Like many people during the holiday season, Sitkan Gaylen Needham was planning on spending Christmas with her adult children, who planned to fly in from Pelican. However, due to record snowfall, low visibility and cold temperatures, Pelican has been without seaplane access since November 28th, cutting the Southeast community of 91 people off from the rest of the region.
“We lived out there full time in the 70s, and we had hard winters out there then, and the seaplanes landed, and they would often ice up,” said Needham. “I think now they’re just more cautious.”
With transportation to and from Pelican limited to Coast Guard and law enforcement helicopters in medical emergencies, not only was Needham unable to celebrate Christmas with her family, she also has had difficulty bringing the Christmas spirit to them.
“I was thinking of a Christmas package I was getting ready to mail out there, and knowing that the planes weren’t flying if you send it, then it ends up going into [the] Alaska Seaplane office and just sitting there. And in this case, the Christmas cookies would have been moldy, right?,” said Needham. “So we’ve just kind of been waiting to hear that they’ve gotten [on] a plane.”
Ajax Eggleston is Needham’s son who has been living in Pelican off-and-on for about five decades, and says he thinks this is the longest period of time Pelican has gone without plane access.
He says it doesn’t help that Pelican’s December ferry was also canceled due to rough winter conditions in the region. Living in remote Alaska, Eggleston is used to the occasional mail delay, but dealing with decreased ferry capacity at the same time has not made things easy.
“That’s kind of a big part of this, is that we just don’t have reliable ferry service anymore, because we only have [the] LeConte that can tie up to our ferry terminal, and when the LaConte is laid up, we don’t have a big enough ferry to run in foul weather,” said Eggleston.
As a result, Eggleston is still waiting to receive the replacement parts he needs to repair his broken furnace and pipes. As for other residents in Pelican, he knows some who have rescheduled their medical appointments. Others are waiting on Costco orders of fresh produce that are stuck in Juneau.
“Everybody’s kind of hunkered down just watching their vegetables disappear,” said Eggleston. “We’re fine. We’re [a] subsistence- based community, so we’re not going to starve. But there’s no vegetables and no produce of any kind. So we’re overdue for a mail plane!”
Eggleston says Pelican residents have saved up enough frozen vegetables to get by. There is a Allen Marine catamaran expected to arrive on January 6, as well as a state ferry on January 10. Until then, Eggleston says right now, Pelican residents are in a waiting game for better weather.
