A burn can easily get out of control as evidenced by the damage in this photograph taken on June 4th. Photo by Dick Kauffman

Ketchikan: High fire danger warning issued today; Borough residents asked to not burn anything outdoors - "Word has just arrived from Stan McCoy, the Fire Management Officer with the Ketchikan-Misty Fiords Ranger District, that a high fire danger warning was issued today for the Ketchikan area because of the dry conditions and winds," said Dave Hull, Chief of the North Tongass Volunteer Fire Department.

The relative humidity is very low and the conditions are predicted to continue through the weekend. Both Fire Chief Hull and Fire Chief Scott Davis of the South Tongass Volunteer Fire Department said all residents of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough should be informed of the danger and they are asking residents to not burn anything outdoors until weather conditions change. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Operation Alaska Road: The culvert installation in progress at the 19th kilometer along the road. Photo by Maj. Richard C. Sater, U.S. Air Force Reserve

Annette Island: Largest culvert installation project of construction season underway - The largest culvert installation project of the construction season is underway.
The finished culvert, situated on the northern side of the Walden Point Road project at the 19th kilometer from the starting point near Metlakatla, will be 19.5 feet wide and 144 feet long. The culvert will provide a channel for Chester Creek to run underneath the finished road.

Joint Task Force Alaskan Road's first sergeant, 1st Sgt. Edwin Arner, Missouri Army National Guard, is overseeing the project, working with a team of eight soldiers and extra help as necessary. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Alaska: Data shows cancer spurt from Alaska nuclear test site By DON HUNTER - People who worked on Amchitka Island during the nuclear testing program more than three decades ago have contracted radiation-related cancers at rates several times those of a comparable segment of the general population, according to an analysis of former workers.

Dr. Mary Ellen Gordian looked at data from two groups: medical screenings of 550 former Amchitka workers and reports from more than 1,400 former Amchitka workers who have contacted a federal program set up to help them file for compensation programs. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

National: Vigil threatens to put president in tough spot By MARC SANDALOW - A grieving California mother's vigil near President Bush's Texas ranch is putting a human face on the toll of the Iraq war as she brings worldwide attention to her anguish.

Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville began camping in a ditch along the road leading to Crawford, Texas, on Saturday, determined to confront Bush over the death of her son Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist who was killed in Sadr City on April 4, 2004. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

National: Congress jumps into debate over murderer's interment at Arlington By LISA HOFFMAN - In a corner of Arlington National Cemetery, America's most hallowed ground, the remains of a double murderer rest.

And, unless Congress decrees otherwise, that is where the cremated ashes of Russell Wayne Wagner - convicted of the brutal stabbing deaths of an elderly Maryland couple - will stay, in perpetuity. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

International: If Iraq fails, U.S. hopes for Mideast go with it By PAUL KORING - s the daily carnage becomes a numbing norm, only the most horrendous acts of violence grab international attention: The suicide bomber who kills scores of children clustered around a U.S. soldier handing out candy; the exploding fuel tanker that obliterates the center of an Iraqi village; or the back-to-back attacks that kill 21 marines in two days.

More than two years after the triumphal declaration of "Mission Accomplished," parts of Iraq remain lawless, unstable and riven, threatened by a spreading insurgency and mired in crime, misery and growing anger. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

National: More runaway youths than previously thought, survey finds By THOMAS HARGROVE and GUIDO H. STEMPEL III - At least one in every eight adults in America ran away from home for more than a day as children, making juvenile flight a far more widespread problem than is commonly realized.

A study by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that slightly more than 12 percent of the 1,016 adults interviewed last month reported they fled home at least once during childhood. That would translate to at least 27 million Americans. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Business - Economy: Economists to explore world of online games By TOM ABATE - For roughly a decade, people have used role-playing online games to conduct parallel lives. Raise another family. Start a new business. Build your own city. It's all possible in these virtual worlds.

Now, some economists and social scientists say these Internet worlds could be a new type of laboratory to study economic behavior, such as how consumers respond to inflation. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters WELCOME TO CARTOONVILLE By Dave Person - Thursday pm Primary business of this community By Peter Bolling - Thursday pm Proposition One Vote By Suzan Thompson - Thursday pm Port Berth Expansion Bond --VOTE NO By Roberta McCreary - Thursday pm Nothing said about a government conspiracy By Julie Kay Smithson - Thursday pm "First City Forum" Invitation By John Hunt - Thursday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Highway Robbers Tab, The Calgary Sun Distributed exclusively to subscribers by Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Political Cartoonists Ketchikan Calendar, Meetings, Events Today's Forecast City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements August 2005 Click on the date for stories and photos published on that day... S M T W T F S   01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30          Front Page Archives

Bill Steigerwald: Passing up the Highway Pork - Jeff Flake, an Arizona congressman, was only one of eight House members to vote against the $286.4 billion highway bill and mass transit bill, a pork-fattened law that passed with bipartisan gusto on July 29 in the House, 412-8, and in the Senate, 91-4.

The six-year bill, which took two years to pass, allocates federal Highway Trust Fund revenue (mostly the 18 cent federal gas tax) for road and transit projects in every congressional district in the country. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Alaska Editorial: Young's bounty for Alaska needs re-evaluation - Alaska Congressman Don Young was mighty proud of the big federal earmarks he put into the transportation bill, especially for two big Alaska bridge projects. With help from U.S. Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, Rep. Young bagged $229 million for the Knik Arm Crossing and almost as much for a project connecting Ketchikan to Gravina Island.

Critics inside and outside the state have questioned the wisdom of tying up so much federal road money in two projects that serve sparsely settled areas. Those questions take on even more force now. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Dale McFeatters: Paved with good intentions - As President Bush signed the massive highway bill this week, he may well have thought to himself, "Thank heaven, I'll never have to do this again." When the six-year bill comes up for its next renewal, he'll be an ex-president on his ranch in Texas.

If the bill was not an outright defeat for the president, it was certainly a signal capitulation to political reality. Bush had to sign the bill - it was coming up on two years overdue - and if it was not what he wanted, the White House probably reckoned it was the best deal he was going to get. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Ann McFeatters: 'Death tax' debate alive and kicking in Senate - Once again, we are about to be hit with an emotional barrage of misleading "information" about the nation's urgent need to deal with the federal estate tax, which President Bush dubs the "death tax" and demands "must be repealed forever."

In an essay for The Wall Street Journal, Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, insists the "death tax is the cruelest, most unfair tax our government imposes." He said that in the first week after Labor Day he will call for a Senate vote to repeal it. "There will be no more hiding on the issue of permanent death-tax repeal," he warned. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Deroy Murdock: There's good news, too, to be had in Iraq - Amid roadside bombs, constitutional squabbles and even a blinding sandstorm on Monday, one wonders if anything is going right in Iraq. Plenty is, actually, although the mainstream media rarely mention such good news.

The journalists' maxim, "If it bleeds, it leads," prevails. Major news outlets correctly focus on the depressing consequences of the Improvised Explosive Devices and car bombs responsible for 70 percent of U.S. military fatalities in Iraq last month. Terrorist assassinations of civil servants and police officers obviously deserve coverage. But it honors neither America's soldiers nor Iraq's selfless patriots to overlook the achievements they share in this new republic. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005

Dan Thomasson: Bush stumbling down same path as LBJ - For those who covered the White House in the '60s, the similarities between Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush seem to be growing daily - with, of course, one exception: Johnson became a lame-duck president by choice while Bush legally can't seek re-election.

The latest polls show that public support for the Iraq war is declining rapidly and that angst has begun to detract from what normally would be high marks for the president during a period of steady economic growth. Concerns about Iraq also have spilled over to other areas of Bush's agenda, just as war concerns did for Johnson. - More...
Thursday - August 11, 2005