Search & Rescue

A Sitka man who spent half an hour in the ocean after his kayak capsized last weekend was rescued by a quick-thinking passerby who swam from shore and pulled him to safety. The good Samaritan was aware of the risks — she’s a five-year veteran of Sitka’s search and rescue team.

Roman Solar moved to Sitka in February, and with spring’s arrival he’s been getting a taste of the outdoors with kayaking. He went for the first time in early April, but on his second planned trip, his friends couldn’t go.

“We planned a group of people, but the other people were busy, and some people kind of changed their minds,” Solar said. “So I was kinda like, the only one left over.”

Around 5:30 in the afternoon on April 10, he set out on his first solo kayaking trip in Starrigavan Bay. He paddled three miles toward Nakwasina Sound. As the sun dipped, he turned around to go back.

As he was nearing the Starrigavan boat launch area on his return trip, the water began to get a little choppy. A wave hit his kayak, dumping Solar into the ocean and swamping his boat. He tried flipping the kayak sideways to empty it.

“I flip it sideways, and instead of water going out, even more water gets in. And now it’s like 100%,” Solar said. “The compartment where I sit is 100% full of water, and the compartment behind me is 100% full of water.”

Solar estimated he was about 2,000 feet from the shore. He swam for it.

“I tried swimming as hard as I could for maybe 15 or 20 minutes up to the shore, but then I look back and the kayak is right next to me, and nothing changed,” Solar said. “I’m like, where I was, you know. I just spent so much energy.”

He tried swimming the backstroke, too. Then he just held on the kayak and yelled for help. At one point a boat drove by in the distance. Solar yelled out to them, but they didn’t hear him over their engine.

Then, after about half an hour, Solar saw something moving toward him in the water.

“And I’m thinking this could be one of those buoys,” he said. “Or this could be someone’s head going towards me.”

It was Sheila Swanberg, and Solar was in luck — she’s a five year veteran of Sitka’s search and rescue team.

Swanberg was walking her dog Charlee on the bridge at the Starrigavan Estuary that evening when she heard a strange noise.

During the day, Swanberg works with birds at the Alaska Raptor Center. That night, she was at work trying to identify one.

“There was definitely a noise that I was like, ‘That’s a bird. But what bird is that? I was trying to listen very closely to it because I didn’t recognize it,” Swanberg said.

Nearby were a bunch of ducks, and Swanberg tried to identify which duck the weird noise was coming from.

“Then I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a person. That’s not a bird,’” Swanberg said. That’s when she saw the overturned kayak on the water.

She took off running, flagging down a car that was driving by. She told the driver to call 911, then she tied up her dog, set down her phone, and swam to Solar’s aid.

“I was just super, super impressed that, after all that time in the water, he was still calling, because I don’t know if I could have been calling after 30 minutes of just being in that cold,” Swanberg said.

She helped him swim back to shore with the kayak.

“I was really glad that that she was so brave,” Solar said. “She risked her life going [in] this very cold water and swimming such a long distance towards me.”

While Swanberg was responding, police were on their way, and the fire department was assembling a boat crew to rescue the kayaker. But Swanberg managed to get Solar to the shore fast enough that the fire department had to trade the boat for an ambulance. They cared for Solar and took him to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center, where he was treated for hypothermia.

Solar is on the mend now, and incredibly thankful to Swanberg for saving him that day. He says at first he was embarrassed about the accident, but now he’s hoping others can learn from his mistake.

“Maybe my mistake will actually save some other people from from doing the same or getting into very dangerous situation,” Solar said.

He says in the future he probably won’t kayak alone — he’ll go with a group, get better gear and maybe pick a warmer day, too.

“I just really liked that Roman was loud. That’s the best thing he could have done — keep making noise,” Swanberg said. “So I definitely want to make sure everybody knows that if you’re in the water like that, don’t give up calling for help.”

Fire Chief Craig Warren says kayakers should be aware of their skill level and the weather — it was gusty on April 10. He says Solar was lucky Swanberg was there.

“Sheila’s really the hero of the day though,” Warren said. “She just did what Sitkans do. We help each other out. She had no idea who this person was. And she didn’t think twice about it. She just went in to rescue this person. She didn’t have any of her response equipment. She was just being a good person.”

61-year-old Jeffrey Wright is a lifelong Sitkan and an avid outdoorsman.

“I’ve always been interested in the outdoors, and it kind of declined a bit when my father passed away in ’98. We did a lot in the outdoors, boating and stuff,” Wright told KCAW in an interview on April 4.

But a heart attack in 2018 moved hiking to the forefront of his life.

“And I realized at that point that I needed to make a change in my lifestyle,” he said. “I started watching what I ate, and then we started, you know, hiking parks all over the West Coast.”

He’s hiked every trail in Sitka, but Mt. Verstovia is his favorite. The trailhead is only a 15-minute walk from his home. He’s hiked it at least 14 times in the last year.

He always has a plan, and tells his girlfriend, Carrie, where he’s going. But he really likes solo hiking.

“There’s something about doing something by yourself,” Wright said. “You’re in the moment. You’re absolutely awake, absolutely alive.”

So far this winter, he’d hiked up Mt. Verstovia at least half a dozen times with one goal in mind: hiking the full trail in the snow.

But every time he tried, the conditions weren’t quite right to make it far beyond Picnic Rock, a granite outcropping situated just over 2,500 feet above the trailhead. It was either too windy or the snowpack was too soft, even with snowshoes, to traverse the saddle to the summit, which rises another 800 feet.

But on March 26, the snowpack was firm and the skies were clear.

“I knew pretty much right away that was the day,” Wright said. “I had snowshoes on, and I wasn’t sinking that far. And I was able to pretty much scamper up that slope to Picnic Rock. You know, compared to the previous seven times — much, much easier.”

He made it about two-thirds of the way from Picnic Rock to the next landing, and the snow got harder. He took off his snowshoes, replacing them with spikes. And then, just shy of 3,000 feet elevation, he took a photo, smiling into his cell phone’s camera with a panorama of peaks and a bluebird sky behind him.

“It was just absolutely beautiful up there,” Wright said. “It’s really indescribable.”

Climbing a bit higher and arriving at a narrow ridge that’s generally known as the sketchiest part of the summit route, Wright said he underestimated the snowpack. That’s when he slipped.

“I made a mistake. I shouldn’t I shouldn’t have crossed at that point,” he said. “Because once I fell, I was on the way. And there was no stopping.”

At first he was aware enough to reach for nearby branches to try to stop himself. But then he picked up speed.

“It was basically like a luge, you know, like an Olympic luge,” Wright said, describing the feeling he initially had while falling. “It was kind of like, you know, a swervy-type path. And I was going really, really fast.”

As he slid down the side of the mountain, he hit snow boulders that would explode and spray him in the face with powder at first.

“But then things changed, and everything went like a yellow, whitish — and then it was clear,” Wright said. “That’s what I was seeing. And I got very calm. There was no pain. I had no fear. Yeah, it was very peaceful. And then, the next thing I know, I’m reaching for my phone.”

Wright had been knocked unconscious for over half an hour. When he sat up, there was a pool of blood beneath his head. His GPS remained on, and he would later calculate that he’d fallen more than 1,100 feet over the course of a couple of minutes.

Likely in shock, he stood up, hoping he could hike out of the snowfield.

“I felt a pop in my right hip,” Wright said. “Now, it wasn’t painful. And it ultimately turned out to be a fractured pelvis. But I knew I couldn’t hike out of there. And that was very, very concerning to me.”

Wright’s phone somehow survived the fall. He was able to dial 911 and reach dispatchers in Sitka. About 45 minutes later, he guided an Air Station Sitka helicopter to his location.

“I was, like, waving furiously. And they saw me — of course they did — and they turned the nose of the [helicopter],” Wright said. “It was a very emotional moment. I knew I was going to live.”

Just as a Coast Guard rescuer was pulling Wright to safety in the helicopter, snow began hurtling down the side of the mountain — an avalanche that’s visible in the Coast Guard’s rescue video.

“Just an incredible, extraordinary act of bravery on his part,” Wright said of the rescue swimmer who brought him to safety. “You know, I’m very impressed that he would put his life out there for someone he didn’t even know, but I guess that’s what they do.”

Wright spent several days in the hospital. Now he’s out and about, on crutches and healing. In addition to the broken pelvis, he suffered an injury to his lower spine, a laceration on the back of his head requiring five stitches and a bruise “the size of a turkey dinner plate” on his hip.

“People are surprised that I’m alive. And I understand that,” Wright said. “But you know, I’ve survived things far greater in my life. I had a heart attack. And I rate that fall with this heart attack as far as severity. And there’s other things that have happened that I’ve overcome that were much, much greater.”

“And that helps me — not downplay what happened to me — but it puts it into perspective,” he said.

Wright says he’s thankful for the first responders from the Coast Guard and Sitka Mountain Rescue, and he won’t make the same mistake in the future. He says fellow hikers should do what they’re comfortable with and what they’re prepared for.

And while solo hiking isn’t for everyone, it’s still for him.

“This isn’t gonna change who I am. I learned from my mistakes. I’m still gonna go back to Yosemite, I’m still gonna go back to Zion, [and the] Grand Canyon,” Wright said.

“This isn’t going to break my spirit,” he said. “I’m going to continue to enjoy the outdoors and enjoy hikes and maintain my good health.”

The Juneau Police Department has a new page on its website dedicated to missing persons cases. 

The page has photos and descriptions of missing people in Juneau and details about when they were last seen. There are currently 15 people missing in Juneau. Cases span from 1985 to 2020.

All the missing people from last year were found dead. The last person to be found, Clifford White, was found this year on March 15. 

Juneau police used to have a missing persons page. JPD’s Public Safety Manager Erann Kalwara said the page went away when the city put all of the department’s websites onto a new system.

For the past few years, Facebook has been the main place where Juneau police have shared information about missing people in Juneau.

Kalwara said it’s harder to share all the necessary information there.

“We just don’t have enough room to give the details of all of them,” Kalwara said. “So we were talking about, should we highlight one of our older cases every month? How do we want to handle that? And we just decided it was best to readjust that webpage that we had.”

Kalwara said Facebook is still the place to get out more urgent information and to try to get the community’s help looking for someone. 

The police department is looking for feedback on its new page. 

“If family members or people who are familiar with missing persons cases want to provide feedback on ways that they think we can improve, we are absolutely open to that because this is our our first real attempt,” Kalwara said.

Kierstan Farnsworth’s brother went missing last year. She started a Facebook group dedicated to finding missing people in Juneau. She posted a link there to the new JPD missing persons page, and said she is hopeful that it’s a step in the right direction. 

Farnsworth hopes radio and phone alerts will happen next. 

But Kalwara said she doesn’t know if that will happen. Some other communities around the state use an alert system called Nixle to send alerts on missing people. But right now, Juneau police don’t plan to do that.

The U.S. Coast Guard medevaced a man from a fish processing boat north of Cold Bay Monday.

The 62-year-old man was hoisted from the 254-foot Phoenix after he experienced stroke-like symptoms, according to a USCG news release. Officials at the command center in Juneau received the initial medevac request shortly before 11 a.m. Monday morning.

The vessel was about 50 miles north of Cold Bay Monday afternoon when the Alex Haley sent its MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew to rescue the sick man. He was flown to Cold Bay, where he was put in the care of an ambulance crew.

Winds were gusting up to 40 mph and seas were at a height of 10 feet during the hoist, the statement said.

Master Chief Petty Officer Christopher Cole said this week has been busy for the cutter and its aircrew.

“They had two medevacs in four days and were essential in getting these individuals to a higher level of care,” he said in a statement.

USCG officials didn’t elaborate on the man’s condition.

It wasn’t the first time Kortnie Horazdovsky had gotten a call from the International Emergency Response Coordination Center. Her brother, Kaleb Westfall, had used his inReach satellite messenger to call for help when he got caught in a sudden storm while fishing last June. On Sunday, he pressed the SOS button again. Horazdovsky said he had also sent her a one-word message: “Crash.”

“I was like, ‘Oh, boy, here we go,’” she said. “He’s not on a boat this time. But, you know, I didn’t know what he was up to out there. I figured he was snowmachining.”

Westfall was at the top of the Iowithla River in the Muklung Hills, about 50 miles north of Dillingham. He had crashed after hitting a creek bed and seemed to be in rough shape.

“He was texting another friend from his inReach the whole time, just kind of one-word answers. Things like ‘serious injury,’” she said. “So it was a little concerning, because he was just one word answers. And it sounded pretty bad. He thought he had broken his femur.”

Horazdovsky got in contact with some of Westfall’s friends, and the rescue center contacted the state troopers at 4:45 p.m. on Sunday.

Troopers requested help from local rescue teams and sent for a helicopter from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage, more than 300 miles away.

But volunteers got there first.

Ian Fo was one of the first to arrive on the scene. He often snowmachines with Westfall. He got a call from Horazdovsky and the troopers Sunday afternoon.

“I automatically just started getting dressed and was in contact with the trooper and he was gonna contact some people and let me know what the plan was,” he said.

Fo rallied three friends, and they set out for the crash site on snowmachines. The group found Westfall conscious but badly bleeding from his leg and face when they reached him shortly before 8 p.m.

“We just kept him warm, we brought some blankets and we started a small fire and waited for the helicopter, it was going to be on its way,” he said.

They also contacted pilot Gabe Davis, a friend who was out flying in his Cessna 185, a small plane equipped with skis to land on snow. Davis said one of the snowmachiners, Mark Schwantes, told him Westfall had activated an SOS signal.

“He told me about where he was,” he said. “I know the trail. So I went over and tried to find his trail and I found it, and I saw him. He had damaged his snow machine. I mean, I could see blood on the snow and he was in pretty rough shape.”

Davis had to fly to Dillingham and unload his plane so it was light enough to get back to the scene.

“By stroke of luck, the guy I was with who’s a friend of mine who came up for vacation to see Alaska is a fireman and first responder,” he said. “When we got back to Dillingham we had some lumber, and so we grabbed some sheets of plywood and some two-by-fours to make a backboard and stuff. So we took off, went back and landed. By the time we got there the second time the snowmachiners were there.”

The group of snowmachiners told Davis a trooper helicopter was on its way from Anchorage. But three hours after the accident was first reported, it hadn’t arrived yet. Davis didn’t think they should wait.

“I said, ‘F*** that, we’re putting him in the airplane and getting him out of here,’” Davis said. “It was after eight o’clock at night.”

The volunteer rescuers made a makeshift plywood gurney and loaded Westfall into Davis’ plane. He was flown to Dillingham, then medevaced to Seattle.

Horazdavsky said her brother has multiple broken bones in his face, bruised lungs and a gash on his leg, but he’s in stable condition.

“He’s awake. He’s texting. He’s in good spirits. He told me he looks worse than he feels,” she laughed. “So that’s good. And, yeah, we’re just really thankful that it ended up this way.”

After Westfall was flown out, volunteers with Dillingham Search and Rescue arrived and brought his snowmachine back to Dillingham.

Fo said that over the several hours they were out there, it felt like everything was a matter of life and death — a few strokes of good fortune made all the difference.

“I think it was extremely important that the airplane was there,” Fo said. “[Davis] happened to be in the area, and he happened to be working on a project himself. So he had adequate supplies on the plane, including a first aid kit as well as a friend who is a firefighter EMT, so that was a huge help. The fact that he had supplies on his plane for us to make something to transport Kaleb about 300 yards to the plane.”

But luck only goes so far. Fo said the rescue wouldn’t have been possible without quick thinking from everyone involved and the competence of the region’s outdoor community.

“It makes me feel just really grateful and confident in the people in this community that have the skills and the wherewithal and just the decision-making at the time in the moment,” Fo said. “It gives me so much confidence in the people in the community.”

He said they came together with their skills and experience to save Westfall’s life.

Salvagers are attempting to contain a diesel fuel spill after an 83-foot tugboat ran aground in Neva Strait early Monday morning while towing an Alaska Marine Lines barge.

Four crew members were aboard the Western Mariner when it ran aground shortly before 3 a.m. Monday, about 15 miles northwest of Sitka. All were safely taken aboard a Good Samaritan vessel.

The Western Mariner was towing the Chichagof Provider, a 286-foot container barge. According to a situation report from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, the Western Mariner was heading southbound when a steering failure caused the barge to collide with the tug, pushing it onto the beach.

The grounding ruptured one of the tug’s fuel tanks, which can hold around 13,000 gallons of diesel fuel. The DEC says that a sheen was observed on the water covering an area of around 4 nautical miles, north to Salisbury Sound.

Efforts to offload the fuel and stop the spill are underway, and containment boom has been placed to reduce the spread. The Coast Guard and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation have set up a unified command, and the tug’s owner, Western Towboat, has retained Sitka-based salvagers Hanson Maritime.

The oil spill response vessel Neka Bay has been mobilized from Juneau, and the Southeast Alaska Petroleum Response Organization has been activated.

The barge has been anchored in Neva Strait outside of the main navigation channel.

The DEC says that the cause of the accident remains under investigation. The DEC is coordinating its response with the state Department of Fish & Game, which could potentially hold a seine opening for herring on March 22 in Hayward Strait, eight miles to the south of the grounded tug.