although, we don’t really know at this point whose fault it is. They’ve just been nice and we were very grateful for that.”

The couple say they bought the green house with red and white trim over 25 years ago, renovated it, and added a garage and efficiency apartment. It’s set back a ways with trees and the creek masking highway traffic sounds.

Days after the water receded, Varni and Funk were still piling up soaked personal belongings to haul to the dump.

They’ll need a new furnace and must now connect to city sewer.

The outside siding and the downstairs drywall and flooring all need to be ripped out.

“It’s nothing huge for contractor-type people,” Funk said. “Big problem is finding somebody to do it. And right now, everybody’s busy as a cat in a litter box.”

The couple are staying with friends and plan to find an apartment nearby while demolition and renovations are underway.

 

A Belgian woman is trying to set a record for being the youngest ever to fly solo around the world. The airport in Juneau will be her first stopover in Alaska.

Zara Rutherford, 19, left Belgium Aug. 18. Right now, she is near the halfway mark in her 27,685 nautical mile journey through more than 50 countries.

Yvette Soutiere is the fixer for Rutherford’s stopover in Juneau, currently scheduled for as early as Sunday.

Soutiere remembers as a child becoming entranced listening to air traffic control and cockpit radio communications while riding aboard an airliner. She dreamed of learning to fly.

“I know that when I was a little girl, I was told: ‘One, you’re female. Two, you’re too short. Three, no one would ever hire you as a woman,’” Soutiere remembers. “And so, I waited until I was in my forties to get my pilot’s license.”

Soutiere said it may be slightly different in Alaska. But the number of women pilots overall is still extremely low.

“Women pilots make up 7% to 8% of all of the pilots in the United States,” she said. “In the world, the number is approximately 4%.”

Rutherford is going around the world solo to show other girls and young women they can fly, too. And, to inspire them to get into science, technology, engineering, and math fields.

During a recent interview on CNN, Rutherford said flying ten hours a day for two or three months straight would be tiring and pretty dangerous. So, she’ll limit her time in the air.

“I’ll be flying up to five hours a day,” Rutherford said. “And then every three days, taking a break just to make sure that I’m in the right mindset, I’m all excited, ready to go, (and) not too tired.”

“And that way, I’ll successfully go around the world.”

Rutherford is flying a Shark ultralight. It’s designed for long-range, cross-country flight with a maximum cruising speed of over 180 miles per hour.

Soutiere said Ward Air is providing hangar space for Rutherford’s stopover in Juneau.

An airport employee will host her overnight. And, an anonymous donor will pay for Rutherford’s fuel for the next leg of her flight.

As for Soutiere, she got her pilot’s license and flew solo just four years ago. She said there’s nothing like breaking gravity and truly moving in three dimensions.

“I find that I really tap into my insignificance, which is almost a spiritual experience because the whole world is so big and you are so small,” she said. “When you’re up in the air, you really get that feeling.”

After Rutherford leaves Juneau, she’ll head to Anchorage, Nome, and then on through the Russian Far East to southern Asia and then Africa.

Weather permitting, she’s scheduled to complete her around-the-world journey in Belgium in late October or November.

Some gardeners may think of vegetable gardening season winding down right now with harvesting already underway or just around the corner. Not true.

There are several vegetables that we can plant right now for late summer or even late fall and winter harvest.

Master Gardener Ed Buyarski says in this edition of Gardentalk that spinach and kale can be planted now for potential harvest in October and November.

Fast-growing lettuce and radishes or slower-growing swiss chard, early turnips, mustard greens, and bok choy are other vegetables that can be grown over the next few months or even over the winter.

He also recommends fertilizing soil in which vegetables had just been harvested. Then, plant cover crop seeds like fava beans, field peas, vetch, and oats.

“This is fast growing material,” Buyarski said. “And at the same time, they are fixing nitrogen which also improves the soil.”

Buyarski said the tips of the beans and peas are great in salads.

“So, you get double benefits,” he said. “You get food and you get soil improvement.”

Juneau’s 9/11 memorial just got an update. The memorial’s original designer, Brent Fischer, was inspired to create a memorial to the lives lost during the event that led to America’s longest war.

Fischer said his wife encouraged him to propose and design a memorial for Juneau after one of his childhood friends died on 9/11.

Christopher Newton was aboard Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Fischer said they were in the Boy Scouts together in Lakewood, California, and he remembers him as having the greatest smile.

“So, it was very personal to me. And it just symbolized everything that my wife, Debbie, and I felt,” Fischer said. “And the [Glacier Valley Rotary] Club just totally embraced it as well.”

Fischer was a member of the Glacier Valley Rotary Club at the time, and Riverside Rotary Park is still the club’s most visible service project in town.

For the park, Fischer designed a broken pentagon with two missing sides as a flagpole base.

“Each side measures 4 feet in length,” Fischer explained. “That represents the four lost planes.”

“The two missing sides of the Pentagon represent the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The memorial is constructed with concrete and Pennsylvania marble to represent the strength found in our heroes. The forget-me-not flowers symbolize the rebirth of patriotism and our promise to never forget,” he said.

“Of course, the flag represents the unity of our nation,” Fischer said. “And the head of the memorial, the Pentagon, is aligned with the North Star. And that’s a symbol of all Alaskans.”

It was built by Rotarians in just months and was one of the first 9/11 memorials in the country. The park served as the venue for services on the first anniversary.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, who orchestrated the attacks, is long dead. The war is over, U.S. troops are out of Afghanistan, and many Americans and Afghan allies were airlifted out in a hectic evacuation.

Fischer said initially entering the war and then getting out of Afghanistan were both the right things to do.

“However, I personally think that how it was done and leaving Americans there goes against everything that I think we believe as Americans,” he said. “And I hate to see that. It’s a tragedy. And we should be getting our Americans out of there and our allies that helped us over the last 20 years because they will be killed.”

Fischer originally designed a low wall that would partially enclose the memorial itself. But it was never built. At least not until this summer when the Glacier Valley Rotary Club also moved a shelter closer to the playground and erected a large pavilion in the park.

Charlie Williams with the Glacier Valley Rotary Club said the additions were prompted by a recently developed master plan for the park.

“It always involves money and time,” Williams said. “So, in this situation, we could build a shelter for a fraction of the cost that would cost the city. And so they recognize the value of leveraging a few dollars to get the things that are in the master plan as a wise thing to do.”

He said they will likely install engraved bricks and an interpretive sign at the memorial next spring.

Williams said the latest improvements to the park were made possible by support from the Juneau Community Foundation and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

This year’s memorial ceremony starts at 9:40 a.m Saturday and will wrap up at 10:15 a.m. at Riverside Rotary Park. Those attending the ceremony are encouraged to socially distance and wear a mask.

 

Juneau area gardeners may have tomato plants in various stages of growth. Now is the time to coax those plants toward potential harvest of the fruit.

In the latest edition of Gardentalk, Master Gardener Ed Buyarski suggests trimming the newly formed flowers, especially if they are just now emerging at the top of the plant.

Also, any yellowing leaves and any parts of the plant showing signs of gray, fuzzy mildew should all be removed.

Gardeners can encourage self-pollination of existing lower flowers by gently shaking the plants. An oscillating fan will also help distribute the pollen in a greenhouse, and extra heat will help extend the growing season.

For those plants that are done flowering or already bearing fruit, Buyarski recommends stressing them by limiting their water to accelerate fruit development.

Buyarski also has suggestions for building or equipping a new greenhouse, such as installing a screen door and windows that allow ventilation at either end and an oscillating fan to promote air circulation inside.

He also recommends clearing the immediate area around the greenhouse of trees or tree branches that could obstruct the sun.

Family and friends are offering a $5,000 reward for help finding an Oregon man who is still missing in Juneau after ten days.

Joe Clayton has been missing since he left for a hike Aug. 20. His car was found at the Auke Lake boat ramp that evening. His keys, wallet, backpack and binoculars were found four days later at an abandoned campsite in a wooded area near the University of Alaska Southeast.

Clayton’s sister Michelle Lyman says they’ve been talking to people and putting up fliers around Juneau to get the word out about his disappearance.

Lyman says her brother disappeared once before in Florida, in the aftermath of a divorce, but she says they didn’t see any recent signs that he would disappear again.

She says Clayton likes people and animals and is usually not shy about talking with other people.

Lyman says they plan to look at surveillance footage at the Auke Bay ferry terminal to determine whether he got on a state ferry to Sitka or another Southeast community.

Clayton is a 48-year-old white male, about 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds. He was last seen wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Lyman says he also may be wearing his brown Carhartt jacket with a hood.

Juneau Police ask that anyone who spots Clayton call them right away at 586-0600 and then stay within eyesight until an officer can arrive and verify his identity.