A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter that crashed earlier this summer in Sitka has been recovered, and will be transported to North Carolina.

The MH-60 Jayhawk from Air Station Sitka went down on June 22 during a training flight, crashing on the south side of Harbor Mountain. The four crew members survived the crash with only minor injuries.

In a statement sent to KCAW on Monday (9-14-26) Coast Guard spokesperson Omar Faba said that following several months of preparation, the Alaska National Guard Down Aircraft Recovery Team, with support from an Army aviation team, recovered the helicopter and all associated parts from the crash site last week. The Army team arrived Tuesday afternoon and completed on-scene recovery work Tuesday and Wednesday. The aircraft was lifted from the site on Thursday and the recovery operation concluded that afternoon.

Faba said Harbor Mountain Road was reopened and access restrictions in the area were lifted.

The helicopter is being shipped to Aviation Logistics Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

Nearly 630,000 cruise passengers are set to visit Sitka in 2027, making next summer the biggest in the community’s history. The record-breaking season will be the latest of several in recent years, and follows ongoing community debate on the level of cruise traffic Sitkans want.

Voters rejected an initiative to cap cruise traffic in 2025, shortly after the Sitka Assembly narrowly approved a “Memorandum of Understanding” between the city and the cruise dock to set some parameters. In contrast to the cap initiative, the MOU was presented as a way for the city and the industry to agree on guidelines to follow, without hard, legally binding limits.

At a Sitka Tourism Commission meeting on September 10, some community members said the news of next year’s numbers means it’s time to revisit the document.

Klaudia Leccese is with Small Town SOUL, the advocacy group that filed the cruise cap initiative and continues to push for a regulatory approach. She said Sitka needs to “get a grip” on the situation, and it’s critical to start now since the industry schedules ships years in advance. 

“Increases, like what is scheduled for now for 2027, tell us that the MOU doesn’t have any teeth and isn’t working. So we’re really concerned about the MOU. It doesn’t seem like it’s a strong enough thing to make sure that we don’t have increases, or you know a creep upward,” Leccese said. “We really need to kind of come together and have something that we can all count on as being solid information, so we can really know what the community does want.”

There are roughly 22 days with more than 7000 passengers in next year’s cruise calendar. SOUL organizers pointed to data from previous community survey from 2023– in that survey a majority of respondents preferred 6000 passengers a day or less. Leccese said 630,000 visitors is too many for the small town to accommodate. But Sitka Dock Company owner Chris McGraw pushed back. 

“The numbers are not out of control. They’re not continuing to go up exponentially. We have a bump in 2027 of the days over 7000, and that 7000 number was not a cap. It was never intended to be a cap in the MOU,” McGraw said.

McGraw noted that the schedule is set to drop back down in 2028 with just over 600,000 visitors. But he said next year Sitka is ready to accommodate the increase with more infrastructure and new tour businesses to disperse passengers and ease congestion downtown. He used his own tour company, Adventure Sitka, as an example. 

“And on a busy 7,000 passenger day, we’ll have over 500 people on tour in Adventure Sitka, and that’s either on boats or kayaks, and we’ll put over 800 people through our theater. So that’s 1,300 people that in 2023 and 2024 would have just been dropped off downtown,” McGraw said. “And we’re not the only company that has added that. You see more vans, you see more boats, and the people have been dispersed. So it’s difficult to compare apples to apples from 2023 to 2026.”

Following presentations from McGraw and SOUL, the commission opened the floor up to a handful of Sitkans in attendance. Teal West is a downtown business owner and member of Safeguard Sitka’s Future, an advocacy group that campaigned against cruise limits. She said the MOU is working.

“I think it matters that we continue to talk about the data, and not the emotions. The data is that it’s working, so let’s keep doing what we’re doing,” West said. “We can’t continue to move this goalpost every time we see numbers come up. We have to listen, and we have to see, and we have to listen to the experiences that everybody is having in the community, not just a certain group of people.” 

But Phyllis Hackett, a former tourism task force member, said the commission should acknowledge the continuing effects of the industry’s rapid growth.

“The effect is positive for some and negative for some, but overall, it is dramatic. It is very dramatic, and growing pains, yes, but it’s a dramatic effect, and it does deserve some attention,” Hackett said. “And I think that you need to make a recommendation to the assembly to acknowledge that, and to work towards finding something with with the stakeholders, finding something that is going to be able to spread the effect out, so that people can see all sides of it.” 

The commission’s vice chair, Bethany Lowrance, is a local tour operator. Lowrance said while new businesses may have helped disperse high traffic away from downtown, they’ve also begun to create congestion in other areas, like Sitka’s trail system.

“I’m excited that we have so many new businesses that are getting out and getting to show off our beautiful hometown, but at the same time, at what cost? Not only to us, but to our visitors as well, giving them the experience that we want to give them,” Lowrance said. “So I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I love what we’re doing, but I feel like we’re at a point where we we need to look, because we’re in the biggest city in the world, or in the United States, but we’re very little as to where we can take [people].” 

Lowrance said she doesn’t know what the commission’s next steps should be without more community input, but she said there should be next steps.

Member Devon Calvin said the group should move toward revisiting the MOU and replacing it with a new agreement. But Chair Jeremy Plank and member Sherri Blankenship said they felt the collaboration between the city and the industry had improved the situation year-over-year, and takes time to work. Still, they felt one missing piece in the MOU needed to be addressed. That’s the addition of cruise line associations, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska (CLAA). Without them at the table, Plank said the scheduling process stays outside of the city’s purview.

“If you look at the MOU over in Juneau, they are part of that. I think that they should be at the table during this discussion, and if there’s a mechanism that we can kind of tighten to try to bring them into that conversation earlier, it’s maybe bringing them [in]” Plank said. “It’s really hard to have a discussion about what’s going on with the schedule if we have one party that’s clearly missing at the table.”

The commission recommended the city’s tourism manager investigate bringing CLIA and CLAA to the table on a 5-1 vote with Calvin opposed. 

Sitka’s elementary schools made the Alaska Reads Act work last year. Now they’d like the funding to keep it working – KCAW

In Sitka, the results from the first year of the state education initiative program, Alaska Reads, were extraordinary. But this year is more of a struggle, as the state grant funding to support the program has mostly dried up, and positions once funded by the program have been cut or reassigned.

Students and teachers report a sharp decline in support for non-native English speakers in Ketchikan schools— KRBD

As flat funding continues to impact schools across the state, one demographic in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District may be getting hit especially hard – the large number of students who don’t speak English as their first language. Many current and former school district staff have been raising the alarm about what they say is a severe and concerning decline in resources for these students.

Skagway School credits community, teachers and a unique testing culture for its high test scores – KHNS

Skagway School District contains just one school, a one-story building with students from preschool to twelfth grade. It serves the families of the Southeast Alaska community that’s approximately 20 miles from the Canadian border. For the 13th year in a row, Skagway’s school district had the highest state scores in all assessed areas, according to administrators. KHNS reporter Melinda Munson interviewed school staff to get a better understanding of what makes this rural Alaskan school flourish academically.

In Wrangell, police and educators look to make students safer from school shootings – KSTK

School safety has been top of mind for a lot of school districts in recent years. Even though school shootings happen every year in the Lower 48, gun violence also happens in rural Alaska. And the state knows that – they require mandatory safety drills every month at public schools. KSTK’s Colette Czarnecki talked with Wrangell schools to see how they’re starting to improve keeping kids safe on their remote island.

As Alaska schools close, one Aleutian village bucks the trend – KUCB

While Alaskan schools are closing their doors, one remote Aleutian community is flipping the script.

For the first time in over a decade, children in Nikolski are back in the classroom.

A community’s fight to save Unangam Tunuu on St. Paul Island– KUHB/KUCB

In the remote, Bering Sea island community of St. Paul, educators and community members are working to preserve Unangam Tunuu, the traditional language of the Unangax people. But even as students learn to speak their ancestors’ tongue, the language faces an uncertain future.

In Southeast Alaska, travel for school activities can be a nightmare, but it’s worth it- KFSK

In remote Southeast Alaska, travel for school activities can be a logistical nightmare. But studies show it’s worth it – activities are good for kids academically, physically, and emotionally. Petersburg’s activities director agrees. This fall he spent long days working to bring seven teams to town for a high school volleyball conference.

Career openings at KCAW:

Sarah Hughes News Residency:
Raven Radio’s News Residency is a one-year program for early-career journalists looking to further develop their skills in a supportive, small newsroom environment in Sitka, Alaska, with a proven track record for training the next generation of exceptional audio journalists. View the job description here. For more information about the residency, please visit the Sarah Evangeline Hughes News Residency page here.

How to Apply: Submit a letter of interest, resume, and links to three examples of your best journalistic work to applications@kcaw.org. Please include your first and last name and the position title in the subject line.

Open until February 18, 2026 or when filled.

On December 16^th, KCAW aired special, locally-produced news and public affairs programming as part of “Southeast Celebrates News Day”, a one-day fundraiser for our News Department.  During the day, we raised $19,000.  Thank You to all new and sustaining members!

All who contributed, including sustaining members, were entered into a drawing for 2 roundtrip tickets on Alaska Seaplanes to any of their destinations.  We appreciate Alaska Seaplanes and you for contributing!

“Southeast Celebrates News Day” is a reminder of the vital community service Raven News provides – and it’s a service made possible by YOU.  We aired 5 one hour shows.  In case you missed them or would like to listen again, click on the links below.

“The Public Service of Raven Radio” 

Host:  Becky Meiers

Panelist:  Rich McClear

“Birds, Bears, and Baleens” 

Host:  Jacyn Schmidt

Panelists: Lauren Bell, Louise Brady, and Matt Goff

“The State of Health in The Panhandle” 

Host:  Martha Pearson

Panelists:  Kari Lundgren and Monica Chase

“Our Next Guest:  The Community Calendar” 

Host:  Cara Crain

Panelists:  Megan Pasternak, Andrew Roseman, and Michelle Friedman

“The Future of Fishing” 

Host:  Rob Woolsey

Panelists:  Heather Bauscher, Linda Behnken, and Harvey Kitka

If you contribute by December 31^st, you will be entered to win Alaska Seaplanes tickets.  Make your contribution here or call (907) 747-5877.  Thank You!

The mission of KCAW’s Community Advisory Board is to contribute to a dynamic conversation about what a commitment to community means for KCAW’s programming, partnerships, and presence, both on-air and off. 

KCAW seeks Community Advisory Board members who bring ideas, relationships, passion and follow-through, and are able to envision KCAW as a cultural institution as well as a broadcaster. The time commitment is expected to be one hour a quarter for meetings, plus the time needed to complete CAB-identified projects. The CAB will create a quarterly report to the Raven Radio Foundation, Inc. Board of Directors.

Specific tasks include, but are not limited to:

• Engaging in robust discussion about the role of public radio and how KCAW can best serve all our communities of license, including translator communities.
• Providing feedback on programming, including advising station leadership in setting programming goals and evaluating on-air programs. 
• Helping KCAW to see opportunities for community engagement and voice in alignment with the station’s strategic priorities.
• Auditioning interstitial content (audio pieces under 10 minutes in length) and making recommendations.
• Informing and drafting a ‘show proposal’ process for new programs, identifying underrepresented voices and areas where KCAW can better meet our mission.
• Conducting focus groups and other audience fact-finding/assessment activities, focusing on quantifiable, measurable data collection.

If you’d like to become a member of the CAB, or have any questions, please contact generalmanager@kcaw.org.

Our next CAB meeting will be September 15th, 6-7:30pm at the station (2B Lincoln Street, Sitka) and via Zoom (link here)

CAB members include:

• Jeanne Stolberg
• John Herchenrider
• Noah Galarza
• Columbus Byrd
• Mary Hames
• Taylor White (Board Representative)
• Mariana Robertson (Management Representative)