KNBA News for Thursday November 5, 2015
Bethel fire update
By Anna Rose MacArthur, KYUK
The city of Bethel plans to seek disaster assistance from the state in the wake of a disastrous fire that destroyed two schools and emptied student housing.
Flames broke out early Tuesday morning in the Kilbuk campus, which houses a Yupik emersion school and the Kuskokwim Learning Academy. Students in dormitories evacuated the KLA dorms around 3:45 Tuesday morning after the fire alarm sounded. Most exited wearing pajamas. KLA is a residential, alternative high school.
Joshua Gill is with the Lower Kuskokwim School District. The immersion school is a charter elementary Yup’ik school.
“The actual immersion school is flat. The immersion school itself k-6 is not standing,” said Gill.
The operation and maintenance sections of the campus and the lockers holding the students’ school supplies were also destroyed.
The wing housing the media center containing Yup’ik artifacts and hundreds of Yup’ik elder interviews, is still standing, although heavy smoke and water damage is expected. The Yup’ik instructional materials are lost
“There was a lot of age in those materials and a lot of personal blood, sweat and tears put into them that we’re definitely not going to be able to replace. But until we get in there and assess, we really don’t know. That was all created in-house here in LKSD with our folks,” said Gill.
The KLA school and dorms are standing but inoperable due to heavy smoke and water damage.
The students were taken to a school district building where social workers are counseling the students.
The Bethel fire department received the call at 3:46 a.m. and responded immediately and attempted to contain the fire, but it had spread inside the building. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Tasing video
By Robert Woolsey KCAW
A video now making the rounds on Facebook and YouTube shows a Mt. Edgecumbe High School student stripped to his underwear and restrained by three Sitka Police Department officers while one shocks him with a Taser several times. One officer yells a slur afterward the officers finish tasering the man.
The video of a September, 2014 incident was posted last week by a Sitka man, Alexander Allison, a middle school teacher, who obtained it from a defense attorney.
The man, a student at the time, tasered by police is Franklin Hoogendorn, an Alaska Native. Sitka Police Chief Sheldon Schmitt says the video does not tell the whole story
"What you are seeing on the video is a culmination of a longer contact,” said Schmitt.
Schmidt says Hoogendorn was attempting underage drinking outside a Sitka bar at the time of his arrest, and was combatative during and after the arrest.
Schmitt says, he stands by his officers' actions.
"According to the officers, he was resisting in the jail cell. He was using his arms and his legs to not comply. And he was doing so with force. The officer mentioned several times that he was a very strong young man,” said Schmitt.
The department investigated and found the three officers involved did not use excessive force, said Schmitt.
Chief Schmitt says his department has worked ceaselessly to build bridges in the community and that he’s willing to talk about this topic with anyone. He also concedes that things could have been done differently.
Big Bob Aiken
By Lori Townsend APRN
A legend of traditional Alaska Native games has died. Big Bob Aiken, known as the 'The World's Largest Eskimo' still held records for the Indian and Eskimo stick pull competitions. He believed deeply in the original purpose of the games. In a phone conversation last July from the World Eskimo Indian Olympics or WEIO games in Fairbanks, he said the games were meant to be friendly competition that tested strength and revealed who would be a good hunter.
Lou Freedman worked as a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News in the late 80s and became a friend of Bob Aiken as he covered him in Fairbanks at the WEIO games. He said although Aiken didn't have his own children, he cared for all children involved in the games and was an important diplomat.
"The kids would swarm around him. He was interacting with everybody. You know, it was sort of like 'we can't make a decision until we find out what Bob thinks about it. And he was that kind of fella, he just stood out with a big personality to go with his big size,” said Freedman.
Bob Aiken was a life long Barrow resident until the last few years when he had to live in Anchorage for dialysis treatments after he lost a kidney. In recent months he had also developed a heart problem. Freedman says even with his health trouble, he never missed the games and acted as an MC, or an official and remained a large figure both physically, at 6 foot 4 and as a champion of performing the games correctly.
Bob Aiken was 62 years old and died on Tuesday.