Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Research on a flat spot for air evacuations. Talk of old-style civil defense sirens to warn of fast-moving wildfires. Hundreds of urban firefighters training in wildland firefighting techniques while snow still blankets the ground.

This is the new reality in Alaska’s largest city, where a recent series of wildfires near Anchorage and the hottest day on record have sparked fears that a warming climate could soon mean serious, untenable blazes in urban areas — just like in the rest of the drought-plagued American West.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Army has grounded aviation units for training after 12 soldiers died within the last month in helicopter crashes in Alaska and Kentucky, the military branch announced Friday.

The suspension of air operations was effective immediately, with units grounded until they complete the training, said Lt. Col. Terence Kelley, an Army spokesperson. For active-duty units, the training is to take place between May 1 and 5. Army National Guard and Reserve units will have until May 31 to complete the training.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A day after the Biden administration approved a major Alaska oil project, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland waded into another thorny battle in the state — a long-simmering dispute over building a road through a national wildlife refuge to provide health care access for a remote, and largely Indigenous, community.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval of a massive oil development in northern Alaska commits the U.S. to yet another decadeslong crude project even as scientists urgently warn that only a halt to more fossil fuel emissions can stem climate change.

ConocoPhillips’ Willow project would produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak, and using that crude would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Not one but two volcanoes on the same island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain were rocked by earthquakes on Friday, prompting concerns about a possible eruption.

Elevated earthquake activity was reported at both Tanaga and Takawangha volcanoes on uninhabited Tanaga Island, hundreds of miles (kilometers) from Anchorage.

“If an eruption were to occur, it is uncertain at this stage if it would come from Takawangha or Tanaga,” officials at the Alaska Volcano Observatory said in a statement that raised the alert level for the two volcanoes.

WALES, Alaska (AP) — A polar bear has attacked and killed two people in a remote village in western Alaska, according to state troopers.

Alaska State Troopers said they received the report of the attack at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in Wales, on the western tip of the Seward Peninsula, KTUU reported.

“Initial reports indicate that a polar bear had entered the community and had chased multiple residents,” troopers wrote. “The bear fatally attacked an adult female and juvenile male.”

The bear was shot and killed by a local resident as it attacked the pair, troopers said.

NUIQSUT, Alaska (AP) — Though the weather outside was frightful, schoolchildren in the northern Alaska Inupiac community of Nuiqsut were so delighted for a visit by Santa that they braved wind chills of 25 degrees below zero just to see him land on a snow-covered airstrip.

Once again, it was time for Operation Santa Claus in Alaska. And here in Nuiqsut, a roadless village of about 460 residents on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope, the temperatures may have been plunging but the children were warming quickly.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has won reelection, defeating Donald Trump-endorsed GOP rival Kelly Tshibaka.

Murkowski beat Tshibaka in the Nov. 8 ranked choice election. The results were announced Wednesday, when elections officials tabulated the ranked choice results after neither candidate won more than 50% of first-choice votes. Murkowski wound up with 54% of the vote after ranked choice voting, picking up a majority of the votes cast for Democrat Pat Chesbro after she was eliminated.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Two Russian Indigenous Siberians were so scared of having to fight the war in Ukraine, they chanced everything to take a small boat across the treacherous Bering Sea to reach American soil, Alaska’s senior U.S. senator said after talking with the two.

The two, identified as males by a resident, landed earlier this month near Gambell, on Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait, where they asked for asylum.