Search & Rescue

The U.S. Coast Guard is seeking help from the public in its investigation of a Dutch Harbor-based fishing vessel that was lost off the Alaska Peninsula along with five crew members.

The F/V Scandies Rose sank on New Year’s Eve about 170 miles west of Kodiak Island while en route to fish for Pacific cod. Two fishermen were rescued wearing gumby survival suits in a life raft. The other five crew members and their 130-foot crab boat were never found.

Coast Guard investigators would appreciate anyone with information about the vessel or conditions around the time the ship was lost to come forward, according to Petty Officer Janessa Warschkow.

“Whether that is former sailing experience on board the Scandies Rose, experience with the crew of the Scandies Rose, if you know the weather between Chiniak and Kodiak on December 31 of 2019,” she said. “Any information is helpful for the ongoing investigation.”

Warschkow said the intent of crowdsourcing information from the public is to gather facts to determine what happened, why it happened and identify any corrective measures which can be taken to prevent future tragedies.

“In this day and age, with social media being a very big platform to use for information, we do use social media and this type of thing to try and gather information from the public,” Warschkow said.

The Coast Guard has released very little information about its findings so far. And according to Warschkow, the investigation could take months or even more than a year to conclude. Eventually, she said, the agency will release its findings.

Anyone who has information on the sinking of the Scandies Rose last New Year’s Eve is asked to email ScandiesRoseMBI@uscg.mil.

Correction: A photo caption has been updated to reflect the correct date that the Scandies Rose sank. It was December 31. 

A fisherman is safe after his vessel ran aground and later burned over the weekend off Sitka. The 47-foot Saami went hard aground on Six-Mile Rock in Sitka Sound on Saturday night.

The skipper of the Saami, Cale LaDuke, was the only person on board at the time of the incident. He put out a distress call over VHF radio sometime after 10 p.m. on Aug. 29. An Air Station Sitka helicopter responded and hoisted LaDuke from the rock at 10:52 P.M.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Melissa McKenzie credits LaDuke with making all the right moves after the Saami got into trouble. She says LaDuke went ashore on Six-Mile Rock with emergency gear in a dry bag. In addition to his VHF radio, he had a phone, flares and headlamp — all of which contributed to his speedy rescue.

McKenzie reports that the Saami caught fire sometime Sunday and was seriously damaged. She says that, weather permitting, a salvage company will inspect the wreck on Tuesday to determine whether it can be saved.

The live-in staff at Capital City Fire/Rescue’s Station 2 in downtown Douglas are all women and some of them are the newest first responders in Juneau.

This is not the first time that the fire station has been fully staffed by women, but it’s reflective of a trend over the past decade.

Meg Thordarson has been with the fire department for 11 years. She noted changes in the industry over time.

“Definitely more women involved in the department from medics to fire personnel to being on special teams,” she said in an interview on Juneau Afternoon. “We’re accepted a lot better, not just in Juneau Fire Department but statewide. The numbers of women are growing.”

The three other women of Station 2 — Jannelle Pine, Cat Pearson, and Sadie Inman — are recent graduates of the city’s firefighter academy.

Their class graduated in May and it was unusual in two ways: they were mostly women and they graduated during a pandemic.

“I was told that the other academies usually had a couple girls sprinkled in and this academy was the first one that was, by the end of it, the majority of it was women,” said Inman.

Classes began in early January and continued until March, but when COVID-19 came to Alaska some decisions had to be made.

“We continued because it was considered emergency work and it’s important to have first responders be able to get trained and get certified so that way in a pandemic like this we can be useful and help out the community,” said Pine.

The cadets had to make a few adjustments and be patient with delays in order to take their final exams and complete the course. Although it was a few weeks later than originally planned, the graduates earned firefighter and hazmat state certifications and are now eligible to be hired as career staff.

“For the department one kind of scary thing is if somebody in the department gets sick that puts a whole shift down at a station, when we don’t have a whole lot of first responders to begin with,” said Pearson, who noted that it doesn’t take much in a small community like Juneau for the support system to break down.

“Just because we’re in a pandemic doesn’t mean that the other medical calls are stopping,” she said. “We really need to try and do our best to keep our resources available for that.”

It is important to Pearson and her fellow first responders that everyone take as many precautions as they possibly can.

Listen to the full interview:

The wrong fuel caused an Alaska Division of Forestry plane to plummet into freezing water in May, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Three firefighters and one pilot took off from the Aniak runway on May 28. They were first heading to McGrath, and then to Soldotna to start fighting fires, but they didn’t make it.

Instead, they crash-landed in a pond right off the runway. All four survived. Three had injuries that required surgery, including the pilot, Mark Jordan.

The NTSB report says that a vendor tasked with filling up the plane was unclear which kind of fuel to use for the type of airplane and filled it up with the wrong kind. The Forestry airplane is an Aero Commander 500 Shrike, which only uses a certain type of fuel.

The fuel vendor asked the pilot if he wanted “prist with your jet.” Prist is a type of chemical that prevents fuel from gelling in planes that fly higher altitudes. And “jet” refers to Jet A fuel. The pilot said no. The fuel vendor filled it up with Jet A fuel, and wrote that down on a receipt that he then handed the pilot, who signed it.

Jordan said that as he took off, he felt “mechanical turbulence” and the aircraft struggled to climb. Unable to maintain altitude, he aimed for the shallow pond. That was the last thing he remembered. Five Aniak teenagers happened by and saw two of the firefighters struggle out of the plane. They helped rescue Jordan and the three passengers. The plane itself is totaled.

“Like with any accident or incident, we conducted an after-action review of the incident to try to pull any lessons learned out of it that we could, to see if there needs to be any policy changes or anything that we can do to make for a safer aviation program,” said Tim Mowry, spokesperson for the Alaska Division of Forestry.

Mowry said that those changes will not be made until NTSB issues its final report, which will be roughly six months from now.

Meanwhile, Jordan is out for this fire season. The three other firefighters are also recovering. Mowry said that only one of them, who is from Aniak, has recovered enough go back to fighting fires.

Four people are safe after a Coast Guard helicopter rescued a 59-year-old Washington state man who appeared to be suffering from hypothermia while paddling on Prince of Wales Island on Friday, according to Alaska State Troopers.

Authorities got a distress call at about 10 a.m. from a party of two adults and two children. One of the adults, later identified as Steve Moyer, was dangerously cold as the group paddled the Honker Divide Canoe Route on the Thorne River.

A Sitka-based Coast Guard helicopter plucked Moyer from the scene and flew him to Ketchikan for treatment.

Search and rescue volunteers and the Thorne Bay Village Public Safety Officer located the remaining three paddlers and guided them down the remainder of the route, according to state troopers.

The Honker Divide Canoe Route is a 30-mile paddling trail popular with anglers on Prince of Wales Island. The U.S. Forest Service describes it as “a challenging paddle.”

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the city where the Coast Guard helicopter was based. Southeast Alaska’s Coast Guard helicopters are based in Sitka, not Juneau.

A man is dead after an apparent hiking accident near Juneau’s Perseverance Trail on Friday, July 3.

Juneau police have identified the man who died as 36-year-old California resident Anthony Michael Medina.

Lieutenant Krag Campbell said in an email that Medina and a Juneau resident were hiking in the area and slid down a snow chute. Medina slipped off about an eight-foot drop and hit his head on a rock. Capital City Fire/Rescue Chief Rich Etheridge says the man suffered a massive head injury.

Etheridge says some members of Juneau Mountain Rescue were already in the area and responded to the scene. The Alaska State Troopers also responded.

“We sent two of our paramedics up to Basin Road on a helicopter,” said Etheridge. “They were able to load the patient up and start doing an assessment. [They] took him straight to Bartlett [Regional] Hospital.”

Medina was declared dead at the hospital.

Campbell said Medina’s family have been notified.

Note: This story has been updated.