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CLARION
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P E N I N S U L A
MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014 Soldotna-Kenai, Alaska
Vol. 44, Issue 244
50 cents newsstands daily/$1.00 Sunday
Question Do you plan to participate in one of the Peninsula’s dipnet fisheries? n Yes n No n I’m going to wait and see To place your vote and comment, visit our Web site at www. peninsulaclarion. com. Results and selected comments will be posted each Tuesday in the Clarion, and a new question will be asked. Suggested questions may be submitted online or e-mailed to news@peninsulaclarion.com.
Shaken
but not stirred By RASHAH MCCHESNEY Peninsula Clarion
In the news State archives closing for 6 weeks C
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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Beginning Monday and lasting through Aug. 25, the Alaska State Archives Research Room will be closed and research services limited to an emergency-only basis. That is to allow for staff to transfer and process 13,000 boxes from two other facilities to the new state library, archives and museum vault. The state department of education, in a release, said that staff will fulfill emergency requests for student transcripts and address urgent reference questions on a caseby-case basis.
Sonar estimates Estimated late-run kings in the Kenai River: n Thursday: 196 n So far: 2,122 Estimated Kenai River reds: n Saturday: 23,779 n So far: 207,607 Estimated Kasilof River reds: n Saturday: 9,540 n So far: 236,989
Information provided by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Sonar estimates can be obtained by calling 262-9097.
Index Weather..................A-2 Local...................... A-3 Opinion.................. A-4 Nation.................... A-5 World..................... A-6 Sports.....................A-8 Classifieds........... B-10 Comics................. B-13
Check us out online at www.peninsulaclarion.com To subscribe, call 283-3584.
Photos by Rashah McChesney/Peninsula Clarion
Above: A group of Community Emergency Response Team trainees transport a mock earthquake victim in a blanket during a disaster drill Saturday in Soldotna. Ten communities on the Kenai Peninsula have CERT members. Right: Community Emergency Response Team trainees transport mock earthquake victims to a staging area.
The classrooms and hallways of Soldotna High School were dark, lit only by the occasional emergency light and the jagged, shaky beams emitting from Community Emergency Response Team trainee headlamps as teams moved quickly through the building, searching classrooms for victims of a simulated earthquake. The building was largely silent, save for the occasional anguished scream of a volunteer victim as they simulated shaken mothers whose children had been killed — many with broken bones, head injuries and other afflictions designed to test the triage knowledge of 12 team members who worked through the disaster drill as the capstone of the community emergency response, or CERT, program. In the scenario, a 7.2 magnitude
earthquake struck about 45 miles from Soldotna and emergency services personnel were responding to hundreds of damage and injury reports on the Central Peninsula area; CERT members have been called to help and the Soldotna CERT team was assigned to the high school where about 250 people were gathered when the earthquake hit. The CERT team was assigned to search the building for injured and trapped people. The task required significant logistical planning. The group broke into three groups and canvassed the school — marking each door with a series of signals indicating that the room had been searched and how many, if any, victims were inside. The students missed a few things. In one room, Billie Sylvester screamed so loudly her son Joseph Sylvester couldn’t continue to play dead with a straight face and the team See DRILL, page A-7
Kodiak High works with NASA on temblor project PETER J MLADINEO Kodiak Daily Mirror
KODIAK, Alaska — A global initiative led by NASA to develop ways to better predict earthquakes will soon get legs in Kodiak. And some of its data crunchers will be Kodiak High School students. “We will have some NASA interns coming here this fall,” Kodiak Island Borough School District Stewart McDonald told the Kodiak Daily Mirror. “They’re going to be installing the earthquake sensors that talk to the satellites. They will be installed right here we’ll have students working on these proj-
ects directly with the scientific community.” The Global Earthquake Forecasting System is a new international network under development by several partners in research, industry and education, including NASA’s Ames Research Center, San Jose State University, Italy’s Polytechnic di Milani, Switzerland’s International Centre for Earth Simulation, India’s Variable Energy Cyclotron Center, Turkey’s Middle East Technical University, Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Silicon Valley’s GeoCosmo Science Center, New Jersey’s Trillium Learning and several
Alaskan school districts — including Kodiak. Ron Fortunato, director of Trillium Education, which is heading up the educational outreach for the project as part of his American Bridge program, explained how the system works. Every time there is an earthquake, tectonic plates underground crush against each other. Some of those tectonic zones occur just south of Kodiak Island. “When they push hard on each other, they actually create stresses that change the chemistry of some of the particles down there and create charged ions that form currents
‘When these sensors get set up the students will be looking at the real-time data that’s coming out of the earth.’ — Ron Fortunato Director, Trillium Education of electricity and different compounds,” Fortunato said. The chemicals rise to the earth’s surface and, scientists postulate, observing the chemical reactions may significantly improve the predictive abilities of scientists. Fortunato maintains that earthquake predictions could now be stretched to days before a quake
instead of the current seconds. Kodiak is the very first school district to participate in the program. The first two sensors in the country will be in Kodiak, with the data read by Kodiak High students. “When these sensors get set See KODIAK, page A-7
Juneau e-cigarette users face new but familiar rule KATIE MORITZ Morris News Service-Alaska Juneau Empire
JUNEAU, Alaska — Juneau resident Todd Mace picked up electronic cigarette use about a year ago as a healthier option while he tried to kick a decadelong cigarette habit. Being able to take a couple puffs of his ecigarette inside the bars kept him out of the lineup of smokers outside downtown bars — and away from temptation, he said. But now Mace, along with Juneau’s other e-cigarette smokers, must follow the same rules imposed on tobacco smokers —
no smoking in bars, restaurants, bus stop shelters, city buildings and other public places. The ordinance amending the city’s pre-existing secondhand smoke control code to include e-cigarettes was adopted at a June 30 Assembly meeting. It puts into writing what some city institutions — including the Juneau School District and the Zach Gordon Youth Center — had already decided to do: put restrictions on a relatively new product that hasn’t been addressed through legislation. Robert Barr, director of the downtown library, was integral in getting something on e-cigarettes in the Juneau books. He
said that since e-cigarettes became popular, he has had about six instances in which library patrons either asked if they could use an e-cigarette inside or just took one out and started puffing. With e-cigarettes left out of the city’s secondhand smoke control code, library staff couldn’t legally say no, Barr said, and they couldn’t do anything when other patrons complained about the vapor. “We couldn’t really address those complaints people were having,” he said. “I asked the city attorney if that was something that fell under the city secondhand smoking code.” C
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Photo by Rashah McChesney/Peninsula Clarion
Handler Curtiss Smith shows Hi Times What The Inferno, a champion Pomeranian, as judge Florence Males looks him over during the Kenai Kennel Club’s annual dog show in Soldotna. For a slideshow of the weekend’s competition, visit www.peninsulaclarion.com