After 15 years of development, Atka is set to dedicate its hydropower plant this fall. Now, another Aleutian community is trying to follow its example.  Adak is in the first stages of turning its abundant water supply into energy.

A moderate-sized earthquake occurred near Unalaska early this morning.

The 4.0-magnitude earthquake happened on the Pacific side of the island, nearly 40 miles from town. It struck at around 3am, and occurred at a depth of 21 miles below the earth’s surface.

And just down the Aleutian Chain, another 4.3-magnitude four earthquake hit about 15 miles from Atka. That earthquake occurred just after midnight.

(Steve Smith/AVO)

A remote volcano in the western Aleutians has started rumbling.

An earthquake swarm at Little Sitkin started around 7pm on Wednesday and picked up this morning, prompting the Alaska Volcano Observatory to put the volcano on watch. So far, no eruptive activity has been detected.

Rick Wessels is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and he says the earthquakes have been striking just few miles below the volcano. He says that while the quakes have been hitting at regular intervals, they haven’t been very powerful.

The Coast Guard performed back-to-back medevacs of two heart attack patients aboard separate cargo vessels in western Alaska.

The first call came Tuesday morning, when the Netherlands-flagged ship BBC Denmark reported that a 48-year-old mariner was showing signs of a heart attack. The vessel was nearly 600 miles southwest of Unalaska at the time, and made way toward Adak in an effort to meet a Coast Guard helicopter crew off the cutter Munro. The helicopter made contact with the BBC Denmark on Wednesday morning, and the patient was successfully transported to Adak and then on to Anchorage for further care.

Suna X/Izembek Enhancement

The hovercraft that will link the village of Akutan with its new airport made the trip down from Cold Bay last week. The hovercraft has a long and storied history operating in the Aleutians, but it’s the only connection between the new runway and the community of 1,000 people.

The Aleutians East Borough acquired the Suna X in 2007, to provide a transportation link between King Cove and the all-weather airport in Cold Bay. The hovercraft operated on and off for a little over two years, until 2010, when the Borough permanently suspended its operations. They cited high costs, mechanical problems and unreliability. It’s been sitting in King Cove ever since. But now, the Borough is giving it a second chance, in Akutan.

Cleveland Volcano experienced yet another explosion on Friday morning – its twentieth since Christmas.

Cleveland is one of the Aleutian Islands’ most active volcanoes. It’s been on watch for the better part of the past two years, and in June it blew ash 35,000 feet high.

Today’s explosion was small by comparison and didn’t produce a visible ash cloud, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Since there isn’t any real-time monitoring equipment on Cleveland, the explosion was detected using infrasound and seismic equipment on nearby volcanoes.

(Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

For years, King Cove residents have clashed with environmental activists over their plan to build a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Locals say it could save lives by making medevacs easier, but activists argue that it would ruin ecosystems.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service knew it would get plenty of responses from both sides when it asked for public comment on the road this summer. But they may have gotten a little more than they bargained for.

It’s been 15 years since Atka first started working on a new hydroelectric power plant. Now, the facility is almost done.

Atka city manager Julie Dirks says the plant should go online by the end of the month, and will start generating electricity right away. Eventually, hydroelectric power will replace diesel as the main source of energy on the island.

But Dirks couldn’t say exactly when that will happen.

The Bangun Perkasa

The Coast Guard cutter Rush normally patrols Alaskan waters, but it’s traveled deep into the Pacific Ocean in pursuit of a suspected pirate fishing vessel.

At a Senate hearing in Kodiak on Monday, Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp said the cutter Rush had intercepted a vessel suspected of high seas drift netting off the coast of Japan. The United Nations moratorium on high seas drift netting is enforced by member states, including the U.S.