6:53
Aleknagik is a small community 20 miles up the road from Bristol Bay’s western hub of Dillingham. It has around 200 residents, but no local police.
So, for years, when someone in Aleknagik called 911, the person on the other end of the line couldn’t offer direct help.
That was dangerous, said Kay Andrews, Aleknagik’s city administrator.
“Five years ago, my daughter tried to call 911, and she was told to call another number,” said Andrews. “This was an emergency. She has no means to write another number and then hang up the phone and call another number.”
The problem was that 911 calls were routed to the Dillingham police, who don’t have jurisdiction in Aleknagik, because it’s outside of Dillingham’s city limits. The issue highlighted the patchwork and often inefficient emergency-call system in rural Alaska.
The Capstone Clinic in Dillingham. Oct. 27, 2020.
Credit Izzy Ross/KDLG
Sixty percent of people 16 and older in Dillingham are now vaccinated against COVID-19. And that number will likely rise.
Dillingham plans to host a number of pop-up COVID-19 testing and vaccine clinics, which are set to start at the end of May and run through July. Interim City Manager Gregg Brelsford says the city plans to use state funding as a stopgap until federal stimulus money, called the American Rescue Plan, becomes available in mid-July.
“That’s our estimate right now, based on the information we have, Brelsford said. So we’ve structured our program to go for two months to give us a bridge between now and the time when we should get that additional money. And then we can continue the program if the city wants to at that time.”
11:14
Dillingham Interim City Manager Gregg Brelsford will leave his position next week.
Brelsford served as the Bristol Bay Borough’s manager for two years. He worked closely with Dillingham’s former city manager, Tod Larson, ahead of last year’s fishing season.
“It was very intense, it was very confusing, very fragmented, very fluid, very unpredictable, he said. So Tod and I formed a bond being the two city managers in the bay going through that together, and trying to manage the COVID risk in the first year when everything was new.”
Brelsford stepped up in January, a month after Larson left. He tackled a number of tasks during his time as Dillingham manager, including implementation of the city’s COVID-19 regulations. He said his experience in the borough gave him an understanding of what was at stake when making those decisions for small communities that see a large influx of people during the summer.
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7:27
KDLG s Izzy Ross talks to Interim City Manager Gregg Brelsford about the new emergency order.
The Dillingham City Council will vote tonight on whether to extend the city’s declaration of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic until September, including whether to extend the city manager’s emergency powers.
On Tuesday, Interim City Manager Gregg Brelsford issued an emergency order to end Dillingham’s mandatory travel quarantine for people who are fully vaccinated or who have recovered from a previous COVID-19 infection. The order takes effect at 11:59 p.m. on Friday.
It will replace the previous emergency order issued in December that shortened Dillingham’s travel quarantine to 10 days.