In a difficult year, Sitkans lose connectivity and find connection
Posted by KCAW News | Dec 31, 2024
The Cable Innovator in Salisbury Sound in September, 2024. Tracking the ship’s progress from Victoria, B.C., to Sitka was a favorite pastime for those who found a way to get online during Sitka’s 16-day internet outage in August-September. (USFS/Joe Serio)
2024 was an especially challenging year for Sitka. The community coped with tragedies, school layoffs, a low salmon harvest, and no internet for 16 days. But somehow Sitka came together and pulled through. Call it resiliency – or muscle memory – but when things are difficult, Sitkans manage to find their way home.
Here’s a look back at 2024 from the KCAW news team. Listen here:
Look back at some of the stories featured in our year-ender conversation:
Mental health counselor Melissa Marconi-Wentzel expected most Sitkans to be stressed by the prolonged internet outage. That wasn’t the case, however. Many, she found, were relieved — like a “snow day” in school.
Students around the state walked out of class in April, calling for the legislature to take action on a proposal to increase school funding. In Sitka, students at Mt. Edgecumbe High School and Sitka High School took to the parking lots to protest the governor’s veto of a bill that would have boosted state funding for public schools for the first time in eight years.
Sitka teachers are used to the cycle of worry that comes with budget season but when the district had to cut 16 positions this spring, the stakes felt different.
The road to renaming the formerly named Baranof Elementary School has been rough in places, but this year the community finally landed on a name– Xóots, the Lingít word for “brown bear.”
Japan has long been the primary market for Sitka’s commercial herring fishery. But that market is changing. New regulations and evolving tastes have led to a dip in Japanese consumption of herring eggs, or kazunoko. So what does that mean for Sitka and Alaska’s other herring fisheries? In KCAW’s five part series Phantom Fish: The return of Japan’s vanished herring industry, KCAW’s Katherine Rose went to Japan this spring to find out. Listen to the full series here.
A dispute over the management of the Sitka Animal Shelter at least two years in the making came to a head this summer, when volunteers were barred from the facility. The ousted volunteer group brought its complaints to the Sitka Assembly, hoping not just to be allowed back in, but to set a new course for the troubled operation. (KCAW/Rose)
The loss of five lives aboard the seiner Wind Walker earlier this month was the latest in a string of tragedies that has shaken Sitka this year, from a January boating accident that killed two teens to the apparent bear mauling of a local troller and fisheries advocate in October. In a two-hour vigil at the University of Alaska Southeast boat ramp in December, more than 80 Sitkans and visitors gathered to share stories of loss.
