A late-night smoke break led to an emergency response at the UniSea bunkhouses last week.
Unalaska's public safety department received reports of a fire at the Attu bunkhouse around 1 a.m. Friday. Fire volunteers arrived to find light-colored smoke pouring out of one of the bunkhouse rooms.
"The building had been evacuated, the alarms were going off, and the Shemya building had also been evacuated due to the proximity," says fire chief Abner Hoage. "The exterior walls are pretty close there."
It’s been more than six months since the F/V Arctic Hunter went aground outside Unalaska. Now, the boat's insurance company is almost ready to drag it off the rocks.
Insurance adjustor Jim Ronning says they’re expecting to sign a deal with a contractor by the end of the week.
That contractor will have to cut the Hunter into pieces and drag them out of the shallows, back to harbor.
Unalaska's emergency responders were busy Wednesday fighting an industrial fire inside a warehouse on East Point Road.
Uber Sosa is a dock worker for Pacific Stevedoring. At 5 a.m. Wednesday, he was at home -- in a dormitory right next door to the warehouse that his company leases from the Ounalashka Corporation.
"Someone woke me up," Sosa says. "It was the police, came knocking on everybody’s door, telling them to get out."
The TW Manila leaving port in Australia in 2013. (Courtesy: Basil Brindle/MarineTraffic.com)
The Coast Guard sent three aircraft on a long-range rescue for a mariner aboard a container ship near Unalaska Monday.
The 751-foot bulk carrier TW Manila first called for help late Sunday night. They reported a crewmember was suffering from appendicitis-like symptoms on board.
The ship was 450 miles south of Unalaska at the time. That’s too far out to sea for a helicopter to safely conduct a hoist.
Right now, a sticker on the kids' room window denotes the state license. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
The community center is getting rid of its state child care license, which officials say has been more of a hindrance than a help for years.
The state has granted PCR an exemption from its license as a child care center.
PCR director D. Tyrell McGirt says the exemption will give them more flexibility with two daily after-school programs: the one for first through fourth graders, and Kindercamp, for kindergarteners.
All charges have been dropped for one of two high school seniors arrested in a pair of marijuana busts earlier this month.
Unalaska police arrested 18-year-olds Johanna Pham and Shadrack Baird about two weeks ago, along with 30-year-old Jason Tungul. The arrests came after Baird allegedly sold marijuana to a confidential informant.
Getting sick in Unalaska can often mean flying out to see a doctor in Anchorage. It’s expensive and inconvenient -- and the Iliuliuk Family & Health Services clinic is working to spare residents the hassle.
They’ve introduced new technologies and programs to offer more care here at home.
Now, they’re being honored for those efforts with a pair of awards: one from the Alaska Primary Care Association for innovative programs, and one from the Alaska Rural Health Conference. The clinic received the conference's 2014 outstanding rural health program award in Anchorage last week.
