Community

Fire was confined to a bedroom Tuesday morning in a Douglas Island apartment, but heavy smoke damaged the entire residence.   No one was home at the time.

Capital City Fire and Rescue Chief Rich Etheridge says crews arrived at the apartment complex owned by Tlingit and Haida Regional Housing Authority about 8:15 a.m. The fire was out by 9:45.

“When the crews got on scene they had heavy smoke pushing out of one of the open front doors and all of the windows were black,” Etheridge said. “Fire crews made a quick attack with hand lines into the residence, extinguished the fire in the back bedroom, and vented the smoke out then they opened the walls and the ceilings.”

Etheridge says the two-story apartment was one of eight units in a building, and other units were evacuated, but the fire did not spread beyond a back bedroom on the first floor.  He estimates $75,000 damage to the apartment and personal belongings, primarily due to smoke and heat damage. He says the unit will have to be completely gutted and remodeled.

Fire marshal Dan Jager says more interviews must be done before investigators can determine a cause of the fire.

“We haven’t ruled out if it was intentional or not. We don’t know if it was accidental.  We still have some interviews to do and some follow-up investigation stuff on site,” Jager says. “Really, the key thing is getting an interview with the tenants to try to find out what was happening prior to the discovery of the fire. That can help with the time line and everything.”

He says the apartment complex was built in the early 1980s. According to Jager, the property manager was working with the Red Cross to find the occupants temporary housing.  No names have been released.

 

 

Residents of Circle are cleaning up after an ice jam on the Yukon River caused extensive flooded in the community on Sunday.

Circle First Chief Jessica Boyle says the ice started breaking up around 3 a.m. Sunday, jammed downstream and sent water over a 25 foot seawall along the Yukon River.

“Came over the seawall, came up onto the roads,” Boyle said. “It just totally engulfed the whole downtown area of Circle.”

Boyle says about 15 homes were flooded, some getting as much as 3 feet of water.

“Most of the houses in the downtown area did get water in it and then a couple came off the foundations and floated into the woods behind where their house originally was,” she said.

Boyle says a community hall on higher ground, is providing housing for some while others have taken refuge with friends whose homes were not flooded. She says the community of about 80 people is a mess.

“There’s ice chunks on the roads, it’s pretty muddy, pretty messy, there’s a strong smell of diesel and gas in the downtown area,” Boyle said. “Our church got flooded, our clinic got flooded. It looks pretty rough.”

Circle’s electric generator is working and Boyle says the community has a 5,000 gallon holding tank that’s providing fresh water, but there’s concern the city well may be contaminated. She says community leaders are communicating with agencies, including the Tanana Chiefs Conference, the Red Cross for recovery assistance.

A flood warning has also been issued downstream on at Fort Yukon.

National Weather service hydrologist Ed Plumb says aerial surveillance indicates the village will likely experience high water.

“We’re expecting the break up front to push past Fort Yukon sometime later today and with all this water coming down the river,” Plumb said. “Low lying areas of Fort Yukon will likely see water go over the bank.”

Plumb says the big concern is that strong ice below Ft. Yukon will result in a jam.

Ice on the Yukon River at Eagle began to move early Friday morning resulting in the second worst flood on record since a devastating flood wiped out the community’s waterfront and a nearby Alaska Native village in 2009. Damage this year was minimal in comparison and residents are relieved.

Giant chunks of ice and silt-rich water overflowed the banks of the Yukon River at Eagle near dawn Friday morning, but by mid-day, the water had receded.

National Weather Service Hydrologist Scott Lindsey was on the scene to survey the damage.  He says this year’s is the second worst flood in recorded history.

“I’ve been coming here for 12 years,” he said, “and it’s by far the worst, other than 2009 that I have seen.”

Water bubbled from the ground, creating an eerie boiling sound along the floodplain.

“Yeah, this is pretty substantial!” called Claude Denver, the Response Manager for Alaska’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“Well, what we’re seeing here is large pans of ice that have been lifted by the high water and deposited on mission road here,” he explained.  “This is the only road between Eagle Village and the City of Eagle, so it’s a primary conduit and it’s really important that we can maintain it so it stays open.”

At least six homes, a number of wood and tool sheds, vehicles and heavy machinery were damaged by truck and trailer sized blocks of ice.  A handful of telephone poles were knocked over or snapped in half as well.

David Helmer works for Alaska Power and Telephone in Eagle.

“There’s some poles that we have to take care of, cut the wires down and keep it safe for the people in the area,” said Helmer.  “Other than that, it will take homeowners rebuilding their homes before we can reconnect to them.”

Helmer was helping Falcon Inn Bed and Breakfast owner Marlys House clean up after nearly three feet of mucky water filled the bottom floor of her business.  The B&B was moved off its foundation and heavily damaged in the largest flood on record back in 2009.

“We were sitting out there thinking it was gonna be a replay of 2009,” she smiled.  “But it came up and came up and we hauled everything out of the bedroom.  We got about three feet of water.  And Charlie’s working on the boiler and we’re just drying things out.”

The Falcon Inn stands at the river’s edge above a retaining wall along Eagle’s historic Front Street. Marlys’s husband, Charlie House has since raised the building by four feet.  Despite the high water this year, he was in good spirits.

“We had to open the doors to let the water out, but we’re gonna have it all going here in a few days, so it isn’t anything like last time,” he said with a sigh of relief.

No personal injuries have been reported in either the City of Eagle or Eagle Village, 12 miles down the road.  The village did report high water, but no serious damage. Emergency Response Manager Claude Denver says it’s unlikely the state will provide individual financial disaster assistance to those affected because damage is not widespread.

CBJ Assemblymembers voted last week to essentially break a contract for a vendor’s services at Bartlett Regional Hospital.

In an uncommon move, the Assembly’s Finance Committee on May 8th considered adding a capital improvement project and operating appropriations item of about $8.5 million total to the upcoming budget. And then, Finance Committee members promptly voted to reject those appropriations for the city-owned hospital.

The Assembly earlier had never considered funding for those items even though the contract with Cerner corporation was already signed.

“We just know that that shouldn’t have happened. So, that’s why we took the corrective action,” said Finance Committee Chair Karen Crane. The contract was an unscheduled or an unfunded item on an earlier capital improvement projects list, but Crane said that it did not go through the regular CIP process.

Because the hospital has to follow the same appropriation rules as everybody in the Assembly. That money has to be appropriated. It has not been appropriated.”

Bartlett Regional Hospital Chief Executive Officer Chris Harff said the contract was signed before Tennessee-based Quorum Health Resources left as managers of the facility.

“The maintenence costs of that contract is something that we didn’t really feel comfortable,” said Harff.

(The Hospital Board voted to do their own hiring of senior leadership in December 2011, Harff’s first day on the job was in August 2012, and the hospital board voted to officially terminate Quorum’s management contract in October 2012.)

The contract with Cerner in Kansas City, Missouri was for a new electronic medical records or EMR accounting system for Bartlett. It would’ve cost the CBJ about $7.37 million in total capital improvement project expenditures, and required an ongoing maintenance fee of $1.155 million each year.

Harff said they’re already under pressure with various rising or additional costs taking a bigger piece out of $83 million in net revenues. She said the hospital’s net income or profit has been as high as $9 million. But, now, net income is projected to be down to $3.3 million.

In the industry, for hospitals to maintain, they suggest about a 3- to 5-percent profit margin. We kind of picked a number in the middle. A budget is as good as a budget, and we all know things can happen.”

Essentially, the hospital cannot afford Cerner’s million-plus annual maintenence fee for the new EMR.

Some money, although Harff could not say how much, was paid to Cerner at signing of the contract. So far, the contract has not been implemented. Harff said the next step is negotiating with Cerner for a potential resolution.

The city, like it does in every contract, has clauses that, you know, ‘this has to be approved,’ there is processes. So, we are looking to that clause to be honest to the vendor, saying ‘we don’t know if we can really afford this,’ which leaves us other options.”

Crane said the issue was not sent onto the full Assembly for consideration, so she considers the Finance Committee’s vote to be the final word on the issue.

They are now going to have to look and see if they can’t find something less expensive.”

Hospitals and other health care providers are mandated to shift to EMR, which is essentially the modern digital version of the old paper chart. Harff said they could still qualify for federal incentives and avoid being penalized, such as with potential deductions in Medicare reimbursement, if they act quickly to get a system up and running.

We’re not in danger of losing any money. But we want to make sure that we can pay for the solution we have and be financially viable.

Bartlett does have an alternative EMR system that will need significant updating to bring online, but Harff said it should come at a much lower expense than the Cerner contract.

KTOO has contacted Cerner officials in Missouri and this story will be updated if they respond with any substantial comment.

Salt Lake City Police Assistant Bureau Commander Bryce Johnson has been selected to head the Juneau Police Department.

City Manager Kim Kiefer announced Johnson’s hire Wednesday afternoon.  He was one of three finalists for the job, who visited Juneau last month.  They went through what’s known as an assessment center process, where they encountered situations like those they will deal with as chief.  They were rated by criminal justice and public safety officials as well as the city manager.

Kiefer says the raters felt confident Johnson had the necessary experience and attributes to lead the 90-person department.   She says he also was favored by Juneau Police Department staff.

Kiefer says Johnson was offered the position several weeks ago, but the announcement could not be made until background checks were complete.

Johnson has worked his way through the ranks at Salt Lake PD over the last 20 years, and says he is looking forward to the challenge of being a police chief in what he calls a “neat department.”

He says JPD is intriguing because of Juneau’s isolation.

“For a department that size, it has so many different things going on,  from its own tactical SWAT team, its own explosive ordinance unit, its own dispatch center.  Even though it’s smaller it still has all the same functions and that’s really one of the things that drew me to Juneau, because you got functions that other departments of that size just don’t have,” he said in a telephone interview with KTOO on Wednesday.

In addition to his police work, Johnson has been a Reserve Intelligence Specialist for the U. S. Naval Reserve, and taught criminal justice and law enforcement at Salt Lake City high schools.  Johnson earned a bachelors’ degree in political science from the University of Utah and a Masters of Public Administration from Brigham Young University.

Johnson will be in Juneau next week to work with Chief Greg Browning, who is retiring at the end of the month. Johnson takes over the post on June 3^rd.

The 57-year-old Browning came to the department 13 years ago from Amarillo, Texas, where he’d been on the police force for more than 20 years.  He started in Juneau as assistant chief and took over as chief in 2006.  Browning has said Juneau has been the “highlight of his career.”

JPD Assistant Chief Page Decker is also retiring at the end of the month.

Forty-one  peace officers have already died in the line of duty in the United States, including two in Alaska.

Peace officers across the country  celebrated their Memorial Day on Wednesday.  In Juneau, police officers gathered at noon at Evergreen Cemetery to remember fallen officers Richard Adair and Jimmy Kennedy, who died by gunfire in 1979 while responding to a call just up the hill from the cemetery.  The suspect committed suicide.

Adair is buried at Evergreen Cemetery and Juneau public safety officers traditionally lay a wreath at the grave.

Lt. Kris Sell said the wreath is a symbol of the sacrifice of Adair, Kennedy, and other fallen officers.

“We stand here today at the equivalent of the Juneau Police Officer Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. That’s a place in (Washington) D.C. that is used to honor soldiers who have lost their lives,” Sell said. “We treat this sacred and honored place of Adair’s final resting place  as our place to come and give our thanks for those sacrifices.”

The Memorial Day commemoration continued last evening at JPD, where State Trooper Lt. Steve Hall remembered Village Public Safety Officer Thomas Madole and Alaska State Trooper Tage Toll, who died in separate incidents in March.

Madole was shot and killed on March 7^th in Manokotak, about 25 miles southwest of Dillingham.  Hall says it was clear Madole had established a close connection to the people of the Yup’ik Eskimo village of about 450.

“It’s a hard thing to do to move into a rural community like that and be that accepted,” Hall said.  “You really have to be an exceptional individual to have that kind of relationship that quickly with the close knit community you’re going into. So his service is evident in that by itself.”

Toll was the father of small children who had been a state trooper for about 10 years.  He died March 30^th in a helicopter crash, after rescuing a stranded snowmobiler.

“Tage was a real dedicated guy.  He moved around the state a fair bit, worked in different positions so he was known by lots and lots of members of the department,” Hall said.

President Barack Obama issued a proclamation establishing May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day. Gov. Sean Parnell has declared May 10 through 17 as Law Enforcement Memorial Week in Alaska.