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Posted by Eric Stone | Feb 26, 2021
Rotary Beach south of Saxman is also called Bugge’s Beach. It’s one of only two tested beaches in the Ketchikan area that regulators say shouldn’t be included on the EPA’s impaired waters list. (KRBD file photo)
For the fourth year in a row, weekly summer water quality tests show that most Ketchikan beaches have elevated levels of bacteria that could make people sick. That happened this year even without dozens of cruise ships sailing through the Inside Passage and discharging wastewater.
And it’s less of a surprise than you might think.
The time the Arctic Bar went in the drink
Fishermen went dipnetting for floating bottles in Thomas Basin
By DAVE KIFFER Friday PM (SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - Just about every time there is a high tide in Ketchikan Creek or a storm swells the runoff from Granite Basin, someone mentions the time the Arctic Bar literally went into the drink.
Not everyone gets the date correct, some people think it happened back in the 1930s, others are convinced it was the 1940s or 1950s. Even old photographs show up on-line indicating the wrong date(s). Here is a primer. The actual date the bar collapsed, and spilled its contents under the Stedman Street bridge into Thomas Basin? December 10, 1962.
In a normal year, the big topic of conversation would have been the heavy summer rainfall or the December deluge that threatened to cause Ketchikan Lakes Dam to breach. Or it might have been the month-long visit of Phoenix the humpback whale who bubble fed just about every day for four weeks in November at the downtown Ketchikan docks.
But in Ketchikan, in 2020, the biggest news was the same as it was all over the world, the COVID-19 Pandemic and how it changed nearly every facet of our lives over the last nine months of the year.
COVID-19 arrived in March in the First City, and, by the end of the year, more than 250 residents and travelers had tested positive. One local woman, Julie Wasuli of Saxman, died from COVID-19 in December at a hospital in Bellingham, Washington.