Alaska Digest
Glacier deemed hazardous to visitors
VALDEZ - The Worthington Glacier has become such a hazard to visitors that the manager of its recreational site will not return next summer.
Mike Coppock said he hopes to manage another, safer glacier park site, but not the Worthington, which is easily accessible off the Richardson Highway 29 miles from Valdez at the top of Thompson Pass.
"I have real safety concerns about the place and they are extremely hard to resolve," said Coppock, 48, who has managed the concession for two summers.
The glacier has been in retreat for several years. The rate is accelerating and the rate of calving also is growing, he told the Valdez Star.
Over the summer, the glacier retreated 85 feet, he said. Coppock said he became so alarmed at the peril that he alerted the Alaska Natural History Association, which manages the park for the state.
He and his staff erected warning signs, but they had little effect, he said. Children often run around unsupervised while adults like to be photographed standing on the glacier.
"It has all the makings for a potentially bad accident," he said.
There were several near misses last summer. A kayaker paddled his way down the feeder stream at the north end of the glacier and into the glacier pond below. The next day, an ice block broke away and fell into the stream bed, filling the narrow canyon.
In another incident, a group of people had just exited the glacier when "a ton of ice came crashing down without warning," he said.
Jack Sinclair, a district ranger for the state parks division, said he does not disagree with Coppock.
"There are inherent dangers present" at the Worthington Glacier as with all glaciers, he said. Over the years, the Worthington Glacier made a gradual run-out making it easily accessible on foot.
Whooping cough breaks out among Old Believers
ANCHORAGE - State health officials are investigating an outbreak of whooping cough in three Russian Old Believer communities on the lower Kenai Peninsula.
The state health department dispatched several epidemiologists and public health nurses to the communities over the past two weeks to investigate cases of whooping cough, a bacterial respiratory infection also called pertussis.
The vaccine for whooping cough is one of several immunizations required for school attendance in Alaska, although state law allows exemptions.
Residents of those settlements sometimes choose not to immunize their children because of religious beliefs, health officials said.
By Friday, five confirmed cases of pertussis had been reported in the area of Kachemak Selo, an Old Believer community at the head of Kachemak Bay. The investigation also has spread to Voznesenka, a nearby community that interacts with Kachemak Selo, and Razdolna, said Dr. Beth Funk, medical epidemiologist.
So far, no one has died or needed hospitalization, she said.
Pertussis typically causes coughs and coldlike symptoms in adults, Funk said. It can be one of the main causes of death in young children who aren't immunized.
State buys touchscreen voting machines
ANCHORAGE - The Alaska Division of Elections bought 55 touchscreen voting machines this summer to make it easier for the blind and other disabled people to vote, even though critics claim the machines are vulnerable to error and fraud.
The state has spent almost $300,000 on the new touchscreen voting machines.
"They don't produce a voter-verifiable paper trail," said David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University. "It's a black box that you put a vote into and have no idea whether it is being recorded properly or not."
University researchers also have issued a report asserting that the Diebold Election Systems touchscreen machines have serious software problems that expose them to tampering.
But election officials in Alaska, and elsewhere in the nation, insist the machines can be trusted.
The state needs to put at least one touchscreen voting machine in each of its 446 election precincts by 2006 to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, said Laura Glaiser, director of the Alaska Division of Elections.
The machines will be added to the Accu-vote optical scanners that most polling places use now.
Probe uncovers more complaints about officer
NOME - Detectives looking into charges that a Nome police officer murdered a Native woman after picking her up in his patrol car are investigating allegations from at least two women that the officer stalked them, Alaska State Troopers said.
Matthew C. Owens is charged with the murder of Sonya Ivanoff, a popular, athletic 19-year-old from Unalakleet who moved to Nome about a year ago. She died from a .22-caliber bullet to her head. Her body was found by a search team member in a gravel pit on the outskirts of Nome on Aug. 13.
Trooper Sgt. Randy McPherron said Friday two women, both of them Natives, came forward during the investigation into Ivanoff's death.