Nine seismic stations in Alaska are set to go dark this month, leaving tsunami forecasters without important data used to determine whether an earthquake will send a destructive wave barreling toward the West Coast.

The stations relied on a federal grant that lapsed last year; this fall, the Trump administration declined to renew it. Data from the stations helps researchers determine the magnitude and shape of earthquakes along the Alaskan Subduction Zone, a fault that can produce some of the most powerful quakes in the world and put California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii at risk.

Losing the stations could lead Alaska’s coastal communities to receive delayed notice of an impending tsunami, according to Michael West, the director of the Alaska Earthquake Center. And communities farther away, like in Washington state, could get a less precise forecast.

“In sheer statistics, the last domestic tsunami came from Alaska, and the next one likely will,” he said.

It’s the latest blow to the U.S.’ tsunami warning system, which was already struggling with disinvestment and understaffing. Researchers said they are concerned that the network is beginning to crumble.

“All the things in the tsunami warning system are going backwards,” West said. “There’s a compound problem.”

The U.S. has two tsunami warning centers — one in Palmer, Alaska, and the other in Honolulu — that operate around-the-clock making predictions that help emergency managers determine whether coastal evacuations are necessary after an earthquake. The data from Alaska’s seismic stations has historically fed into the centers.

Both centers are already short-staffed. Of the 20 full-time positions at the center in Alaska, only 11 are currently filled, according to Tom Fahy, the union legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization. In Hawaii, four of the 16 roles are open. (Both locations are in the process of hiring scientists, Fahy said.)

Additionally, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has decreased funding for the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, which pays for the majority of states’ tsunami risk reduction work. The agency provided $4 million in 2025 — far less than the $6 million it has historically offered.

“It’s on life support,” West said of the program.

On top of that, NOAA laid off the National Weather Service’s tsunami program manager, Corina Allen, as part of the Trump administration’s firing of probationary workers in February, according to Harold Tobin, the Washington state seismologist. Allen, who had recently started at the agency, declined to comment via a spokesperson for her new employer, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.

These recent cuts have played out amid the Trump administration’s broader efforts to slash federal spending on science and climate research, among other areas. NOAA fired hundreds of workers in February, curtailed weather balloon launches and halted research on the costs of climate and weather disasters, among other cuts.

Most of the seismic stations being shut down in Alaska are in remote areas of the Aleutian Islands, West said. The chain extends west from the Alaskan Peninsula toward Russia, tracing an underwater subduction zone. KHNS, a public radio station in Alaska, first reported the news that the stations would be taken offline.

A NOAA grant for about $300,000 each year had supported the stations. The Alaska Earthquake Center requested new grant funding through 2028, but it was denied, according to an email between West and NOAA staffers that was viewed by NBC News.

Kim Doster, a NOAA spokeswoman, said the federal agency stopped providing the money in 2024 under the Biden administration. In the spring, the University of Alaska Fairbanks ponied up funds to keep the program going for another year, believing that the federal government would ultimately cover the cost, said Uma Bhatt, a University of Alaska Fairbanks professor and associate director of the research institute that administered the grant. But new funds never materialized.

“The loss of these observations does not prevent the Tsunami Warning Center from being able to carry out its mission,” Doster said. “The AEC [Alaska Earthquake Center] is one of many partners supporting the National Weather Service’s tsunami operations, and NWS continues to use many mechanisms to ensure the collection of seismic data across the state of Alaska.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

West said the Alaska Earthquake Center provides the majority of data used for tsunami warnings in the state. The grant that supported the nine seismic stations also funded a data feed with information from the center’s other sensors, according to West. The national tsunami warning centers will no longer have direct access to the feed.

West said the stations on the Aleutian Islands cover a huge geographic range.

“There’s nothing else around,” he said. “It’s not like there’s another instrument 20 miles down the road. There’s no road.”

The plan is to abandon the stations later this month and leave their equipment in place, West added.

Tobin, in Washington state, said he worries that the closures “could delay or degrade the quality of tsunami warnings.”

“This is a region that’s sparsely monitored. We kind of need to have a stethoscope on this region,” he said, adding: “These programs are in the background until a big, terrible event happens.”

The Alaska-Aleutian subduction zone is one of the most active faults in the world and has produced significant tsunamis in the past. In 1964, a tsunami produced by a magnitude-9.2 earthquake killed 124 people, including 13 in California and five in Oregon, according to NOAA. Most of the California deaths were in Crescent City, where a 21-foot wave destroyed 29 city blocks, according to the city’s website.

Tsunami experts said the stations in the Aleutian Islands are critical in quickly understanding nearby earthquakes. The closer a quake is to a sensor, the less uncertainty about a subsequent tsunami.

NOAA’s tsunami warning centers aim to put out an initial forecast within five minutes, West said, which is critical for local communities. (A strong earthquake in the Aleutian Islands could send an initial wave into nearby Alaskan communities within minutes.) The only data available quickly enough to inform those initial forecasts comes from seismic signals (rather than tide gauges or pressure sensors attached to buoys).

The warning centers then put out a more specific forecast of wave heights after about 40 minutes. Daniel Eungard, the tsunami program lead for the Washington Geological Survey, said that not having the Alaska sensors would create more uncertainty about the heights of waves expected, complicating decisions about whether to evacuate along the Washington coastline.

“We try not to over-evacuate,” he said, adding that it costs time, money and trust if warnings prove unnecessary.

Over the last year, the national tsunami warning centers have had their hands full. A magnitude-7.0 earthquake near Cape Mendocino, California, triggered tsunami alerts along the state’s coast in December. In July, a magnitude-8.8 quake off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula prompted a widespread alert along the U.S. West Coast. The peninsula is just west of the Aleutian Islands.

NOAA helped build many of the seismic stations that have been part of the Alaska Earthquake Center’s network. But West said the agency has decreased its support over the past two decades; nine NOAA-built stations were decommissioned in 2013.

“It’s now or never to decide whether or not NOAA is part of this,” he said. “What I really want to do is spark a discussion about tsunami efforts in the U.S. and have that not be triggered by the next devastating tsunami.”

One of the men killed in a Girdwood-area avalanche last March whose body was recovered earlier this week was identified as 39-year-old Charles Eppard, Alaska State Troopers said Friday.

Eppard, of Montana, was one of three heli-skiers fatally engulfed by a March 4 avalanche about 9 miles northeast of Girdwood, in a mountain cirque near the west fork of Twentymile River.

His remains were found Tuesday in the slide area of the avalanche, according to a state Department of Public Safety online statement.

Troopers released Eppard’s name after the State Medical Examiner Office positively identified the remains and his next of kin were notified.

Eppard and two other friends from their high school days in Minnesota, David Linder and Jeremy Leif, were skiing with Chugach Powder Guides, a longtime Alaska heli-ski operator, when they were buried by the avalanche. A fourth member of the group survived.

The avalanche was the nation’s deadliest since 2023.

Troopers recovered the body of 39-year-old Linder, of Florida, from a log jam in a river flowing underneath the avalanche area on Oct. 3. The remains of Leif, 38, haven’t been found.

A group seeking to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting and open primary system says it has gathered enough signatures to put the repeal question on the 2026 ballot.

The group formed after the 2024 election, when a similar effort narrowly failed to pass.

It began gathering signatures in February, looking to collect more than 34,000 signatures from three-quarters of state House districts.

Supporters of the repeal effort now say they have gathered more than 48,000 signatures. Once they’re submitted to the Division of Elections, state workers will review the signatures to ensure they come from registered Alaska voters, were collected according to state laws, and meet the geographic distribution requirements. If approved by the state Division of Elections, the repeal question will appear on the 2026 ballot.

The petition was formed by former state Rep. Ken McCarty, an Eagle River Republican, along with Republican candidate for governor Bernadette Wilson and Judy Eledge, president of the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club.

Ahead of submitting their petition to the Division of Elections for verification, a group of repeal supporters gathered in an Anchorage parking lot to celebrate the milestone. Among the group were McCarty, Eledge, Alaska GOP Chair Carmela Warfield and Bethany Marcum, a former Americans for Prosperity-Alaska director who has taken a leading role in orchestrating the repeal effort.

The roughly two dozen supporters marched across a parking lot to the Division of Elections, following a dump truck festooned with a hand-painted “dump RCV” sign, while blasting the “Rocky” theme song from a portable speaker. At the state office’s doorstep, the truck ceremonially dropped a pile of empty cardboard boxes. The signature booklets were delivered later in the day.

While the effort so far has been led and orchestrated by Republican politicians and activists, McCarty said he did not want it to be perceived as partisan. McCarty himself lost a state Senate race last year to a more moderate Republican, Sen. Kelly Merrick of Eagle River.

Alaska voters approved ranked choice voting and open primaries by a small margin through a ballot measure in 2020.

The voting method has since been used in state and federal elections. It has been celebrated by some elected Alaska politicians who say it favors moderate candidates more likely to work across the aisle. But conservative Republicans have largely decried the election reform, warning that it makes it harder for farther-right GOP members to win elections, and reduces the power of the GOP to pick its own candidates through a closed primary system.

A group funding the repeal effort had raised more than $247,000 by early October. Nearly three-quarters of its funding — $181,000 — came from Aurora Action Network, a political action committee registered with the Federal Election Commission.

The Aurora Action Network formed on June 6. Later that month, it began giving money to the repeal effort. According to federal reports covering June, the committee is funded by Damien Stella, an Alaska engineering consultant, and Michael Rydin, a Texas political activist who has donated large sums to conservative causes.

Most of the group’s spending has gone to Upward LLC, a Florida-based signature gathering company.

Marcum said Thursday that 65% of the petition signatures were gathered by volunteers. The remainder were gathered by paid workers who traveled to rural parts of the state where the group did not find volunteers.

Already, a group called Protect Alaska’s Elections has registered its intent with the state to spend money to defend Alaska’s election system. In 2024, a similar group opposing the previous repeal initiative spent $15 million on a campaign in defense of open primaries and ranked choice voting.