Joey Chang says he was getting ready to depart the Hubbard state ferry after it docked in Kake on Saturday when suddenly the ship was no longer at the dock.
“We are getting ready to get into the vehicle and we saw the opening of the ramp, and suddenly the whole ferry was moving away from the dock, and everybody got shocked and pretty much everyone froze up,” he said. “The north wind was blowing so hard it pushed the ferry away from the dock.”
“And then I was looking at the rope, because the rope was still holding, and I was like ‘this is going to break very soon.’ And it was just as I thinking about that right there that it just snapped.”
Chang, the pastor at Kake Memorial Presbyterian Church, unexpectedly found himself back in Juneau on Saturday night along with roughly 30 other people and an estimated 20 vehicles that weren’t able to get off the ferry in Kake when high winds broke a cable on the dock there that prevented the ship from being properly secured.
The mishap stranded people on both ends — visiting participants of a school volleyball tournament in Kake scheduled to board to get home, as well as the residents returning from Juneau who in many cases had loaded their vehicles with food for Thanksgiving celebrations in the village. Alaska Marine Highway System officials helped coordinate flights to get the volleyball participants to their hometowns, and are now attempting to make hasty dock repairs to allow the Hubbard to return to Kake either Wednesday or Saturday.
Chang, in an interview Sunday, said the aborted voyage has already forced the cancellation of an annual multi-church community Thanksgiving worship gathering scheduled during the day that typically involves about 150 people. The hope is to reschedule it when the Hubbard — and supplies being brought aboard it — eventually reaches the village.
An aerial view of Kake in 2014. (James Brooks / CC BY 2.0)
In the meantime, he and his family have a place to stay in Juneau, but he said it’s a more difficult situation for some residents facing the expense and uncertainties of a stay that could last a week — along with possibly celebrating Thanksgiving away from home.
“Some of them have a connection like we have, and they have the family or friends they can stay with in Juneau, but like I said a lot of them may have to pay extra money for hotels and food and other things, and it’s not going to be easy for them,” he said.
Residents in Juneau and Kake sought help on social media, and from local organizations and companies, to safely store the large amount of perishable foods some people were bringing to the village as well as assist them with other practical arrangements.
Among those offering assistance was Tlingit and Haida’s Public Safety Department, which in a Facebook post offered storage space at its emergency operations center in Lemon Creek. AMHS and other officials said they were in discussions with Alaska Seaplanes and private catamaran operators about possible transport options for people not wanting to wait until the Hubbard can reach Kake.
“It’s just a day-by-day thing and just keeping our fingers crossed,” said Kake Mayor Lloyd Davis at midday Sunday, shortly after picking some people up at the Kake Airport. “(Alaska) Seaplanes is obviously busy getting some folks home. But you’re still going to have that handful of folks that are going to wait for this ferry because they want to come home with their vehicle and whatnot there because they have a ton of stuff in it too. So hopefully they could get a fix as soon as possible, and we could get back on schedule here.”
The mishap at the Kake ferry dock occurred due to winds gusting to 50 miles per hour — about twice the forecasted speed — which damaged a vessel mooring wire on the dock, said Danielle Tessen, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, in an interview Sunday.
“The vessel couldn’t be secured to the dock” with that break, she said. While the ship is secured with multiple lines “once one breaks they kind of all impact one another. And so it wasn’t like you can’t just not connect one.”
Unable to depart Kake on Saturday because of the breakage were about three dozen students, coaches, referees and other visiting participants in the volleyball tournament, said Kake City School District Superintendent Anji Gallanos on Sunday.
“One of many parts for us was that we now, as a small community with no restaurants and no extra support, were having these teams and their coaches,” she said.”We were making sure that they were fed and having to come together to make sure that we got them taken care of.”
DOT coordinated and is paying for flights for students and other visitors involved in the volleyball tournament, with bookings for all of the people involved in place as of midday Sunday, Tessen said.
A total of 33 people who departed from Juneau for Kake early Saturday morning were forced to make the return trip after the aborted docking, Tessen said. A special sailing by the Hubbard from Juneau to Kake will take place if the dock can be repaired in time, otherwise the current plan is to sail there next Saturday.
Several Kake residents said the mishap shows how essential reliable ferry service to the community is, and the hardships that are being experienced by reductions in both the reliability and frequency of sailings in recent years. It is a shared concern among several small Southeast communities that may get a single sailing a month — if that — during the winter season in particular.
“Our community has been advocating with the Alaska Marine Highway System for nearly 10 years to have more frequent ferries,” Gallanos said. “We only get one ferry a month. So that’s one of the reasons this is a compounded problem, is just this ongoing lack of ferry service.”
Tessen noted the Kake ferry dock is among the AMHS facilities scheduled for upgrades as part of the revised Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan for 2024-27 adopted earlier this year.
Meanwhile, a shorter-term dilemma is trying to get 13 turkeys and other fixings back to Kake for a holiday fundraising dinner scheduled next Saturday that typically serves 100 to 150 people, said Heather Witcher, co-captain with her husband for The Salvation Army Kake Corps. She said they were fortunate because they were able to get accommodations — for themselves and the turkeys — from their Salvation Army counterparts in Juneau, but holiday plans back home are now uncertain for people besides themselves.
“The concern is and the thought is that Kake isn’t enough on the priority list of destinations to really push (the dock repairs) for us,” she said. “And that’s concerning because we have a lot of people — there were several families from the Lower 48 who had traveled (here) — and if they go back on the 30th they’ve missed the holidays with their families and that’s just heartbreaking.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
