Regional

The M/V Tustumena returns to service this week. That’s the only Alaska Marine Highway System ferry that sails between all 13 ports of call out the Aleutian Chain.The Kennicott has been the only ferry sailing to the Aleutians since the nearly 60-year-old Tusty went into the shipyard for repairs back in December.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers visited Unalaska in late June to teach Unalaskans about unexploded ordnance—that is, undetonated explosives. The U.S. military left lots of unexploded ordnance when they were stationed in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. And grenades, chemical weapons and other munitions have been turning up on the island’s hiking trails and beaches for decades.

The U.S. Air Force has agreed to pay more than $200 thousand in fines for mismanaging hazardous waste on a distant island in the far Western Aleutians. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a June 23 statement that the Air Force stored hazardous waste without a permit at Eareckson Air Station, on Shemya Island.

Four people were on board F/V Pacific Sounder when she got stuck on the western shore of Unimak Island — between Unalaska and the Alaska Peninsula — on the morning of June 17. The Pacific Sounder hailed a MAYDAY call at 10:43 Friday morning but the crew waited three hours before they were rescued. Eventually, the Good Samaritan boat, the Polar Sea, arrived and found the crew unharmed.

A taxi driver involved in a head-on collision in Unalaska last week is in “fair” condition, according to representatives from Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. Ron Knop was medevaced to Anchorage after his taxi-cab collided with a commercial tractor-trailer truck at the “S” curves on Airport Beach Road last Monday.

Nearly 2,000 tons of subsea fiber has begun the journey from Europe to Alaska and its eventual home on the ocean floor along the Aleutian Chain. The fiber — which is the foundation of GCI’s 800-mile Aleutians Fiber Project — would close the digital divide and bring high speed internet to homes in some of the most remote communities in the nation, including Unalaska.

One of the most sealed off communities in the country is under a hunker down order following a surge of COVID-19. Roughly half of all coronavirus cases recorded on St. Paul Island since the start of the pandemic have happened in the last two weeks.

Representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said they plan to remediate a half-dozen contaminated World War II sites in the Unalaska Valley this fall. They have been making slow but steady progress to remediate formerly used defense sites — or FUDS — across the island for decades.

For nearly 80 years, a small American flag placed by an old friend was the only thing that stood above the tundra, marking the plot of Army Pvt. George Fox in Unalaska’s cemetery.But on Monday, that all changed when the decorated fallen veteran’s resting place was finally recognized.Fox is the only known Unangax̂ soldier killed fighting in World War II and any war since, and for decades he was buried in an unmarked grave. This Memorial Day, he was finally honored with a gravestone in a long-awaited burial ceremony, which drew crowds from across the state and Lower 48 to the remote Aleutian community.

Two years after becoming one of the most sealed-off locations in the United States, St. Paul Island is reopening to visitors. St. Paul Island Tour, a business within the Unangan-owned TDX Corp., is resuming its operations after a pause forced by the COVID-19 pandemic.