Can bearly believe it!

A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.

The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson. 

Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.

The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.

Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.

“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled. 

“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”

After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it. 

The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.

But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.

“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said. 

“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”

Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.

JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.

While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — Reno and Las Vegas are the two fastest-warming cities in the entire country.

Tonight we take a look at what neighboring Arizona is doing to address similar heat challenges, and whether those steps can work in Nevada.

Las Vegas has several areas called urban heat islands, which are hotter than the surrounding areas because of less vegetation, such as trees, and more concrete development.

Residents in East Las Vegas, one of the areas considered an urban heat island, say they’re not surprised that temperatures continue to rise, especially in their part of town.

“Definitely, when you go more to outskirts, there’s definitely more shade, more trees everywhere, but more in the center of town it’s very much less,” said Anthony Flores.

He believes there could be more relief from the heat.

“More water accessibility, more shade overall,” said Flores, whose line of work causes him to be outside every day. “I usually drink over two gallons of water a day just to keep not getting heat stroke.”

Charlie Ponce agrees with him.

“Definitely more trees that are useful, not like palm trees or anything like that. Parks that have like the water parks in them,” said Ponce. “Yeah, splash pads.”

Valley cities and Clark County have implemented steps like having cooling stations and tree-planting campaigns to help address heat challenges.

Phoenix and other parts of Arizona are also experiencing extreme heat every summer, as well as drought issues.

UNLV Public Policy Professor Dr. Ben Leffel says there are steps in the neighboring state that can be useful here in Nevada, where temperatures historically continue to be on the rise.

“For example, Phoenix has an ordinance that says that tenants must have rooms that are coolable to at least 86 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Dr. Leffel. “And that’s then also that first responders are equipped with chilled IV therapy and cold water immersion and things like that.”

News 3 spoke with heat mitigation and management experts in Arizona to see what they believe has been working for them.

One thing they mentioned was that Arizona has the first state-level chief heat officer.

“We have much better and much more accurate numbers now about who’s actually getting sick and who’s dying from heat-related deaths, and what the causes and kind of contributing factors are. So, if you don’t track something, you can’t understand what’s going on with it,” said Dr. Ladd Keith, Heat Resilience Initiative Director at the University of Arizona.

Ponce thinks it would help in Las Vegas.

“Like, let them know to tell the public like, hey, in these areas it’s getting out of hand, and this is what we can do as a community, or just have someone like regulated or watch over it,” she said.

And the city of Phoenix also has an entire heat office, something that can be beneficial on a local level, like being able to coordinate between different groups like homeless outreach, the hospitals, etcetera.

“Statewide coordination of cooling centers, lessons learned that are shared across different working groups, and so just a lot of cooperation that really creates a lot of efficiency too, and so I think that’s an important thing to note, is there is a cost to this, but the efforts are saving lives, and I think it’s making government more efficient,” said Keith.

Amy Scoville-Weaver, the Healthy Cities Program Director in Arizona for The Nature Conservancy, says the Phoenix Metro has done well with increasing vegetation, including in areas where there’s drought.

“So we’re looking at supporting and planting hardy trees, drought-tolerant trees, trees that are already designed, designed to live and thrive in water-scarce environments,” said Scoville-Weaver.

She says they also look at improving infrastructure to support it.

“So when it does rain, the water doesn’t just go down asphalt, get polluted, and go through a storm drain; rather, that water is being diverted to vegetation that needs it,” said Scoville-Weaver.

Leffel says another thing to keep in mind is heat safety can also come from indoor policies.

“For example, Phoenix has an ordinance that says that tenants must have rooms that are coolable to at least 86 degrees Fahrenheit,” he said.

A new Nevada law that went into effect last week requires larger jurisdictions to come up with heat mitigation plans.

A California bill would let insurers monitor customers’ driving data in exchange for discounted premiums.

Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, the author of AB 311, said the digital monitoring, known as telematics, rewards good driving and would improve safety. In real time, telematics technology would track data such as speed, location and how a vehicle is being driven.

“We have to slow people down,” McKinnor said. “That is the whole purpose for this bill, is driver safety.”

A voter-approved law from 1988, Prop 103, required insurance rates to be based mainly on driving record, miles driven and experience. It made California the only state in the country to prohibit telematics. 

McKinnor believes the law is outdated. She argued that her bill would also help good drivers who pay higher rates because of where they live. 

“Where I live definitely brings my insurance up,” McKinnor said. “If we both drive the same way, we’ll get charged the same way, instead of by our ZIP code.”

California’s Department of Insurance and consumer groups oppose the bill, citing privacy concerns. 

“We can’t look behind the algorithm and see what weight it’s giving to different criteria, which is a big problem,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “Auto insurance, otherwise, is transparent. This is why the Department of Insurance is opposed, because of the lack of transparency in the algorithm.”

The proposed savings in exchange for good driving might not be guaranteed. Telematics data from the Maryland Insurance Administration showed that 31% of drivers who opted into the program saw a drop in rates, 24% saw an increase and 45% saw no change to their premiums. 

“This collects an awful lot of data about people, more than they know, and it’s like having Big Brother in your back seat,” Court said. 

McKinnor insisted that drivers will not be forced to enroll in the program. 

“It’s still opt-in in the other 49 states,” she said. “We’re not going to make this mandatory. It’ll be a per-volunteer situation.”

McKinnor’s bill passed through the legislature’s insurance committee. It’s expected to be presented to the full Senate in August.