Ketchikan’s Jeff Carlson remembers that early spring day all too well. He’s the owner of Lighthouse Excursions, a Ketchikan-based boat tour company. When he first heard about the rockslide near the airport ferry terminal, he thought it’d be cleared pretty quickly.
“And I remember originally thinking like, ‘Oh, gosh, another landslide,’ and then, ‘Oh, this one’s not too big of a deal. So that’s good news,’” Carlson said. “And then, of course, it became evident pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to be cleared for quite some time.”
It would be four days before debris on the Tongass Highway near Wolfe Point would be partially cleared.
So Carlson stepped up. He was gearing for the summer season when the slide happened. His company took shifts assisting a few other boat tour operators with transporting commuters blocked by the rubble.
“This was, I think, the most unique kind of a service that we were able to provide, especially when it comes to an emergency,” Carlson said.
Wolfe Point had been an area of concern to local officials for a number of years. It experienced several rockfalls, and the state Department of Transportation was in the process of alleviating the area’s rockfall risk when the slide occurred. According to DOT, those efforts included debris cleanup in ditches, slope stabilization and more. Nearby powerlines made cleanup efforts challenging.
The borough and city governments signed a joint disaster declaration and state geologists assessed the slope before cleanup efforts began. That essentially pooled more state resources to address the rockslide. The borough assembly has not introduced action items about the rockslide area since. The city council in July approved a funding reimbursement for costs the city incurred during the rockslide response.
Rodney Dial was the borough mayor at the time of the Wolfe Point rockslide. He said locals from all sectors came together to ensure disruptions on the island were limited.
“It’s surprising how many different issues that you actually wind up with,” Dial said. “You have people that need to go to the hospital that might be in the north end. You have people that need to get medication. And so, there’s just all of these different issues that all of a sudden come up, and it was really a team effort to address it.”
Ketchikan Fire Chief Rick Hines said the North Tongass Volunteer Fire Department provided emergency medical services to those cut off from the hospital by flying or boating patients to an ambulance south of the slide. And Point Higgins Elementary School, north of town, was prepared to overnight students at the school who were separated from their families, although they didn’t end up needing to.
And despite shoulder season preparations, boaters transported thousands of passengers during the multi-day closure. Emma Bullock is Allen Marine Tours’ senior sales and marketing manager. She said the company moved about 4,000 passengers in the week following the slide.
Bullock said one of the biggest takeaways from the disaster was the community’s resiliency.
“It did not stop Ketchikan from the daily activities,” Bullock said. “We were having people coming on with their dogs to go out hiking out by Ward Lake, and it didn’t slow down the beats of what makes Ketchikan.”
Carlson, with Lighthouse Excursions, said he enjoyed the opportunity to help his neighbors in need. His company moved about 500 people.
Carlson said that considering his company primarily serves tourists, the rockslide response was a rare chance to connect with locals.
“This was the absolute opposite. It was seeing a familiar face on every run, if not the whole boat being familiar,” Carlson said. “And so seeing some familiar faces aboard my boat who have never been aboard my boat, that was quite fun.”
In the year following the Wolfe Point rockslide, state DOT said it’s monitoring the site via drone to ensure future rockslides or falls won’t happen there. They’ve also installed a rock debris buttress.
Hunter Morrison is a Report for America corps member for KRBD. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.
