A purse seiner fishes for salmon in Southeast Alaska in 2010. The Doxa, a 56-foot commercial fishing boat registered for purse seining, sank in Kasaan Bay on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. (File photo by KFSK)
A 56-foot commercial fishing boat sank Friday near Prince of Wales Island in southern Southeast.
The vessel Doxa went down in the vicinity of Skowl Island in Kasaan Bay, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. All five people on board survived, with no injuries reported.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Melissa McKenzie said watchstanders in the Juneau sector received a mayday call early Friday morning. She said the boat sank in 600 feet of water, but the crew was able to abandon ship.
“Before it sank, they were able to get into a small skiff, and they floated in the small skiff for a while,” she said. “Then a good Samaritan vessel came by and recovered all five individuals.”
McKenzie said the crew waited in the good Samaritan vessel until the Ketchikan Coast Guard station’s 45-foot boat arrived, which took the crew and skiff in tow back to Ketchikan.
The DOXA is owned by Ketchikan-based DOXA Fisheries and is registered for purse seine fishing.
The Coast Guard says it will investigate the cause of the sinking.
View of a lake in the Misty Fjords National Monument on Aug. 1, 2021. (Molly Lubbers/KRBD)
Two people escaped serious injury Saturday afternoon after their floatplane crashed during takeoff in the Misty Fjords National Monument, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The crash site — about 40 miles southeast of Ketchikan — is in the same vicinity as Thursday’s fatal sightseeing crash that claimed six lives.
The Cessna 180 crashed Saturday near a public recreational cabin at Humpback Lake. The plane is privately owned and was not part of a charter tour, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Melissa McKenzie.
A distress call via satellite phone was received at 2:45 p.m. shortly after the crash, she said, adding that the party was well prepared for an emergency.
“They actually had a personal locator beacon that they were able to set off that basically led our responders to their exact location,” McKenzie told KRBD on Saturday evening. “And they also had a dry bag that had clothes and food that they took with them to the shore when they swam from the plane.”
An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Sitka arrived at the U.S. Forest Service cabin, and a rescuer hoisted the apparently uninjured people up. They were transferred to emergency personnel waiting in Ketchikan, she said.
It’s unclear what went wrong on takeoff. Weather conditions on scene were about 65 degrees with light winds. Visibility was about 10 miles with cloud ceilings at 5,000 feet.
Misty Fjords National Monument is a popular destination for flightseeing tours. Since 2015, at least 21 people — including six last Thursday — have been killed in crashes in the area.
View of Misty Fjords National Monument from a float plane on August 1. (Molly Lubbers/KRBD).
UPDATE Aug 8 at 10 a.m.
Authorities have released the names of the five cruise ship visitors and pilot killed in Thursday’s floatplane crash in Misty Fjords National Monument.
The Southeast Aviation pilot was identified as 64-year-old Rolf Lanzendorfer of Cle Elum, Washington. A LinkedIn profile says he’s worked as a commercial pilot for the Ketchikan-based company for more than six years.
The five Holland America Line cruise ship passengers killed were identified as:
Mark Henderson, 69, of Napa, Calif.
Jacquelyn Komplin, 60, of Napa, Calif.
Andrea McArthur, 55, of Woodstock, Georgia
Rachel McArthur, 20, of Woodstock, Georgia
Janet Kroll, 77, of Mount Prospect, Illinois
The bodies of the six people were recovered on Saturday afternoon, officials said in a statement. Alaska State Troopers and members of the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad arrived at the crash site at 1:45 p.m. Saturday, the state Department of Public Safety said in a statement. It says they will be transported to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Anchorage. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
Original story
Six people were killed in a flightseeing plane crash near Ketchikan Thursday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The de Havilland Beaver crashed eight miles northeast of Ketchikan, in the area of Misty Fjords National Monument. A pilot and five passengers aboard were on board.
In a statement, Holland America Line said the five passengers had come to Alaska on one of its cruise ships, the Nieuw Amsterdam, which stopped in Ketchikan on Thursday. The passengers were on a floatplane excursion with an independent tour operator, the cruise line said.
The Coast Guard got an emergency signal from the de Havilland Beaver around 11:20 a.m., said Petty Officer Eli Teller. The Coast Guard, Alaska State Troopers, U. S. Forest Service and Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad responded.
Teller said the distress signal came from about 1,400-feet elevation in the Misty Fjords area. Bad weather hampered the search at first, he said.
According to the Coast Guard, a helicopter spotted the plane’s wreckage on a ridgeline.
Rescuers reached the site just after 2:30 p.m. A Coast Guard helicopter lowered two rescuers, but they found no survivors, the Coast Guard said.
Holland America said the plane excursion was independently operated by Southeast Aviation and not sold by the cruise line. It said the passengers were on a seven-day Alaska cruise that left Seattle on Saturday.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims and with our guests and team members who are affected by this tragedy,” the cruise line said.
A mountain in Chugach State Park. Troopers did not immediately release a location for the crash. (Paxson Woelber/Creative Commons)
UPDATE, Wednesday, 10:20 a.m.: Troopers have identified the two adults killed in a small plane crash in Chugach State Park Monday as 23-year-old Anchorage resident Dakota Bauder and 27-year-old Hawaii resident McKenna Vierra.
According to the Alaska State Troopers, next of kin has been notified, and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
Original story:
Troopers say the two adult occupants of a plane that crashed in the Chugach Mountains north of Anchorage on Monday are dead.
According to an online report, troopers were notified of an overdue plane Monday around 8 p.m. and found the wreckage of a plane just before 11 p.m.
On a phone call Tuesday, Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel said the wreckage was found in a steep, mountainous area of Eagle River Valley in Chugach State Park.
The plane was a 1982 Cessna 172 P that took off from Merrill Field. It traveled up the Knik River Valley toward Knik Glacier and Lake George before heading south into Chugach State Park.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records and the tail number provided by troopers, the aircraft belongs to Angel Aviation, a flight school and aircraft rental company.
Recovery efforts were underway throughout the day Tuesday.
The 63-foot wooden seiner Mount Pavlof at the end of the 2020 salmon season. (Photo courtesy of Christopher Rood)
Four fishermen escaped with their lives last weekend after their seine vessel sank south of Ketchikan. Crew members from another fishing boat heard their distress call over the radio and arrived in time to rescue them.
Around 3 a.m. Sunday, Pete Feenstra says he and a three-person crew were readying themselves for a salmon opener south of Ketchikan.
Then he heard a mayday call from the radio. The Mount Pavlof, a fellow seiner, needed help.
“They were kind of booming in on the radio — (they) sounded a lot closer than where they had said that they were,” Feenstra said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Feenstra says he looked at the navigation system aboard his 56-foot seiner, the Noble Provider, and saw that the vessel in distress was less than a mile away. And he knew what he had to do.
“Pulled up anchor and we just flew over there, and by the time we got there the boat was pretty much gone. I saw the stern sticking out of the water and the skiff, and they had crawled in the skiff, but the skiff was still attached to the boat. So I sent my skiff over and they jumped in,” he said.
He says they tried to save the skiff as the 63-foot fishing boat went down. But as it sank 270 feet beneath the waves, the skiff went with it.
“And I just told my guys to cut the line — you don’t want to jeopardize anything else,” he said. “So we cut the line, and within seconds, it was gone.”
They returned to the Noble Provider, where a Ketchikan-based 45-foot Coast Guard response boat picked up the four shaken but otherwise unharmed crew members and returned them to shore.
It’s not yet clear what caused the Mount Pavlof to go down — its owner, Rick Rood, didn’t respond to interview requests on Wednesday. The Coast Guard is investigating, said Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow.
“Our goal is to promote the health and safety of mariners throughout the state, and we want to make sure that if there are any issues that need to be improved, that we can identify those and potentially make changes later on down the line for commercial fishing vessels,” he said.
But one thing is certain: it was a harrowing experience for all involved, Feenstra said three days after the incident
“I’ve seen boats on the rocks, I’ve been on a boat on a rock. I’ve been on a boat that caught fire and sank — my own boat. It’s a scary feeling no matter what side of it you’re on,” he said. “Obviously a lot more on the side of the person on the boat.”
As of Wednesday, there’s no word on whether crews will attempt to salvage the 72-year-old wooden vessel. State records show it has fished in Alaska since at least 1978.
A remote mining camp near Nome, Alaska, where a Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak aircrew rescued the survivor of a bear attack on July 16, 2021. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard)
A Coast Guard aircrew rescued a man Friday near Nome who said he was attacked by a bear.
Officials say the Kodiak-based helicopter crew was flying from Kotzebue to Nome when they saw an SOS sign on top of a shack near a remote mining camp. The crew circled back and spotted a man in front of the shack waving down the helicopter with both hands.
The man told the crew that a bear had harassed him for a week straight and attacked him a few days earlier. The crew noted the man had bruising on his chest and a leg injury. Officials say friends of the man reported him overdue when he hadn’t returned to Nome.
The man was transported to Nome, where he received medical attention.
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