Government

The City of Hoonah declared a local emergency this week following heavy snowstorms in the region. 

On Tuesday night, the Hoonah City Council unanimously approved a disaster declaration, which opens the door for the Southeast community to request aid from the state. Gov. Mike Dunleavy approved the declaration Thursday morning. 

Hoonah’s City Administrator, Dennis Gray Jr., says the small community on Chichagof Island has been overwhelmed with the snow and needs assistance. As of yesterday morning, the National Weather Service in Juneau recorded that Hoonah had received at least three feet of snow since late December. 

“We’re facing the same issues that Juneau is,” he said. “We had three boats sink in our harbor. We have two that are still sunk and causing damage to the floats.”

Hoonah’s declaration comes around the same time that city and tribal leaders in Juneau announced a joint disaster declaration after back-to-back snowstorms dumped more than four feet of snow on Juneau.

Gray said Hoonah city staff and residents are struggling to keep up with snow removal on buildings, boats and roads. He said multiple porches and trailers have collapsed or been damaged due to the increasingly heavy snowpack. 

“We had eight men on top of our wastewater plant shoveling off snow to make sure it didn’t collapse,” he said. “It’s just a big mess.”

Gray said the city is requesting assistance from the state primarily to help recover the two large sunken vessels that local equipment is unable to remove from the harbor. 

Both Hoonah and the capital city are bracing for an atmospheric river expected to hit Southeast on Thursday evening that will bring heavy rain and potential flooding. 

Future assessments of U.S. landslide hazards could include the study of risks posed by atmospheric rivers, which caused extreme precipitation that was linked to recent deadly slides in Southeast Alaska.

The added focus on atmospheric rivers is one of the main updates in a bill that would reauthorize the National Landslide Preparedness Act. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, passed the U.S. Senate on Monday and is now to be considered by the U.S. House.

The initial National Landslide Preparedness Act was signed into law five years ago. That bill broadened the National Landslide Hazards Program led by the U.S. Geological Survey and established a multiagency system to coordinate landslide preparedness and response.

Atmospheric rivers are long and transitory bands of moisture and heat, likened to rivers in the sky. They carry that moisture northward from more southern latitudes, and they can dump vast amounts of rain for several hours or even days.

“You can very rapidly saturate soils in the right conditions,” said Rick Thoman, a scientist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

When such large amounts of warm southern moisture hit the steep mountainous regions of Southeast Alaska, they can cause sudden downhill flows, Thoman said.

“It’s really that intense amount of rain that atmospheric rivers deliver that’s the link to landslides,” he said.

Numerous landslides in the United States have been triggered by atmospheric rivers’ extreme precipitation. Those events include the 2023 slide in Wrangell that killed six people, the 2020 slide in Haines that killed two people and the 2015 slide in Sitka that killed three people.

The National Landslide Preparedness Act Reauthorization Act passed the Senate by unanimous consent. It is co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, whose state was the site of the 2014 Oso landslide that killed 43 people.

Extreme precipitation events from atmospheric rivers are tied to shallow-seated landslides such as the deadly events that struck Southeast Alaska in recent years. Other types of Alaska landslides are caused by more deep-seated slope failures triggered by glacial retreat, permafrost thaw or a combination of those forces.

Also passed on Monday by unanimous consent in the Senate was another Murkowski-sponsored and disaster-focused bill, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program Reauthorization Act. That bill, co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, supports the federal program that maintains earthquake measurement resources and equipment and equipment and early warning systems.

“Earthquakes and landslides are active threats that have taken lives and damaged property across Alaska in recent years,” Murkowski said in a statement issued Tuesday. “Our passage of these bills puts us on track to ensure that federal agencies have the resources they need to help keep communities safe both back home and around the country. I thank my colleagues for working cooperatively to pass these measures and urge the House to take them up and send them to the President as soon as possible.”

The commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Family and Community Services has departed that position to take a job with the Trump administration.

Kim Kovol has accepted a job with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced last week. Her last day working for the state was on Friday, and Tracy Dompeling, the department’s deputy commissioner, assumed the role of acting commissioner, the statement said.

The department’s primary divisions are the Division of Juvenile Justice, the Alaska Psychiatric Institute, the Alaska Pioneer Homes and the Office of Children’s Services.

Kovol was the first commissioner of the Department of Family and Community Services, which was created in 2022. Up to then, its functions were part of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Through an executive order, Dunleavy split that department into two: the Department of Health and the Department of Family and Community Services.

In his statement, Dunleavy said Kovol was a “strong and dedicated leader” for the redesigned department. “As the first Commissioner of DFCS, she built a foundation focused on service, accountability, and support for Alaska’s most vulnerable populations. I thank her for her service and wish her every success in this next role,” he said.

Kovol said she was honored to have served in that role. “I am incredibly grateful to the staff, partners, and communities who have supported our work. Together, we have made meaningful progress for Alaska families, youth, and elders, and I will always be proud of what we have accomplished,” she said in the statement.

Kovol is the second Alaska department head to leave state service to join the Trump administration. Almost a year ago, Emma Pokon left her position as commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation to become the Pacific Northwest regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dunleavy in May chose Randy Bates to be the department’s new commissioner. Bates was formerly director of DEC’s Division of Water.

With Kovol’s departure, there are now five state departments with leaders who currently lack legislative approval.

In addition to Bates, Dunleavy has named commissioner-designees for the Department of Law and the Department of Natural Resources. Dunleavy in August named Stephen Cox, a former U.S. attorney in Texas, as Alaska’s attorney general, replacing Treg Taylor, a Republican who is running for governor.

Dunleavy also named John Crowther, a DNR veteran, as his choice to be permanent commissioner. Crowther became acting commissioner after John Boyle resigned from the position in October.

Bates, Cox and Crowther are subject to legislative confirmation after lawmakers convene later this month for their 2026 session.

The state Department of Revenue is currently being led by an acting commissioner, Janelle Earls, who assumed the job in August after Adam Crum left the commissioner post. Crum is another Republican candidate for governor.

Dunleavy has not yet named his choices for the commissioner posts at the Department of Revenue or the Department of Family and Community Services, said Jeff Turner, the governor’s spokesperson. Earls and Dompeling are currently acting commissioners and it is not clear whether the governor will name commissioner-designees for those positions, he said.

Dunleavy is in the last year of his second term. He is term limited and may not run for reelection.

The City and Borough of Juneau issued an avalanche alert via text Monday afternoon, telling residents in the Mount Juneau slide path to be prepared.

It’s the second avalanche alert issued in the last week, as record-breaking snow blankets the community and the mountains above it.  

Ryan O’Shaughnessy, Juneau’s emergency programs manager, said the alert is not an evacuation advisory. 

“It’s reminding folks to be prepared to evacuate, and that conditions can change rapidly,” he said. 

He said that the historic 4-foot snowpack appeared to stabilize over the weekend. But on Monday the avalanche risk rose again due to a change in the weather. 

“With new snowfall today, warming temperatures and high winds in the forecast, avalanche danger is increasing,” he said.

The alert covers residents in the Behrends and White neighborhoods, as well as Thane Road. The road remains open, but drivers are reminded not to stop in the avalanche zone. 

In the event of an avalanche evacuation, O’Shaugnessy said Centennial Hall will be the emergency shelter and the American Red Cross has resources staged there now. He also said the Alaska Department of Transportation is prepared to clear evacuation routes. 

He said the avalanches that DOT triggered above Thane Road on Gastineau Ridge last week weren’t very large, and that tells him two things: the snowpack is a bit more stubborn than anticipated, and there is still a lot of snow up there.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski struck a note of skepticism in her reaction to Saturday’s military operation ousting Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro.

“While I am hopeful that this morning’s actions have made the world a safer place,” Murkowski wrote in a social media post Saturday, “the manner in which the United States conducts military operations, as well as the authority under which these operations take place, is important.”

She said the Trump administration hasn’t given Congress enough information to evaluate the legal basis for it.

Murkowski is among a handful of Republicans in Congress to raise questions or doubts about the operation. In November, she was one of only two GOP senators who voted to support a measure that would have blocked military action in Venezuela without the approval of Congress.

Sen. Dan Sullivan’s response was more in line with the majority of congressional Republicans. He issued a statement praising President Trump and commending the military for its skill and courage. Sullivan’s post did not directly address Trump’s pronouncement that the U.S. would temporarily “run” Venezuela, but it did reference “painful and difficult lessons learned” from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. That invasion rid a country of its dictator but enmeshed the United States in an eight-year war.

Alaska Congressman Nick Begich also praised Saturday’s military action in Caracas, calling it a “flawless execution of American power and capability.”

The Alaska Earthquake Center is in negotiations with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to restore funding for nine seismic stations.

In late September, NOAA advised the center it would no longer fund its real-time seismic data flow to the National Tsunami Warning Center, a service the federal organization had been funding for decades.

In a statement in mid-December, a NOAA spokesperson said the federal government was working on a “potential funding mechanism” to maintain the stations. A spokesperson for the Alaska Earthquake Center said they expect to have the funding by mid-January.

Dave Snider, tsunami warning coordinator at the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, said scientists can make better decisions faster with more seismic stations. He said the speed of earthquake detection is key to tsunami detection.

“We are built for speed, so we have to do that part very quickly,” he said. “Our aim is to get that first message out within five minutes of detecting the earthquake.”

Several of the stations listed to go dark are in the Aleutians, a region where large earthquakes are very common as the Pacific plate slides beneath the North American plate.

Snider said the Aleutian seismic stations matter most for nearby coastal communities, where every minute counts when detecting a tsunami.

“For a really strong nearby quake, if there’s one that’s happening right along your coastline, it could be immediate,” said Snider.

He said how quickly a tsunami could hit a community depends on the earthquake’s strength, depth and exact location.

Snider said losing the nine seismic stations in the Aleutians could delay earthquake detection by up to a minute.

“Earthquake signals travel out and away from that epicenter really quickly,” he said. “So even if there’s, you know, one sensor is out in your community, there’s going to be another one behind it and another one behind that.”

One of the nine seismic stations at risk of shutting down is in Unalaska, a city of more than 4,000 people, that sits right along the coast, facing the Bering Sea.

Ben Knowles, Unalaska’s fire chief and director of emergency services, said funding is always an issue.

“We want good funding for these agencies that help communities like ours with early warning and early detection that’s extremely important for us,” he said.

When a large earthquake strikes near the Aleutian region, Knowles said, there’s a whole process that follows.

“The National Tsunami Warning Center has an entire center of people that are dedicated to monitoring these things,” he said. “We also partner with places like the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the Alaska Earthquake Center, the National Weather Service, and so they all work hand in hand.”

If there is a tsunami threat, Knowles said the city alerts residents through the Nixle system, social media and if necessary, sound sirens. KUCB also broadcasts emergency information on 89.7 FM and KUCB.org.

Alerts are also notified on the FEMA app, at tsunami.gov and through NOAA weather radio.

Whether the Aleutians seismic stations stay on or not, Snider is confident his team can keep communities safe. But the more seismic stations, the merrier.

“There’s always room for more data,” he said. “And any scientist would never disagree with that.”

In the meantime, the University of Alaska Fairbanks is temporarily funding the stations, so that earthquakes in the island region are detected quickly.