Southcentral

Clean up and assessment work continues following a diesel spill in southern Cook Inlet over the weekend. The vessel in question is currently tied up in Seldovia, on the southern Kenai Peninsula.

The 116-foot landing craft, Thor’s Hammer, was traveling from Seward to Bristol Bay when it encountered rough seas between Point and Nuka Island, which is in Kachemak Bay State Park. Winds were reported in that area at 25 knots with seas to six feet Friday night.

Steven Russell is an environmental program manager with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. He says the vessel itself wasn’t damaged, but its cargo was.

“They had a 9,000 gallon tank trailer onboard the vessel and it moved. It didn’t necessarily break loose, but it shifted and punctured the tank trailer in two places,” Russell says.

He says crews attempted to make temporary repairs at sea. They then headed for the calmer waters near Flat Island and were met by response teams including the Coast Guard and DEC Saturday morning.

Russell says the crew considered taking the vessel to Port Graham Saturday evening for repairs, but due to limited facilities and logistics, they decided to go its larger neighbor, Seldovia, on Sunday instead.

“The vessel transited from the Gore Point, Nuka Island area to lower Cook Inlet and conducted additional repairs,” Russell says. “It’s estimated that in that transit, they lost approximately 6,000 gallons of Number 1 diesel fuel.”

Russell says the nature of diesel fuel in that environment is that it would break apart and dissipate quickly, with no obvious remnants after about an hour.

He says the leaks on the tanker were secured Saturday and it is not producing a visible sheen from the deck.

Once in Seldovia, Thor’s Hammer was boomed off. On Monday afternoon, about 3,000 gallons of diesel was offloaded from the damaged tanker.

The vessel is still tied up at the Seldovia City Dock where it’s being evaluated and decontaminated. It’s under the supervision of the U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Chadux, a private contractor specializing in spill response and cleanup.

“That operation will continue until the Coast Guard and others are sure that the vessel is no longer a potential environmental threat,” Russell says. “We have seen no leakage from the vessel, no sheening from the vessel since it arrived in the southern Cook Inlet.”

Russell says the Department of Interior, National Marine Fisheries Service, and National Wildlife Service evaluated potential harm to wildlife in the area and found none.

“We had certain concerns about bird areas and seal and sea lions. Currently, we have had no indication that any wildlife has been affected by this,” Russell says.

He says still unknown is whether the fuel gushed out all at once in a single area after it was first damaged, or seeped out over the miles the vessel traveled to safe harbor.

The incident team is waiting for automated vessel tracking information to more closely pinpoint its route.

Russell says the Coast Guard, which is leading the operation, should release more information over the next few days.

No injuries, or damage to the vessel, have been reported.

 

Last month, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake caused massive destruction and killed more than 8,000 people in Nepal. For one Upper Susitna Valley pastor, the timing meant that his planned mission trip turned into a relief effort.

Mike Sloan is the pastor at the Church on the Rock in Sunshine, Alaska.  On April 25th, Sloan and his group were on a plane from Bangkok to Kathmandu when the earthquake struck.

“We were just on our descent from Bangkok into the landing approach to Kathmandu Airport when they pulled up again and circled for an hour, and the pilot came on and said there had been an earthquake and the airport was closed,” Sloan said.

Sloan and the other men were traveling to Nepal for an eight day trek to a remote village.  After their flight returned to Bangkok, they waited overnight before being able to complete the journey to Kathmandu.  Once there, the eight day trek was cut in half, and they turned their efforts to helping villagers who lost their homes to the devastating earthquake.

“We pooled as much money as we could among the team, and the biggest concern became shelters, tents, and food. And so, that’s what we put our money into to get out to villages,” he said.

Sloan says that a large international effort began quickly to help the people of Nepal, but that much of the focus was on Kathmandu, the country’s largest city.  Sloan and his companions were able to pool together about $9,000, which they used to buy hundreds of tents and large bags of rice. He says that many of those who lost their homes in the villages also lost their stored food.

“Out in the villages, it’s between crops, and what happens is they store all the food they harvested in their houses, which all collapsed.  So, that means they lost all their food,” Sloan said.

On top of that, Mike Sloan says monsoon season is coming, which will mean constant rainfall for most of the time from June to September.  While houses in Nepalese villages tend to be simple structures built from mud and brick, Sloan says the subsistence lifestyle of many villagers means they don’t have time right now to try to rebuild.

“Right now is their monsoon time, coming, which means they’re planting, mostly corn right now. And that corn has to be planted and going before the rains hit, so they just don’t have a lot of spare time,” Sloan said.

Once the supplies were purchased, they had to be delivered.  Sloan says he and his companions partnered with local church leaders in two villages to get the supplies out.

“With those tents and rice, we were able to go to two different villages,” Sloan said. “One you could drive to, near the Tibetan border, and another we had to hire 50 to 60 porters to pack out the rice.”

The porters spent three days on the trail to reach the remote village. Sloan says the efforts of local church leaders helped greatly with making sure the food and tents got to those who needed them.

“When you work with the faith community, like the Nepali churches, a hundred percent goes in and a hundred percent goes out, just like us.”

Sloan, who lived in Nepal as an aid worker in the past, says that working through the government’s layers of bureaucracy can be frustrating.

“When you get all this money coming in, it ends up getting eaten up by this bureaucratic mess, and very [little] goes out.  That’s just the way it is, and Haiti was that way, and that’s the way this one—and these governments are very, basically, corrupt.”

For that reason, Mike Sloan says he will continue to work through the faith community.  He says efforts are continuing to raise funds locally to send to villages in Nepal.  Currently, the fundraising efforts have yielded between $8,000 and $9,000.  Sloan says he will continue his annual trips to the country, and plans an additional visit later this year.

Hip hop is more than just music and dancing; it’s a culture based on bringing people together. That was the message during this weekend’s All Tribes Hip Hop Cultural Heritage Summit at Begich Middle School in East Anchorage.

Local breakdancer Brianna McMillen is surrounded by an eager group of elementary school students who are spinning on their backs and standing on their heads. Camoflauge sweatpants hang from her petite but powerful frame, baseball hat askew on her head. She’s providing an impromptu dance lesson.

“I want you to move your foot there … then do this,” she says while demonstrating an awkward crab-like walk.

McMillen, aka Bgirl Snap1, started listening to hip hop as teenager at South High in Anchorage.

“I could relate it to an adrenal rush on nice sunny day,” she says. “Just that rush of good feeling and just like that breath of fresh air that life is really good.”

But she says at 16, she couldn’t really express what she felt physically.

“I loved music, but I never felt very rhythmically coordinated,” McMillen says. “I was more of an athlete more than anything. I didn’t know how to dance, and when I saw breaking I saw all the athleticism in it, and all the crazy moves that they were doing. And they were still dancing to the music that was just catching my ear.”

McMillen says through breaking, she met kids from all over town and from a variety of different backgrounds. She soon learned that hip hop isn’t just creativity, it’s self-discipline. She’s using that skill as a Blackhawk mechanic with the Alaska National Guard. She says hip hop is also about understanding that people are just people.

Summit organizer and hip hop artist George Martinez explains that hip hop was created in New York in the 1970s as a way to unify people.

“Because fundamentally it was a group of people who are unlikelies — the write-offs, people who were poor, the people of color in the South Bronx who everyone forgot about — who decided that just with cardboard boxes they could transform a sidewalk into a dance studio and give each other hope.”

Martinez says hip hop values are peace, knowledge, and having fun. The culture gives people tools to compete and air their differences through non-violent, creative means. He says underground battles are happening all the time in Anchorage to see who raps better or dances better.

Samuel Johns grew up in Copper Center living a traditional lifestyle of hunting and fishing with his family. But he also listened to a lot of Tupac. He told the crowd of 40 youth and community members that it was Tupac’s storytelling through music that taught him how to connect to older generations. Now he’s known as AK Rebel and raps about ending domestic abuse and other violence.

“When I make music, I make music that will be remembered 10 years from now because it meant something. Because it’s a real story. It’s not just something that’s meant for clubs; it’s not just something that people dance to.”

Outside of the school, tall white wooden boards lean against a lamppost — temporarily blank canvases. Fourteen-year-old Kwali Phillips shakes a can of spray paint. He’s learning about another element of hip hop — graffiti art — as he reflects on the messages he learned from different rappers.

“Just to be true to myself and don’t make an impersonation of somebody, not to portray myself in a negative light,” he says.

Twelve-year-old Layla Kremer says the music and the dancing unite the kids at Begich Middle School.

“If, like, a new dance comes out, like all the kids are doing it,” Kremer says. “Everybody’s doing it. Like with the Whip, Lil’ Einstein’s music. Like I’ve seen white people, black people, African-Americans, Chinese all just hanging out and doing the exact same dance just hanging out. It brings us all closer together.”

She grabs some paint and leans over a friend to add her mark to the board.

 

It’s been 10 days since the State of Alaska took the rare step of assuming control of Prestige Nursing home in Anchorage. State inspectors found dozens of violations during a visit to the facility. And the state says the nursing home had plenty of prior warning that it needed to improve.

Over the past two years, state inspectors have spent a lot of time inside Prestige Care and Rehabilitation Center of Anchorage. The facility has logged four times the number of complaints as Providence Extended Care, a similarly sized nursing home in the city.

So for the nursing home’s annual recertification review earlier this month, state and federal inspectors decided to show up on a Sunday morning, unannounced. Margaret Brodie is the state’s director of health care services.

“We typically don’t go in on a Sunday but we did in this instance, because anything that was wrong would show on a Sunday,” she says.

The inspectors talked to administrative staff, they pored through patient records and interviewed every single one of Prestige’s 98 residents. The investigation took about a week. And the results were alarming. Brodie says inspectors found 50 violations, eight in the most severe category: immediate jeopardy.

“We were surprised at the number,” she says. “It was extremely high.”

At the end of the inspection the department decided to take the unusual step of assuming temporary management of the facility. The inspection report is not yet public. In the past, Prestige has been cited for things like inadequate nursing care, failing to provide medication to patients, and for numerous problems with call lights and call light response times. Given the volume of complaints against Prestige the health department has investigated over the past two years, Brodie says the company had plenty of warning to correct problems before they escalated to the point of state management.

“What’s happened with Prestige is we write up what their issues are, they put in a corrective action plan, and they work it for a while, and then they kind of stop and then they go right back to where they were,” she says. “And I think the reason for that is that they bring in outside help to correct all the deficiencies and then the outside help leaves.”

Prestige Care is a for-profit corporation based in Washington state. They own 36 nursing homes across the western U.S. and 42 other senior facilities, like assisted living and independent living homes. They bought the Anchorage facility in 2009, after the state took over management from RainDance Healthcare Group following an inspection that likewise revealed potentially dangerous conditions.

Buffy Howard oversees ten nursing homes for Prestige Care in the west. She wouldn’t address whether the company was concerned about the number of complaints the facility has received over the last two years.

“There’s not a way to say that there were more complaints than normal but it’s something we continue to look at in quality improvement,” she says. “Each state is different in the amount of citations that are average. Each building is different on what is a normal amount of ‘tags’ so I can’t really comment on the specifics on that.”

Prestige has already corrected five of the eight violations the recertification inspection uncovered in the ‘immediate jeopardy’ category. The company has until June 4 to correct the other three, which Howard describes as “overarching” administrative problems. She is confident Prestige will meet the deadline.

“We do take these findings very seriously and the safety and welfare of our residents is our priority; it’s always our number one,” she says. “This is a big deal and we understand, and we’ve heard the state and we’re working together, very closely together, to fix and improve.”

Margaret Brodie, with the state, says one thing inspectors found is that Prestige didn’t have enough staff to adequately care for patients. In response, she says the company has added another nurse at night. Overall, she’s pleased with the progress Prestige is making. So is Noel Rea, the interim administrator hired by the state to oversee the facility.

“Prestige has marshaled a lot of resources in here in terms of training and education and that’s been impressive. And I’ve seen a very clear and visible response to the survey and the decision to put in interim management,” he says.

Prestige will be subject to state and federal fines and is paying for Rea’s salary.

Brodie and her staff want to ensure the changes Prestige puts in place to get its full license back won’t evaporate when corporate leaders return to Washington. They’re focusing on making sure local staff are adequately trained to maintain high quality care.

 

NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comment on a draft recovery plan for Cook Inlet beluga whales.

According to a release from NOAA, the plan will structure efforts to bring the whales back up to a healthy population size. Once there, the hope is to remove them from the federal endangered species list.

The plan includes a list of criteria that would have to be met to take the whales off the list and declare them a recovered species.

Jim Balsiger is the regional administrator for NOAA. He says the plan was made with the best available science.

It focuses on ten types of threats to the population and assesses the severity of each threat.

They include natural disasters, oil spills, mass strandings, noise pollution, and other stressors, both natural and human-caused.

Cook Inlet beluga whales have been on the endangered species list since 2008. Since 2011, the inlet has been designated a critical habitat for the species.

According to NOAA Fisheries, the population is estimated to be only 340 animals and there has been a steady decline in the species over the last decade.

One of the focal points in Anchorage’s recent mayoral election was crime, and wrangling with questions over whether or not it is on the rise in the municipality as a result of policy decisions.

Outgoing Mayor Dan Sullivan held a press conference Tuesday at City Hall to explain that statistics for the last year tell a more optimistic story than the one on the campaign trail.

Standing with Police Chief Mark Mew, Sullivan said that major crimes are down overall. Based on the Uniform Crime Reporting standards set by the FBI, incidents went from 14,476 to 14,136, a decline of about 2 percent.

But the numbers come with caveats.

Though serious crimes like homicide, sexual assaults, and theft nudged slightly down from 2013 to 2014, it was not in every category. For example, aggravated assaults were up by 14 percent, vehicle theft by 8 percent. What’s more, many of the categories hit lows relatively recently in 2010 and 2011, but have been persistently rising since.

Sullivan, however, prefers looking at the data in a 5-year average, which puts the frequency of violent crime below that of the previous mayor’s administration.

But critics believe it was investments in the police department during the Begich administration which caused the biggest declines, and that short staffing in the department has led to less follow up on low-priority complaints. And hence, less data points.

For his part, Sullivan has said the city could not afford a force that size, and that he does not believe there is a correlation between spending on APD and incidents of crime. Quality decisions on where to put officers makes a bigger difference than mere quantity, he told reporters.

Incoming mayor Ethan Berkowitz campaigned on expanding the size of the police force to stem what many perceive as a rise in crime across the city. Though firm plans on financing that proposal have not yet been released, police chief Mew says new officers coming out of the academies will be deployed according to recommendations made in the 2010 PERF report .