Search & Rescue

Coast Guard crews from Juneau and Sitka responded to a pleasure craft adrift near Hoonah last night (Wednesday) – the second such incident in Southeast waters this week.

About 8:20 p.m. two men aboard the 24-foot Tlingit Boy II reported on VHF radio that they were disabled near Whitestone Harbor in 40 mile per hour winds and eight-foot seas.

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Sitka and a 45-foot medium response boat from Juneau launched to assist the vessel. Before the response boat could get on scene, the Good Samaritan vessel Vagabond Queen arrived and began towing the Tlingit Boy II back to Hoonah. The Coast Guard helicopter crew remained in the area to assist.

Lieutenant Junior Grade James Dooley says Wednesday’s incident followed the rescue Monday of a man aboard a 22-foot pleasure boat disabled near Kake.

“Just really want to urge all mariners to pay attention to the weather, use really sound judgment before venturing out into this kind of stuff,” Dooley says. “Because, when something goes wrong it can start to go wrong in a hurry.”

Dooley says neither of the men aboard the Tlingit Boy II were injured. The vessel was safely towed by the Vagabond Queen back to Hoonah, about 15 miles north of where it became disabled.

A Coast Guard helicopter this morning (Tuesday) pulled a Wrangell man from his boat this morning as it was sinking.

Forty-seven-year-old Lester Kuntz was rescued in Keku Strait, just south of Conclusion Island.

The Coast Guard launched an unsuccessful search for him yesterday after he was reported missing. Spokeswoman Charley Hengen says Kuntz had been traveling from Kake to Wrangell, when the wind and seas kicked up. She says he had filed a float plan with his family before he left Kake.

Hengen says Kuntz motored into a safe area to wait out the storm, but when the tide went out a hole was punched in his 22-foot Bayliner.

He reportedly had trouble communicating until this morning when he left the area and was able to contact a nearby vessel that relayed a message to the Coast Guard helicopter, which was already searching for him.

She says the helicopter literally hoisted Kuntz from his boat, The Keeper, as it was sinking beneath him.

Kuntz has been flown to Wrangell where he is reportedly in good condition.

The body of a Juneau woman was found in a ditch Friday morning near the intersection of Valley Boulevard and Mendenhall Loop Road.

Juneau police have identified her as 48-year-old Marilyn Williams, born on February 26, 1963.

A witness on his way to a bus stop saw the body and called police. Capital City Fire and Rescue also responded. A medical team pronounced her dead at the scene, according to police spokeswoman Cindee Brown-Mills.

“It doesn’t appear to be foul play at this point,” Brown-Mills said. “They’ve requested an autopsy.”

The body will be sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for the autopsy.

During the investigation, police closed off Valley Boulevard at Diane Street and Kiowa Drive for about an hour, as well as the outbound lane of Loop Road between Floyd Dryden Middle School and Valley.

Brown-Mills said Williams was found face down in the ditch just before Kiowa. She was dressed in a jacket, jeans, shoes and a hat.

Williams lived close by. Her family members have been notified.

The case remains under investigation.

The wreckage of a single-engine plane that crashed July 24th on Douglas Island rests in a Juneau hangar. A National Transportation Safety Board crew is piecing the aircraft together for the investigation into the accident that killed Charles Luck and his wife Liping Tang-Luck.

The NTSB preliminary report indicates the plane crashed very shortly after Luck communicated with the Juneau tower. So soon, says investigator Clint Johnson, that in interviews the air traffic specialist used the term “moments.”

“Mr. Luck called in, indicated that he was about 10 miles to the southeast, landing Juneau, and right after that, we’re not sure exactly how long it was, just moments after that, they received a very faint ELT signal,” Johnson says.

That Emergency Locator Transmitter signal led searchers to an aircraft debris field, at about the 31-hundred foot level of Mount Ben Stewart, near the Eaglecrest Ski Area. The fuselage and bodies were not found until the following day. It was six days before skies cleared enough to recover the bodies.

Johnson has been conducting interviews and expects to review Juneau Air Traffic Control Tower tapes later this week. He’s also awaiting autopsy results.

“What we’re doing is gathering information on the pilot, as far as past history, experience level,” Johnson says. “Obviously there was an autopsy and toxicology screen, which is very, very standard for anybody who’s killed in an airplane accident.”

Charles Luck was a physician assistant at the SEARHC health care clinic in Hoonah. According to Johnson, Luck had not filed a flight plan for his early morning trip to Juneau.

Johnson says the Cessna was being operated on visual flight rules. While weather conditions at the accident site aren’t known, the Juneau airport tower reported marginal conditions that morning.

Johnson says local pilots tell him that when the cloud ceiling is low in Juneau, it’s often even lower over the area where the plane crashed.

The man found dead Tuesday from an apparent fall on the Herbert Glacier Trail was a nursing supervisor at Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Forty-two year old James “Steven” Reese had worked at the hospital about ten years. Bartlett Spokesman Jim Strader says he was popular with both patients and staff, and the whole hospital is shaken by his death.

“They’re talking today about his sense of humor, his sense of caring, his sense of giving,” Strader said. “A lot of people consider Steve to be so typical of the best quality in nurses, a person who thought more about other people than he did himself.”

Strader says Reese had two children.

He helped out with the annual Project Homeless Connect event put on by the Juneau Economic Development Council, and was a member of the Juneau Human Rights Commission from 2005 to 2007.

Reese was reported missing at about 1:30 Tuesday morning when he failed to show up for work. Juneau Police found his car at the Herbert Glacier trailhead and notified Alaska State Troopers. Searchers from Juneau Mountain Rescue and SEADOGS found his body eight hours later in the Herbert River, below the glacier.

The body is being sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for an autopsy.

Reese is the second person to die on the Herbert Glacier Trail this summer. In June, 30-year-old Adam Webb of New York was found dead, also from an apparent fall.

The search continues today for a missing plane that crashed in the mountains near Eaglecrest Ski Area on Douglas Island.

The U.S. Coast Guard says a debris field was found yesterday evening, including an engine and propeller, at the base of a 50-foot cliff after searchers traced an emergency locater transmitter signal.

Low clouds, wind, and poor visibility hampered yesterday’s search for the single engine Cessna – reportedly flying from Hoonah to Juneau. Coast Guard spokesman David Mosely says the plane was coming from Anchorage and had stopped in Hoonah. He says the pilot failed to make a scheduled check-in with Juneau flight services and was reported missing at 6:43 a.m.

“They had done a call in with the air services, the flight service there in Juneau, at about 10 miles out and then did not do their scheduled next check in before landing there in Juneau,” Mosely said.

The EPIRB signal took a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter low over the Mount Ben Stewart and Cropley Lake area yesterday afternoon, but wind and low clouds forced the chopper crew to abandon the air search before they could get an exact location.

Meanwhile, Alaska State Troopers coordinated the ground search and called in Juneau Mountain Rescue. JMR set up an incident command at the Eaglecrest Lodge and sent a team into the woods west of the ski area. Federal Aviation Administration officials and the Civil Air Patrol also were involved in the search. Eaglecrest employees and Alaska Zipline Adventures provided support at base camp.

Trooper Sargent Tim Birt said it was a “moment by moment operation,” with heavy rain and wind moving through the area.

“The aircraft is described as a yellow, white and brown for the colors, Birt said. “The tail number is N as in November, 73045, and it’s a small single engineer aircraft.”

Birt does not know if any passengers were on board.

According to the FAA Registry for Aircraft N-Number, the plane is a Cessna 140, registered to Darrel A. Strachan and Dianna L. Strachan, of San Jose, California.

Coast Guard spokesman Mosely said the plane was based in Anchorage.