South
Alaskan community rebuilds while grappling with fatal landslide's impact
- A landslide struck Wrangell Island last November in southeast Alaska, killing six people, including a family of five.
- Wrangell’s community is slowly returning to normalcy with the upcoming tourism and seafood processing seasons.
- Alaska faces the threat of additional landslides due to an increase in intense rain.
Jamie Roberts and her husband felt lucky when they found an A-frame cabin on forest-draped Wrangell Island in southeast Alaska, where they could settle on a few acres and have some chickens.
A stretch of highway a few miles north, the only road into town, did make her nervous; there, waterfalls cascaded and rocks tumbled from towering bluffs on stormy days. But she always felt safe at her home of more than 20 years.
That all changed the night of Nov. 20 after heavy rains, when a torrent of earth and trees rushed down a mountainside next to their home, cutting a swath to the sea. It killed six people, including a family of five; demolished two houses; and buried the highway.
DEATH TOLL IN ALASKA LANDSLIDE CLIMBS TO 3; 3 OTHERS STILL MISSING
The landslide lacked the scale of one that erased a neighborhood in Oso, Washington, 10 years ago this Friday. But it, too, left a community unmoored, wondering whether the dramatic landscape above was as permanent as it once seemed.
This photo shows a helicopter arriving near the Zimovia Highway where ground teams, including search and rescue dogs, actively searched following a fatal landslide on Nov. 22, 2023. Last November, a landslide struck Wrangell Island in southeast Alaska, killing six people, including a family of five. (Willis Walunga/Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management via AP, File)
Roberts and her family have moved from their home and only returned for brief visits.
“I don’t know that we’d ever sleep very well going back there,” she said.
In some ways, life in Wrangell, a former logging town, is returning to normal. The summer tourism and seafood processing seasons are approaching, and the boys’ varsity basketball team this month competed at state. The highway has been rebuilt.
But trees and other debris still dotted the tidelands and lower portions of the snow-covered scar on a recent day.
That scar is visible from the driveway of Stephen Todd’s waterfront home. Todd, his wife and their dog, Festus, moved back last month after staying closer to town after the slide.
“There were no signs of instability” on that slope before, said Todd, a biologist. “I mean, it’s steep country, but every place is steep country in southeast Alaska.” He and his wife won’t stay in their home when the forecast calls for intense rain.
Rain is a part of life in the region, most of which is nestled in the Tongass National Forest, a temperate rainforest. Communities have long co-existed with landslide risks: In Alaska’s capital, Juneau, the downtown core and tourist district are built into or are at the base of mountains. Thousands of landslides have been documented in the Tongass, though relatively few have been fatal.
But as the climate continues to warm, intense rains are expected to become more frequent in the region and other parts of the West Coast, heightening landslide risk. Researchers have blamed atmospheric rivers for landslides in southeast Alaska that killed three people in Sitka in 2015 and two in Haines in 2020.
After the Wrangell landslide, the state set up a drone operation and weather instruments on Roberts’ property to help officials identify warning signs. A second weather station is planned for the ridgeline above.
State and federal agencies hope to see more high-elevation weather stations installed in the region. The National Weather Service would like to use soil analyses from geologists to better understand how much rain it takes to increase a community’s landslide risk and incorporate that into weather alerts, said senior hydrologist Aaron Jacobs. But the work is intensive, and pulling it together will likely take years.
Wrangell is considering an online dashboard for residents that would use weather data to broadly assess landslide risk, similar to one developed after the Sitka slide, said Mason Villarma, Wrangell’s interim borough manager. Most of Wrangell’s roughly 2,040 people live on the north end of the island. But many homes farther out, along the highway, are built on slopes.
“We can’t tell people whether their property is safe or not. We want to definitely provide them the tools to make good decisions,” Villarma said.
Killed in November were Timothy and Beth Heller, along with their daughters Mara, 16, and Kara, 11. Their son Derek, 12, has not been found. Otto Florschutz, a neighbor, also died. His wife, Christina, survived.
Roberts, who coached Kara and Derek’s swim club, plans to participate in a race Kara wanted to do, in her honor. The club celebrated what would have been Derek’s 13th birthday recently with 13 laps, cupcakes and belly flops — things he would have loved, she said.
FIFTH PERSON CONFIRMED DEAD IN ALASKA LANDSLIDE; 1 STILL MISSING
For a long time, the sound of planes overhead upset Roberts: She thought the noise of the landslide was a jet that was about to crash. Until recently, she would close her eyes or bow her head to avoid seeing the scar on brief visits home to gather personal items.
The family moved four times in the days after the landslide. They need to be out of their current rental by April 1 but haven’t been able to find another house on the island they can afford. They anticipate having to sell their home and move out of state later this year.
Roberts has mixed feelings about selling. She’d be devastated if another family bought the home, only to suffer tragedy.
“Now I’m at the phase where I’m like, ‘It’s not fair,’” she said. “But we get to make the choice of what comes next. And other people didn’t.”
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF) – Augusta Technical College has been awarded a large federal grant to help finish its Jim Hudson Automotive Institute.
The federal investment, according to Augusta Technical College, is in the amount of $6,808,307, and is funded from the Economic Development Administration (EDA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“This grant is a powerful investment in Augusta’s economic future,” said Dr. Kendricks D. Hooker, President of Augusta Technical College. “The Jim Hudson Automotive Institute will directly address critical workforce shortages while creating pathways to high-wage, in-demand careers for our students. By transforming a legacy automotive site into a modern training facility, we are aligning education, industry, and economic development in a way that delivers real value to employers and opportunity to our community.”
The facility, once renovations are complete, is expected to serve as a state-of-the-art automotive workforce training center to help prepare students in careers related to automotive maintenance technology.
“The Institute will expand Augusta Tech’s automotive training footprint and serve hundreds of credit and non-credit students annually,” a statement from Augusta Technical College reads in part. “It is designed to support dealership operations, fleet maintenance, and emerging vehicle technologies, while providing hands-on, industry-aligned instruction that responds to both regional and national labor market demand.”
President Donald Trump touted plans Thursday to coat the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in an “American flag blue” hue, one of the president’s latest construction efforts to refashion government buildings and monuments in Washington, D.C.
Trump said he was inspired to oversee renovations after a friend visited from Germany and noted its decay.
“He said, ‘it’s filthy, dirty. The water is disgusting looking. It’s not representative of the country,’” Trump recalled during a White House event Thursday on drug prices.
Trump posted a video speaking about the renovation of the over 2,000-foot-long pool on Truth Social, shortly before his White House event with reporters.
“Right now, it’s got no water in it because it was in terrible shape. It was filthy, dirty, and it leaked like a sieve for many years,” Trump said in the video. “So I actually went over, went with Secret Service and a group of people, and I took, took a look at it.”
The president said there were initial plans to remove the granite in the pool and replace the stone, but that process would have cost $300 million and taken more than three years to complete.
Instead, Trump said he contacted his own private contractors to clean the stone and then coat it in a new color, which he described as “American flag blue.”
“We scrubbed the surface of the existing granite that’s been there since 1922. We then grouted all of the granite, fixed it up,” Trump said in the video. “It took about two weeks, and now we have a nice, clean surface on which we’re putting an industrial grade swimming pool topping.”
Trump said the project is expected to cost between $1.5 and 2 million dollars and will be completed “long before July 4” for the country’s 250th celebration.
“In another couple of weeks, we’re going to have the most beautiful reflective pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial that you’ve ever seen,” Trump said at the White House.
Trump has pledged to overhaul the pool in the past. The president said in a post on Truth Social last month that he and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum were “working on fixing the absolutely filthy Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.”
The pool, the site of historical events such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, had its last major renovation in 2012 in a $34 million project that lasted almost two years.
Trump’s efforts to revamp the reflecting pool come alongside a number of other construction projects spearheaded by the president across Washington, D.C., including his plans to build a $400 million ballroom and military bunker in the East Wing of the White House and a major renovation of Kennedy Center.
The Texas Education Agency launched an investigation into the Austin Independent School District for celebrating its annual Pride Week.
A TEA spokesperson confirmed with KUT News the state has opened an investigation, but declined to comment since “the matter remains ongoing.”
The investigation comes after conservative State Board of Education member Brandon Hall, from the Fort Worth area, raised concerns in March about AISD breaking the law and working to “indoctrinate” students by celebrating Pride Week.
“It’s time to defund AISD and criminally investigate Superintendent Matias Segura,” Hall said in a social media post.
During an interview with the conservative nonprofit Texas Values, Hall said taxpayers in his district were concerned about state funding going into a district where “instead of focusing on education they are focusing on gender identity and celebrating pride and things like that.”
“[If] we don’t stop it in Austin ISD, we are going to see more of this across the state,” Hall said. “We need to make a statement and set an example. We will not put up with you breaking the law.”
Hall stated that AISD was not complying with Senate Bill 12. The law passed in 2025 and prohibits “diversity, equity and inclusion duties,” including activities that reference gender or sexual orientation, at K-12 public schools. The law also bans the creation of clubs based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
AISD held Pride Week from March 23 to 27 with the theme “beYOUtiful.” Students’ participation was voluntary, and activities took place outside instructional time, including before or after school or during lunch.
Activities included displaying photos of students’ families, wearing wacky socks and sitting with different people during lunch. On the last day each grade level wore a different color to school.
In their guidelines, district officials said AISD celebrated Pride Week during March to “show support” for the diverse students, staff and families. Officials also acknowledged that in past years the district had provided a suggested curriculum and had distributed swag to schools, but that this year it would look different due to “an ever changing environment.”
It is unclear what penalties the district could face. SB 12 states that any employee who engages in or assigns to another person diversity, equity and inclusion duties must be terminated.
This is not the first time AISD has come under scrutiny in recent months. In March, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton notified the district about a complaint regarding a violation of Senate Bill 8, also known as the “bathroom bill.”
In February, Paxton launched an investigation into AISD after students participated in a national walkout. The results of that investigation remain unknown.
KUT News has reached out to AISD for comment but has not heard back.
-
Indianapolis, IN3 minutes agoSaints lose third in a row in Indianapolis
-
Pittsburg, PA9 minutes agoThe Steelers’ Makai Lemon whiff is sadly emblematic of the state of the franchise
-
Augusta, GA15 minutes agoAugusta Tech receives $6.8 million to complete Jim Hudson Automotive Institute
-
Washington, D.C21 minutes agoTrump says he’ll renovate ‘filthy’ reflecting pool on National Mall
-
Cleveland, OH27 minutes agoNike FreezeFest | October 24, 2026 | Greater Cleveland Sports Commission
-
Austin, TX32 minutes ago
Austin ISD is under state investigation for celebrating Pride Week
-
Alabama39 minutes agoRams make surprise first-round move, take Alabama QB Ty Simpson
-
Alaska45 minutes ago
A tiny Arctic village in Alaska is trying to revive its polar bear tourism industry
