DAILY NEWS 2020 Year in Review

 By Dave Kiffer

For the Daily News

In a normal year, the big topic of conversation would have been the heavy summer rainfall or the December deluge that threatened to cause Ketchikan Lakes Dam to breach. Or it may have been the month-long visit of "Phoenix" the humpback whale who bubble fed just about every day for four weeks in November at the downtown Ketchikan docks.

But in Ketchikan, in 2020, the biggest news was the same as it was all over the world, the COVID 19 Pandemic and how it changed nearly every facet of our lives over the last nine months of the year.

COVID 19 arrived in March in the FIrst City and by the end of the year more than 250 residents and travelers had tested positive. One local woman, Julie Wasuli of Saxman, died from COVID at a hospital in Bellingham, Washington in December.

COVID 19 caused the complete shutdown of the summer cruise ship season, meaning that more than 1.2 million visitors, and $150M in projected spending, did not arrive in Ketchikan as normal. The loss of the summer "season" caused major ripple effects through the rest of the economy. Local pocketbooks were also hurt by a weaker than expected summer commercial fishing season that ended up shutting down weeks earlier than normal in the region.

Ketchikan schools shut down for Spring Break and the students didn't come back for the rest of the school year, having to finish up their classes on-line. The high school basketball season ended after the regional tournaments and spring sports like soccer and baseball and softball were cancelled.

The debate over how and when to reopen the schools in the fall raged through much of the summer. School did reopen in the fall, with some schools socially distancing some students to other facilities and schedules that rarely had all students "on campus" at the same time.

Like many communities, Ketchikan struggled with just what level of regulations to have regarding such things as masks, social distancing and business closures or restrictions. In general, the First City followed the state's lead by not requiring masks, but limiting social gatherings and some businesses. For a month, from late March to late April, nearly the entire city came to a standstill, which mirrored a similar one-month lockdown that occurred in the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1919. 

Many local businesses voluntarily chose to require masks and limit capacity. Masks were required to enter government buildings and many offices shut down to walk in traffic. Governmental meetings and other gatherings became Zoom or Teams affairs on-line. Hundreds of local residents spent workdays staring at computer screens from home in order to get their jobs done.

Most large community events in the last nine months of the year were either limited in scope or cancelled. There was no Fourth of July parade, no Blueberry Festival, No in person high school graduations, no Winter Arts Faire and no Clark Cochrane Christmas Basketball Tournament.

Travel to and from the area was limited as testing and quarantine requirements took effect for both airline and marine highway passengers.

About the only activity that was not proscribed by COVID was the outdoor kind and unfortunately it was not a great year for being outside. Ketchikan suffered a much wetter year than normal. There were periods in the late Spring and early Fall that allowed residents to escape their domestic cages long enough to be reminded of the beauty of the local out of doors.

But despite COVID 19, life continued in Ketchikan. Other things happened in Ketchikan in 2020.

Setting the tone for the year, a landslide in late February destroyed the Tatsuda's Grocery Store on Stedman Street. The store had just celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2016 and gone through a remodel. Now it remains unknown whether it will be rebuilt.

In January former city mayor and longtime city councilman Lew Williams III died after a long battle with cancer. Williams was the longest serving politician in Ketchikan history. Williams was later posthumously named CItizen of the Year by the Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce.

In January, the US Army Corps of Engineers approved plans for a private cruise ship dock to be built at the former Pulp Mill site in Ward Cove. The race was on to get the dock built in time for the cruise ship season. Which, of course, never happened. The dock is now complete and awaiting the first Norwegian Cruise Line ships of 2021, whenever they arrive.

The winter of 2020 was a lean time for the Alaska Marine Highway System as budget cuts, planned layups and unplanned ones left most of the system closed for months at a time. At one point, the only ferry operating was the Lituya on the Ketchikan to Metlakatla route. Officials convened a committee to ponder the future of the system.

In February, Houghtaling Fourth Grader Thierry Oyedej won the district spelling bee. The winning word was b-e-a-t-b-o-x-i-n-g. The US mint released a commemorative $1 coin featuring Alaska Native Civil Rights Leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, a former Ketchikan and Klawock resident.

Kayhi senior Chris Lee became the all-time Ketchikan High School boy's basketball scorer, passing Steve Ortiz who set the mark in 1974.

In March, Darrell Ryan was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to the stabbing death of Aaron Dixon in January of 2018. Women in Safe Homes (WISH) received an $800,000 federal grant to remodel the former Ketchikan Regional Youth Facility into an new shelter.

The Ketchikan COVID shutdown lasted from March 17 to April 26. Bars and Churches remained closed until May.

By mid May, cruise lines had begun announcing the cancellations of their summer seasons and Canada put an exclamation point on the summer by announcing it would not allow ships to use its West Coast ports.

At the end of May, parents of the Kayhi and Revilla Classes of 2020 held an outdoor parade for the students from Berth One to Berth Four.

In July, Tyler Cavanaugh, 22, was charged with second degree murder following an altercation in which his stepfather. Peter Jensen died on July 17. 

The City Council approved an equal rights ordinance that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, age, religion, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity or national origin. 

In August, work began on a replacement NOAA dock on Stedman Street that would allow the research vessel Fairweather to dock year-round in Ketchikan. 

The State began a project to expand the 1970s era airport terminal. Eventually, the expansion would allow for three jetways for passengers and a larger waiting and checking in area. Work began later in the year to expand airport facilities on the Revilla side of Tongass Narrows.. That project includes a second ferry terminal, an indoor waiting facility and an expanded parking area.

The Silver Salmon Derby was cancelled because of COVID concerns. It was the first time there was no community salmon derby since 1948.

Borough Mayor Rodney Dial issued a rare mayoral veto when he vetoed a resolution by the Borough Assembly asking the state legislature to protect Alaskans from sexual orientation discrimination. Dial called the measure “anti-Christian.” The Assembly later overrode Dial’s veto by a 5-2 margin. 

The summer of 2020 was the wettest on Ketchikan history with nearly 48 inches of rainfall recorded.

The October local elections featured a much higher than normal amount of absentee and non in-person voting.  Dave Kiffer, Riley Gass, Abby Bradberry and Mark Flora were elected to seats on the City Council. Judith Anglin, Amanda Pearce and Jeremy Bynum were elected to seats on the Borough Assembly. Diane Gubatayo, Paul Robbins, Kim Hodne and Nicole Anderson were elected to the School Board. 

The federal government announced that it was ending the “roadless rule” restrictions in the Tongass National Forest bringing hope to timber industry proponents.  But it remained to be seen whether that decision would be reversed by the incoming federal administration in 2021.

Dan Ortiz was re-elected to the state house seat from the Ketchikan district, defeating school board member Leslie Becker. Bert Stedman ran unopposed for the regional state senate seat.

November was the month of "Phoenix" a humpback whale that visited the downtown area daily, bubble feeding for more than four weeks. The whale came inside the breakwaters at Thomas Basin, Bar Harbor and Casey Moran Harbor numerous times, allowing hundreds of residents to get with a few yards of him as he surfaced again and again while feeding.

The last couple of days in November and the first week of December saw one of the wettest weeks in Ketchikan's history. More than 22 inches of rain fell in eight days, causing the Ketchikan Lakes dam to nearly overflow. Worry over the dam caused local officials to call for a voluntary evacuation of homes on Park Avenue, Harris Street and Freeman Street along Ketchikan Creek, but the rain slowed enough, the dam didn't breech and there was no significant flooding.

For the year, Ketchikan ended up with just short of 180 inches of rain, a wet year but nowhere near the record levels of 202 in 1949 and 196 in 2006. 

There was a ray of light and hope near the end of the year as the first boxes of COVID 19 vaccines arrived in the First City and were distributed to emergency workers. It was unclear when most of Ketchikan would be offered the vaccine. Officials hoped it would be sometime in the first four to to five months of 2021. 

There remained concern over what affects COVID 19 would have on the 2021 cruise ship season, with some indications the season might not start until mid summer of 2021 or that it would start under "bubbles" that would limit where passengers could go in the communities. A local commitee was meeting ito come up with a plan that would open the area to the widest possible amount, but had not received definitive information from the cruise lines themselves. Meanwhile Canada was showing little interest in opening up its ports for the next several months.

The year ended with far more questions than answers regarding how or when Ketchikan - and the rest of the world - would transition out of the pandemic.