In this newscast:
Juneau’s electric utility thinks a bird or squirrel caused a power outage late Sunday morning.
Debbie Driscoll with Alaska Electric Light and Power Company said the outage lasted for almost an hour.
“What we call our line 2 transmission line opened, which has caused an outage to several areas including Douglas, West Juneau, North Douglas and parts of downtown,” Driscoll said.
Driscoll said the transmission line “trips open” when a problem is detected. It’s a safety measure that cuts the flow of electricity to prevent more damage. She compared it to a circuit breaker flipping in a home.
She said AEL&P crews checked the lines for a cause but they didn’t find anything.
“So after patrolling the line and not finding any evidence of anything in contact with the line, we then restored power and that line held, and it didn’t trip back off, so whatever had caused the fault had been cleared,” Driscoll said.
She said past power outages have been caused by mechanical malfunctions, and by animals or objects contacting a transmission line.
A former tugboat converted into a pleasure craft named the 18 Eagles ran aground on Vitskari Rocks less than 10 miles west of Sitka this weekend.
U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Meredith Manning said the boat’s four passengers called for help at 11 a.m. Saturday.
“Coast Guard Cutter John McCormick was in the area as well as (an) Alaska State Trooper crew,” Manning said. “The McCormick small boat crew and the state troopers’ crew were able to get on scene and help dewater the tug and then the state troopers’ vessel towed the tug back into Sitka.”
Manning said she wasn’t aware of any injuries and the Coast Guard will investigate how the boat was grounded. She said 9 mph hour winds were reported at the scene.
Clarification: References in the headline and story to the ship being a tugboat have been clarified to note that it’s a converted tugboat that is now a pleasure craft.
Richard Marshall is a 66-year-old Vietnam veteran. He’s a Juneau resident and was a civilian contractor for the U.S. military in Iraq. He signed up to drive fuel trucks through combat zones because he wanted to help.
During his first year in Iraq, Marshall drove 96 combat missions. In 2004 on Good Friday, he narrowly avoided a deadly attack. I asked him to share his memory of that day and he explained how it changed his life. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“Everyday we would line up and they would hand out keys and according to which key to which truck you got, you would be assigned a convoy commander and you’d form up into a group and leave.
“I was living in a tent with a bunch of guys that I got very close to. So when we would go up to sort of hang around the place where they handed out the keys, we’d routinely walk up together. That morning, they’d awakened us very early in the morning. All of the roads had been shut down for a couple of days. The threat was so high, the danger was so bad, the combat was so furious that they wouldn’t let anybody leave any of the camp. We were (sitting) around waiting for them to line us up and I got up to go get a bottle of water. As I was getting a bottle of water from an area … they called for us to come line up. So we did and it just happened that I ended up a couple of spaces ahead of this group of guys that was behind me. That couple of spaces put me as the last man in the first convoy that day.
“It was just horrible, we got shot at from the minute we left the gate and we got beat up and shot and blown up until we made it to Taji which is halfway to Baghdad. Finally got out of Taji and got south into Baghdad and we were able to supply enough fuel to keep the medevac birds going – that’s about all we could do at that point.
“The following morning, they allowed that second group to leave. … The group of guys that I lived with were all in that convoy. That was the group that got hit with anti-aircraft guns. They pretty well wiped out the convoy. The convoy commander lost an eye; I think we lost seven — there were seven drivers killed, there were several injured. Three or four soldiers killed that day. Basically everybody … all my friends were killed that day.
“So the fickleness is that even though I had it tough getting out of the gate that day and we had a tough time, had it not been for that bottle of water, that silly bottle of water, I would’ve been with them. So … that’s part of the reason why I stayed.”
“Oh sure, yeah, I don’t think — I don’t think that ever goes away. My response, my way of dealing with it, is to try and feel — feel very lucky every day. It’s tough to talk about, but in truth, I just don’t feel like I have the — I don’t have the right to feel bad about anything.
“I’m sorry. In other words, now when I’m working, when I’m doing anything — I mean my gosh, any of those guys — on my worst, worst day, every one of them would love to have that day. I’m just blessed, that’s all. I’m very blessed.”
Richard Marshall left Iraq at the end of 2007 and returned in 2010. After a short break, he moved on to work in Afghanistan for two and a half years.
Today he is semi-retired and works for Juneau Docks and Harbors in his spare time. He and his wife Teresa just celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary and plan to build a retirement home in Haines. Marshall said his biggest regret is spending so many years away from his wife.
The Juneau-Douglas High School seniors are eating a barbecue lunch after visiting Gastineau and Harborview Elementary schools this morning. The seniors donned their caps and gowns and took a victory lap through the schools. The walkthroughs are supposed to inspire the school district’s younger kids to graduate.
Rena Nauer and Sierra Ezrre were eating lunch together but this morning they paraded through different schools. Nauer visited the kids at Gastineau.
“They (were) excited and I went to school there so it was kind of cool getting to do it as a senior and going back,” Nauer said.
She thinks the walk was a good idea because it was fun and it might have a positive impact on the younger kids.
“It’s probably, like, cool getting to see the older kids, like, realizing that’s where you’re going to want to be when you’re older and be, like, ‘Oh my God, that’s going to be me soon,’” she said. “So maybe they’re just, like, looking forward to it.”
Sierra Ezzre visited Harborview – also her old school. She agrees with Nauer because she admired older kids when she was in elementary school.
“Yeah, I definitely looked up to them. Like, I thought they were so cool when I was little,” Ezzre said. “So, for us to go do that, I think that’s really important to them because I feel like quite a few of them look up to us.”
The girls just cut to the heart of the reason for this new tradition. JDHS Assistant Principal Kim McNamara said Juneau educators plan to keep doing this every year to make sure the younger kids remember what graduation looks like.
“The Gastineau kids had their yearbooks ready, they were asking all of the seniors to sign their yearbooks,” McNamara said. “The Harborview kids were equally enthusiastic, lining the halls, giving high-fives, cheering. It was really inspiring.”
Juneau schools first considered doing this last year after they learned other school districts were doing it in the Lower 48. They didn’t get a chance to do it in Juneau until now.
McNamara said these walkthroughs were also meaningful for the seniors.
“Especially the ones that went back to their elementary school,” she said. “It was really meaningful for them to walk through the halls, think back to their experiences as a younger child, and see some of their teachers and be able to connect with them again.”
She said it was a chance for the seniors to reflect on where they came from as they take their final steps out of high school into their next chapter.
The Juneau-Douglas seniors weren’t the only ones who held walkthroughs. Thunder Mountain High School seniors held a similar one at Riverbend Elementary School on Friday.
JDHS, TMHS and Yaakoosge Daakahidi are all holding their graduation ceremonies Sunday.
Alaska State Troopers released the names for two of the three people on board a plane that crashed southwest of Haines Saturday morning.
David Kunat, a 29-year-old Juneau pilot, and an adult male passenger from California both died at the crash site. Troopers said the other passenger, 31-year-old Chan Valentine from Juneau, survived the crash and was transported to Bartlett Regional Hospital.
Authorities notified Kunat’s next of kin, but Saturday night they were still trying to locate next of kin for the passenger from California.
Clint Johnson, chief of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska office, said earlier that an NTSB investigator would visit the crash site Sunday morning.
Two people died in a plane crash about 9 miles southwest of Haines near Glacier Point late Saturday morning. One person is critically injured, said Clint Johnson, chief of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska office in Anchorage.
“Witnesses reported a twin engine airplane taking off from a site. … It crashed in an area of tidal flats or tidal beach in shallow water and unfortunately, two people (were) deceased at the scene,” Johnson said.
He said emergency responders removed the injured passenger from the wreck and flew them to Juneau by helicopter. He does not know the identities of the passengers and he doesn’t know what caused the crash. He also didn’t say whether it was a commercial or private flight.
He said an NTSB investigator will ride a helicopter to the crash site Sunday morning alongside Alaska State Troopers and a representative from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Once our investigator gets boots on the ground down there, those are the types of details as far as weather conditions, wind conditions,” Johnson explained. “Ultimately (we’ll) be able to actually interview the witnesses that actually saw this, that’s where we’re going to get a lot of the information.”
Johnson said they are “blessed” to have witnesses to the crash. He said witnesses can help investigators determine the cause of a crash in the same way witnesses are helpful when investigating car accidents.
The NTSB also reported there was a plane crash 30 miles southeast of Fairbanks Saturday.
