Sports

Scuba diving emergencies can no longer be treated at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau. After more than 30 years, the facility discontinued its hyperbaric chamber program and recently removed the 13-foot chamber.

Now, the closest chambers for public use are in Anchorage or Seattle.

Recently retired physician William Palmer remembers when the hyperbaric chamber came to Juneau.

“I was diving with some of the divers from the NOAA lab and it came up in discussion that if there was a dive accident of any significance in the local waters, there was no backup whatsoever,” Palmer recalls.

Palmer was sent to Florida in the late 1970s to study undersea medicine and hyperbaric chamber operation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signed a memorandum of understanding with the city and borough of Juneau in 1980, and loaned a chamber to Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Douglas Schleiger is the dive center manager for NOAA.

“Our interest was to have a chamber there so if something were to happen, our people could get treated there, that was our own vested interest in it. It was also a service to the community and local divers,” he says.

Scuba divers are at risk of decompression illness, also known as the bends, which can be caused by a fast ascent, a deep dive, or a long dive. Pressurized oxygen is pumped into a hyperbaric chamber to recreate the underwater environment. Over a period of time, pressure in the chamber is brought to a normal atmospheric level.

Without immediate treatment, a serious case of decompression illness could lead to paralysis or death.

Over the decades, the chamber at the hospital was also used for carbon monoxide poisoning and healing wounds. Dr. Palmer says within the first six months of its arrival, the chamber was used to treat ten cases of monoxide poisoning.

Robyn Free is the director of diagnostic imaging and respiratory therapy at Bartlett Regional Hospital. She says in recent years, use of the chamber dropped. It was last used in December 2011 for wound care, which requires 20 sessions in the chamber.

“And prior to that it was 12 months since they had anyone in the chamber.”

That’s one of the reasons the hospital decided to discontinue the program. Another is cost.

The federal agency Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services surveyed the hospital last June and said a fire suppression system had to be put in place to continue running the chamber.

“That was going to be $30,000 to $50,000,” Free explains.

The hospital was in charge of maintaining the chamber. But regulations changed, requiring the work be done by NOAA-certified technicians three times a year. Each visit would cost the hospital $3,400.

“We tried to talk to NOAA and say, ‘Hey, it’s your chamber. If you want it compliant and run a certain way, then we need some help from you,’ and they were like, ‘Well, we can’t do that,’ so there was nowhere to go with that,” says Free.

Dr. Alan McPherson works in Bartlett’s Emergency Department. When the program was still running, he was the main provider of hyperbaric care. He says running the chamber required a crew of five individuals.

“There would be the doctor who had some training or experience in hyperbaric medicine and that generally would be me. There would be the dive supervisor. You’d have a time keeper. You’d have an outside tender to run the levers, and an inside tender to watch the patient.”

Dr. Palmer worked at the hospital when the chamber program started and when it ended.

“I thought it was really, really sad to see, even though infrequently used, this very high tech, unusual emergency facility just fall away,” he says. “The point is really that when you need it, you need it.”

NOAA dive center manager Schleiger says he would prefer to keep the chamber in Juneau.

“If there was a way to work it out where it could be up there and operated by trained, certified folks, and liabilities issues are all worked out, certainly I would do that if it’s feasible because our divers have not gone away. They are still there.”

Currently, there are seven NOAA divers in Juneau. State of Alaska agencies have about 30 divers in southeast. According to the state’s Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission website, there are over 430 active permits for Southeast dive fisheries. And there’s diving for recreation, commercial work, and search and rescue.

Kyle Hebert is the dive safety officer for the department of fish and game. Bartlett’s chamber was once part of the state’s safety plan. Now that includes a flight transfer to Virginia Mason hospital in Seattle. Hebert doesn’t know how much money that would cost the state.

“We’re probably more concerned about the cost in terms of likelihood of serious injury or death,” Hebert says.

The hyperbaric chamber was moved out of Bartlett Regional Hospital three weeks ago, and now sits in NOAA storage in Juneau waiting to be shipped to Seattle.

GCI plans to lease a spot at Eaglecrest Ski Area for a cellphone tower.

The company wants a 20-foot by 20-foot parcel of land near Porcupine Chairlift to install a 50-foot high wooden pole with cellular equipment.

Cellphone coverage at Eaglecrest is spotty at best and non-existent in some places, especially at the base of the mountain.

CBJ Lands Manager Greg Chaney told the Assembly Lands Committee Monday that reliable communications would improve Eaglecrest customer service and skier safety as well as bring the city-owned operation more revenue.

“It’s going to be in the order of 500 to 600 dollars a month.  We’re still negotiating the final amount, but we’re hoping to have a 3 percent increase-per-year provision.  That’s what we’ve done on other towers and that’s kind of the industry standard right now, so for about a five-year period we’ll have that little bit of escalation,” Chaney said.

Chaney said the tower won’t spoil skiers’ and snowboarders’ view, or hinder their way down the bunny slope.

He said GCI plans to string fiber optic cable all the way up Fish Creek Road to the Eaglecrest Lodge.

The Eaglecrest Board of Directors has already approved a draft lease, but it must yet come before the CBJ Planning Commission.

One of the largest luxury sailboats in the world spent the weekend in Auke Bay.

The 295-foot, three-mast Athena has 2,500 square feet of sailing power.  It was one of several large yachts that dominated the Statter Harbor breakwater over the weekend.

The schooner is reportedly owned by James H. Clark, a founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics. He helped design the ship, built by Royal Huisman Shipyard in the Netherlands.

The British-flagged Vibrant Curiosity anchored outside the breakwater. The 280-foot super-yacht was built by Oceanco Shipyard, also in the Netherlands.  It has a swimming pool on the deck, sleeps 18 passengers and a crew of 26.  Its MTU diesel engines cruise up to 20 knots and can go 5,500 miles on one fill up at an average speed of 14 knots.

The Vibrant Curiosity was in Seattle’s Lake Union in mid-June, where KING-TV reported it was being readied for a cruise to Alaska.

German billionaire Reinhold Wuerth reportedly purchased the Vibrant Curiosity for $100 million.

The Lady Christine was the yacht with the helicopter seen in Auke Bay.

The 223-foot motor yacht also was designed and built in the Netherlands, and launched in 2010.

According to Charterworld.com, it’s owned by Scottish businessman Lord Irvine and Lady Christine Laidlaw, who have built a number of sailing and motor yachts.  He apparently has some international racing triumphs and has been described as a “Monaco tax exile.”

The Cayman Islands-flagged 147-foot Cracker Bay used to be called the Campbell Bay. It’s most recent claim to fame came during the last presidential race, when GOP candidate Mitt Romney used it for an exclusive event to thank supporters who’d contributed at least $1 million to his campaign, according to ABC News and Mother Jones. It’s owned by Gary Morse, developer of the Villages retirement community in Florida.

Steep Creek Trail near the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor’s Center is closed until fall.

Sockeye began running over the weekend and the black bears are feasting.

The U.S. Forest Service closes the back side of the trail this time of year to protect both the bears and the people who want to watch them.

Visitor Center director John Neary says giving the bears space improves bear viewing.

“If we allow the bears to have a little space they’re more likely to come closer to the platforms where we can see them even better,” he says.  “It seems kind of counter intuitive, but the more relaxed the bear, the more space they have to retreat if they need to, the more likely they are to come nearby when they want to feed and seek our presence.”

Neary says most of the dozen to two-dozen black bears that use the area around the glacier are juveniles or sows with cubs.  The best place to watch them is from the visitor center grounds and the viewing platform.

“They’re very interested in hanging out right next to the people because it keeps away what they would consider the scarier bears, the big adults or big males that would maybe threaten their cubs.  So what we’re running here is a nursery.  The tourists are a key part of that as well as all the visitors who stay on those platforms and trails sort of  reinforcing for the bears that the people area is there and ‘if I walk right along them with my cubs I’ll be safe,’ ” he says.

Signs are posted and maps explain the area that is closed to walkers and bicyclists between the Moraine Ecology and Steep Creek trails.

Neary says Steep Creek will remain closed through the Coho salmon run.

Kodiak High School graduate Trevor Dunbar did something Monday night in Portland that no other Alaskan – not even his father – had ever accomplished: He ran a mile under four minutes. His time of 3-minutes 59.06-seconds came in the Portland Roughrider Twilight Meet.

Dunbar told an interviewer from the running website Flo-Track that he was thankful to have runner Robb Finnerty pushing him.

“I was just happy to have him and race it into the line,” he said. “Hey … thinking I could run a little bit faster, but the goal was just sub-four, and I’m happy.”

Finnerty, a runner for the Wisconsin Badgers, was just a third of a second behind Dunbar.

Trevor’s dad Marcus, a long time competitive runner and coach in Alaska, was there at the race to watch his youngest son set a mark that he had once dreamt of.

“Well, it’s been a long time coming. I made several attempts myself, and came up short every time, so it’s vindication to have Trevor,” Marcus Dunbar said. “Especially since no Alaskan’s ever done it. You know, I kinda wanted that to be at one time, but there’s been a lot of guys who came before me and guys that came after me, but we all came up short. It’s good to see Trevor getting it done.”

For his part, Trevor honored his dad by wearing his old high school jersey in the meet.

“Definitely a special one. I knew the season finale would be a special one. I wore his old jersey that he used to race in, so that was a little extra, extra little thing to make it a little more symbolic.”

Dunbar will be entering his senior year at the University of Oregon this fall, where he competes in cross country and middle-distance track.

An Anchorage resident, a JDHS high school student, and a novice runner from Juneau were the three fastest in Saturday’s Mt. Robert’s Tram Run.

Forty-eight race participants took off from the Mt Roberts Tram building at 9 a.m. They continued up Franklin Street, took a right at 6th Street, a left onto Gold, followed Basin up to the trailhead of Mt. Robert’s, and kept running, and running, and running.

The Mt. Robert’s Tram Race starts at sea level and ascends three and a half miles to approximately 2,000 feet altitude.

Thirty-three minutes and 56 seconds after the race started, Anchorage-resident Allan Spangler touched the cross, the race’s finish line. Race timers cheered on the first place runner.

Twenty-six-year-old Spangler was in town with his girlfriend for the July 4th weekend. Shortly after hitting the trail, Spangler took the lead and felt pretty sure he could maintain it, “but you never know. It’s a mountain race,” he said.

Coming in two minutes and 25 seconds later was JDHS cross-country runner Riley Moser. The 16-year-old had run the race twice before but never broke the top three, until Saturday.

Moser says he’s been practicing a lot for the upcoming cross-country season. “I’ve been putting on more miles lately, a lot more miles. I’ve been doing a lot more mountains than I probably should be doing. We were told not to run as many mountains and do more flats and speed.”

24-year-old Gabe Wechter just started running a month ago, but says he’s an avid skier and climber. The hardest part of the race for Wechter was not knowing how fast to go during the road portion.

“Turns out I should’ve run faster,” Wechter, the third place finisher, said.

Anchorage resident Laura Fox was the first female runner to cross the finish line at 41 minutes and 19 seconds. “I’ve never been up here before so I didn’t know when it was going to stop,” Fox said.

The two youngest runners were 12-year-old Connor Norman and 11-year-old Aidan Hopson, who have run together in ten races this year. Before the race began, Hopson explained what it’s like to run with Norman, “He’s normally kicking my butt.”

But at 54 minutes and 32 seconds Hopson and Norman touched the cross at the same time. When asked what the most difficult part of the race was, the boys replied, “Everything. The whole thing.”

Spangler and Fox will be added to the Mt. Robert’s Tram Run trophy, but everyone who ran the race took home a free tram ride pass to use in the future. To get excited for redeeming this prize, the runners all took the tram down the mountain.

The next race of the Southeast Road Runners is the Governor’s Cup on Saturday, July 13.