Stebbins store fire leaves one third of community without power

PHOTOS: A major fire at the one store in Stebbins, Alaska on Monday has left one third of that western Alaska community without power, and a community without a store or fuel, as winter sets in on isolated St. Michael’s Island on Norton Sound. The village of Stebbins is eight miles north of the village of St. Michael’s, and 120 miles southeast of Nome. It is a Yup’ik Eskimo village of about 625 people, with a commercial fishing and subsistence way of life. The store is completely destroyed. There is no fire department in Stebbins, and the fire spread to a nearby fuel company, which also caught fire. There was no one inside the building and no one was injured in the blaze, which is still smoldering at the time of this story’s publication.
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Woman dies after boat hit by waves capsizes near Sitka

A Sitka woman died after a boat capsized near Sitka on Sunday morning. According to a press release from the Sitka Police Department, 51-year-old Deanna Moore was pulled out of the water by a U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer and later pronounced dead at Mount Edgecumbe Medical Center. Sitka police wrote that they received the report of a capsized 22-foot-long vessel in the keyhole by Three Entrance Bay at 8:25 a.m. Sunday morning. An emergency response vessel had already begun traveling toward a separate incident, but instead headed toward the capsized vessel and arrived at approximately 9 a.m. “Witness account states the vessel had been hit by a wave, pushing it into a rock, where another wave overtook the vessel, further pushing it into the rocks and shore, sinking the back and of the vessel,” police wrote.
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Eielson PFAS cleanup project won’t clear all contamination, expert says

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract to clean up PFAS-contaminated soil at Eielson Air Force Base. The chemical used in firefighting foams has been linked to serious health problems. And a longtime Alaska contamination expert is skeptical of the PFAS-cleanup technique that’ll be used at Eielson. The Corps of Engineers awarded the $27.6 million contract to Anchorage-based Brice Engineering on Nov. 10. It calls for the contractor to clean up about 130,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil excavated during construction of eight facilities to accommodate the buildup of F-35 fighter jets at Eielson. That’s enough soil to cover an acre of land about nine feet deep. The contractor will employ a process called “soil washing” that uses water to extract enough of the PFAS to meet the state’s cleanup standard.
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