City council took a first step toward amending a contentious trucking rule at their meeting Tuesday night.

Since July 2012, it’s been illegal to drive a tractor-trailer with the fifth wheel in the raised position. Public safety director Jamie Sunderland suggested some changes to the law that bans the practice, based on public safety’s first year enforcing it.

At tonight's meeting, city council will consider a proposal to tighten up a trucking regulation that drivers have found their way around.

Unalaska has prohibited tractor-trailer drivers from operating their vehicles with the fifth wheel in the "raised" position by code, since July 2012. The law was meant to prevent the city's roads from getting chewed up.

Since then, public safety has issued eight citations -- and plenty of verbal warnings -- to drivers.  And police officers have seen more trucks with new welding in place to prevent their fifth wheel from going down all the way, to circumvent the code.

More than a dozen municipal employees turned up at City Hall Monday night to hear the results of a year-long study of how Unalaska categorizes and pays its workers.

The work was done by Fox Lawson and Associates of Phoenix, Arizona and St. Paul, Minnesota. They sent consultant Lori Messer to Unalaska twice over the past year to research the kind of work that city employees are actually doing -- and what they're getting paid for it.

Unalaska’s council will hold a special work session tonight at 6 p.m. to talk about compensation for city employees.

Lori Messer of Fox Lawson and Associates will present the results of a yearlong, $65,000 study, comparing Unalaska’s pay structure to municipalities in Alaska and Washington State. 

Overall, the study finds that Unalaska’s current salary minimums, midpoints, and maximums are competitive with other cities. But the salary range for some jobs -- including fire chief and city engineer -- are at least 15% below the market rate, while other positions, such as heavy equipment operator and corrections officer, are more than 20% above the going rate.

Five crewmen from a burning fishing vessel in the western Aleutian Chain are safe after being rescued by a nearby good Samaritan.

The crew of the 59-foot Kodiak-based longliner Western Venture were safely picked up by the Aleutian Beauty, after their vessel caught fire Sunday morning. 

The Coast Guard airlifted a sick crew member off a fishing vessel near Cold Bay on Friday.

The medevac was for a 42-year-old crew fisherman on the cod longliner Blue Gadus. The man had reported severe chest pains.

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter flew 200 miles northwest of its forward deployment in Cold Bay, to meet the Blue Gadus. An HC-130 airplane was dispatched in case a LifeFlight plane couldn’t make it through rough weather in the region to meet the helicopter.

Credit: Lauren Rosenthal

Alaska's king crab fishing furlough is over.

Most of the fleet received their quota permits from the National Marine Fisheries Service by the end of the day Thursday.

Credit: USCG Lt. Daniel Peters

Almost four months after it sank near Dillingham, the fishing tender Lone Star has been lifted off the bottom and is on its way to Unalaska.

Since June, Magone Marine's made several attempts to get the vessel out of the Igushik River. Heavy mud, extreme tides, and regulatory limits all tripped up the salvage company.

F/V Handler's Chris Simpson scrubs bait jars. / Credit: Lauren Rosenthal

Tuesday was the official opening of Alaska’s king crab season. About a half a dozen boats catching community development quota, issued by the state, got to head out and start fishing.

But as KUCB’s Lauren Rosenthal reports, hundreds of other fishermen were stuck in port, waiting for the federal government to reopen and issue their crab permits.

Instead of plying the Bering Sea, Chris Simpson of the F/V Handler spent the day up to his elbows in hot soapy water.