Quinton Chandler, KTOO

Don’t be surprised if you’re warned by diamond shaped signs to slow down on Egan Drive. The City and Borough of Juneau is replacing the water main downtown.

Paul Beck with CBJ said the work will span the road between the Centennial Hall Convention Center and the Hangar on the Wharf.

“The project is mainly happening at night. There will be some traffic revisions (we) may be down to single lanes in some cases. The peak hours of traffic, there shouldn’t be any impact at all,” Beck said.

Beck explained that the current water main is too old and CBJ wants to replace it before the Department of Transportation starts resurfacing Egan Drive between 10th St. and Main Street this fall.

He estimated the water main replacement will cost between $500,000 and $600,000.

Two other construction projects are underway downtown. Beck said crews are reconstructing Franklin Street between Admiral Way and Ferry Way and starting Monday, he said crews will work on a project near the downtown library.

Beck asks that people drive slowly and carefully through the construction zones. If you have any questions about the water main replacement, he said to contact him at 586-0882, or Mitch McGraw with Southeast Earthmovers at 738-8057.

Alaska Electric Light and Power believes a bird triggered the power outage in downtown Juneau Friday night.

Debbie Driscoll with AEL&P said power stopped flowing from the Second St. substation at 6:12 p.m. Friday.

“We didn’t see anything on inspection, but we were told by an eyewitness that they saw a bird make contact with the line and then fly away, and at that point is when the power tripped off,” Driscoll said.

Outage appears to have been caused by a bird. Power is back on. Enjoy Folk Fest & First Friday. If you’re without power call 586-AELP.

— AEL&P (@AELPJUNEAU) April 8, 2017

Driscoll compared the situation to a breaker flipping in a home. She said the system is designed to “trip open” when a problem is detected – cutting power and preventing further damage or injuries.

“And so what we do is we make sure that there’s no hazards in the line, that we don’t see any issues, and then we close that breaker back in to allow power to flow again,” Driscoll said.

She said 1,154 AEL&P customers lost power, including KTOO, and AEL&P had all power back up 41 minutes after it went out.

Driscoll added that it takes time to restore power because employees physically check the lines and equipment before they turn the lights back on.

If you’re looking for quick answers next time there’s an outage, Driscoll said check AEL&P’s Facebook and Twitter feeds for updates.

Update | 2:10 p.m. Monday

The National Weather Service in Juneau reports 10.6 inches of snow has fallen at their office in Mendenhall Valley since midnight Monday.

Original Story | 1:50 p.m. Monday

Several school buses were stuck in the snow Monday morning.

David Means, director of administrative services for the Juneau School District oversees busing services.

“There was a bus stuck in Douglas on Second Ave. there. They just needed to put chains on it and then it drove itself out,” Means said. “There were some other special education buses stuck on roads that were not plowed, basically on turnarounds as they were trying to pick up special education students.”

Means said one or two more buses may have been stuck.

He said a spokesman for First Student, the company holding the district’s busing contract, was pleased with how this morning went despite the hangups.

“He noted that some routes were running late, primarily due to the slowness of traffic and they were running late,” Means said. “But overall he said he was very pleased with how things came out this morning.”

The district runs 38 buses.

Some parents have complained that school should not have been open considering how much snow has fallen.

The district made the decision to keep school open using the best information available early this morning, Means said.

This morning, First Student drove the roads to evaluate them. They decided the major thoroughfares were passable. The district also consults The Juneau Police Department and the City and Borough of Juneau before it decides whether to hold classes.

“(If) we make a decision to close school, that would be a day that would have to be made up and also many parents who both work often would have to find very last minute daycare arrangements and, or, choose to stay home themselves,” Means said. “We find that when we make a decision to close schools, we’re making it not just for our school system but for the whole community.”

Superintendent Mark Miller said this is his second time deciding whether to close school for snow in his three years with the district. He said whether students can commute to school and back safely is the only factor considered in his decisions.

The National Weather Service expects 3-5 inches of snow to fall today. There is a winter storm warning in effect until 6 pm.

Editor’s note: In a previous version of this story, the word “disapproval” was misspelled in the headline. It has be corrected.

Closing the Bergmann Hotel left some of its tenants homeless and now they’re wondering what they’ll do next.

The Glory Hole soup kitchen is the only short-term shelter open to men, women and children in Juneau. It’s the perfect place for Charlie Joseph to stay warm and wait out the day.

Joseph was at a barbecue the night police and other officials came to close the Bergmann Hotel. So when he went home, he was surprised he couldn’t get in.

“And I went down there and I seen the plyboards on all the windows and when I went to the front, everything was plyboarded off so I didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

The historic building has suffered from years of neglect and mistreatment. Juneau officials condemned it because the building isn’t safe but for Joseph and other Juneau residents, it was home.

The Salvation Army church opened a temporary warming station downtown specifically for the Bergmann residents, but Joseph didn’t know that until the next morning.

He says he just walked the streets all night. He didn’t get any of his things, including his medicine for hypertension and post-traumatic stress disorder before being evicted.

Juneau officials posted a sheet of paper condemning the Bergmann on Thursday. The paper had orders for all the tenants to be out in 24 hours. They also sent a letter to the owners and the property manager listing 15 ways the building violated city code.

When police cleared the building Friday, they promised Bergmann residents that city officials would let them recover their belongings left in the building.

Joseph says no one told him about the pending closure but he had heard rumors about what might happen.

“Everybody was telling us that that’s what they were going to do, but I didn’t get no paper (and) nobody came and talked to me about it, so everything was up in the air,” Joseph said.

He plans to spend his next night indoors in the warming station in the Salvation Army church’s lower level.

There are seven people sleeping here tonight and four are Bergmann tenants. The night before about 15 people came for soup and seven spent the night. The Bergmann property manager said the hotel averaged 30 residents per month.

Chris Clark is playing cribbage with two friends. He says he found out the Bergmann was being closed two hours before he had to leave.

“There were four fire marshals standing out on the lawn and I asked them what they were doing there and they said, ‘We’re condemning the place,’” Clark recalled. “He said, ‘You need to go up and you need to start packing your stuff because you’re out.’ I paid $750 and they’re not giving me that money back. We’re just out.”

Clark says losing his home has made everything harder.

“I’m not only homeless. I’m homeless with AIDS and I have no clothing, no medication, no anything. I have nothing.”

A Salvation Army volunteer brings Clark tissue so he can wipe away tears. He also has a bad back and is on disability.

“You know, I was really proud of being able to pay for my own home and now it’s gone and so is my money. So yeah, I’m a little upset,” he said.

Clark says he and his friends spent the day at the bus stop where they went to keep warm. He’s thankful for the Salvation Army.

Lt. Lance Walters with the Salvation Army says this warming station is on a trial run.

“We’re going to be open from 7 in the evening to 7 in the morning and we’re going to go till Tuesday morning,” Walters said.

Whether they open again depends on how many people volunteer to help.

Walters says the station is a second chance for people who can’t sleep in the Glory Hole. The shelter won’t take people with a blood alcohol level over 0.1.

Walters says the Salvation Army won’t turn away people who are drunk unless they cause too much trouble.

The City and Borough of Juneau’s letter to the Bergmann’s owners gave them a chance to fix the building and open it to tenants in the future.

When each of the 15 violations are fixed, the letter says to contact the CBJ for an inspection.

Alaska Energy Desk’s Rashah McChesney contributed to this story. 

Juneau School District is on a tight budget but still needs to keep up with everyday building needs at its individual schools.

The district has to hold off on expensive updates because two years ago, the state stopped helping with school construction costs.

Mendenhall River Community School is only one of the schools asking to get a remodel.

The district replaced the roof almost 20 years ago, but officials said the building’s interior — with its turquoise walls and bright red carpets, original to the 33-year-old building — was never renovated.

Mendenhall River Principal Kristy Dillingham has a list of the changes she wants.

“Feel how heavy this door is,”  Dillingham said. “You really have to push hard and put your weight into the door to get it open,”

Dillingham stood inside two sets of doors that lead to Mendenhall River’s playground. You have to open the outer doors first, and then there’s another set of doors after those.

Imagine trying to open these doors in a wheelchair or while leaning on a walker. Dillingham wants to make it easier.

She said, “so as we have multiple students in wheelchairs here come into school that they can easily access the school without waiting for people to hold open multiple layers of doors for them to get into the building.”

She wants to give them buttons that open the doors automatically.

Next, she showed me where the kids eat — the gym.

“Our gym floor has a crack in it, where you can feel the sub-floor below,” Dillingham said. “Our lighting in the gym hum and make loud humming noises.”

Parents have complained that a pipe for the sprinkler system in one room burst and started spraying water twice.

“We have plumbing issues in our bathrooms where once or twice a week we’re having to shut a bathroom down because toilets are overflowing,” Dillingham said.

But, the reality is big renovations that would address the doors, the gym floor, the plumbing problems, the carpet and everything else on Dillingham’s list are out of reach.

Dillingham couldn’t guess how much her wishlist would cost but in 2013, a team of engineers and architects from the CBJ and private firms recommended about $13.9 million in renovations for Mendenhall River.

Until 2015, the state paid local governments back for most of the money they borrowed from taxpayers to cover school construction costs.

David Means, the school district’s director of administrative services, said the state won’t do that again until 2020.

“If there’s a vote after October 2020, they would be eligible for (a) 50 percent reimbursement instead of the 60 to 70 percent reimbursement rate,” Means said.

If the City and Borough of Juneau voted to issue a bond to borrow money for Mendenhall River’s renovations, it would have to pay back the full amount.

Means said the CBJ is already stuck with an additional $3 million in bond debt it expected the state to cover before Gov. Bill Walker cut millions from the state’s budget with a veto last summer.

An avalanche at Eaglecrest Ski Area on Saturday injured one person.

According to a Capital City Fire/Rescue Facebook post, a ski patroller saw the injured person get caught by the avalanche.

Eaglecrest Ski Patrol retrieved the injured person and took them to a waiting ambulance.

The post did not identify the injured person or describe the extent of the injuries. CCFR was not immediately available for comment.

In the post, CCFR warned residents to be careful and pointed out that another avalanche came down above Juneau on Friday.

The agency also posted a link to the City and Borough of Juneau’s Urban Avalanche Advisory web page. As of Saturday afternoon, the site warns of high avalanche danger.