Unalaska, AK – The first game of the girls' regional volleyball championships is expected to kick off at around 2:00 p.m. this afternoon.

According to school staff, five of the nine visiting teams have arrived for the tournament, which was originally scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. this morning. As of 11 a.m., the Bristol Bay and Dillingham teams were at the airport in Cold Bay, waiting for the weather to clear, and the Bethel and Kotzebue teams were in King Salmon doing the same.

Unalaska, AK – Unalaska is getting a break from the high winds that kicked up yesterday, but it might not last long.

The wind has died down to about 25 mph as of this morning, but the National Weather Service is warning that a low pressure system in the North Pacific could result in gusts as high as 90 mph by sometime tomorrow.

Winds reached a peak of 80 mph yesterday afternoon, which was enough to pick up a 40-foot container van and pitch it down General's Hill, damaging one home. That container can still be seen on the hillside, and doesn't appear to be moving from where it landed yesterday.

Unalaska, AK – This week Unalaska is hosting the regional 1A, 2A and 3A girls' volleyball championships for the first time, but it's going to happen a little later than scheduled.

Today's high winds have kept most of the teams' flights from arriving here, and Unalaska City School principal Glenn Cole said the first game will be pushed back from its original start time of 10:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Unalaska, AK – High winds this afternoon sent a 40-foot container van rolling down General's Hill, hitting at least one home in the area.

Public Safety Department Lt. Jamie Sunderland says that for now, the van doesn't appear to be in danger of moving any further.

"Right now it's kind of burrowed into the ground, holding in place," he said at about 5 p.m. "The owners have been notified, but I'm thinking for now they're going to have to just wait a while, since the winds are gusting pretty bad."

Unalaska, AK – After the executive session of last night's meeting, the City Council voted unanimously to give the city's non-union employees their normal raises, in spite of continued disagreements over contracts with unionized staff.

The vote, which approved a normal 3 percent raise for the employees retroactive to July 1, was a break with recent city policy. The city's managerial employees, known as Title 3 employees, aren't unionized, but until now their benefits have been tied to those of the union employees. That meant that when union contract negotiations reached an impasse, Title 3 personnel had their annual raises postponed along with the union members. Mayor Shirley Marquardt said that wasn't fair.

Unalaska, AK – After failing to come to an agreement at last night's meeting, the Unalaska City Council will push back its decision on an interim appointment for the council's open seat to next week.

That compromise was reached after council member Dick Peck blocked a motion put forward by member Juanita Lewis to appoint D.H. "Kris" Flanagan to the seat recently vacated by Rocky Caldero.

Unalaska, AK – Six people have put in their names for an open seat on Unalaska's City Council, which council members will be filling by appointment at tomorrow's meeting.

The seat has been vacated by Rocky Caldero, and hopefuls had to submit their names by Wednesday to be considered as his replacement.

Two former council members have put in their names. One is D.H. "Kris" Flanagan, who lost his seat to David Gregory in last month's election. The other is Joanna Aldridge, who stepped down from her own seat on the council earlier this year for family reasons, and briefly sought reelection this fall before reconsidering.

Unalaska, AK – Local seats are still available for flights back to Unalaska after this winter's holiday season.

Alaska Airlines staff in Anchorage say that many seats on Anchorage to Dutch Harbor flights set aside for local residents on December 29, 30, and 31 and January 2 have so far gone unclaimed this year. The airline started reserving the local seats during last year's holiday season. That was in response to complaints that the large number of seasonal workers flying out to Unalaska before the January start of pollock A season and the opilio crab season was making it impossible for residents not employed by the seafood industry to get to and from the island for the holidays.

Unalaska, AK – City officials say that PCB contamination at Unalaska's powerhouse site is worse than initially thought, and that cleaning it up could run $1 million over budget.

The cleanup of the site began this summer, to make way for the slated expansion of the powerhouse. Public Utilities Director Dan Winters said work crews have turned up 3,100 cubic yards of soil with less than 50 parts per million of PCBs, where they had anticipated about 1,200 cubic yards. And there's a whopping 1,600 cubic yards of soil with PCB concentrations over 50 parts per million--considerably more than the 90 cubic yards they had originally estimated.