Major quake recorded in Alaska's Aleutian Islands

ANCHORAGE, Alaska A magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Alaska's Aleutian Islands with a jet-like rumble Friday that shook homes and sent residents scrambling for cover.

"I heard it coming," said Kathleen Nevzoroff, who was sitting at her computer in the tiny Aleutians village of Adak when the major temblor struck at 8:25 a.m. local time, getting stronger and stronger. "I ran to my doors and opened them and my chimes were all ringing."

There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the earthquake, which occurred in a seismically active region. It was strongly felt in Atka, an Aleut community of 64 people, and the larger Aleutian town of Adak, where 320 people live. The quake was followed by multiple aftershocks, including one measuring magnitude 5.1.

The earthquake didn't trigger a tsunami warning, but Michael Burgy with the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said the center is monitoring for potential tsunamis caused by landslides, either on land or under water.

The Alaska Earthquake Information Center said the primary earthquake was centered 67 miles southwest of Adak, about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Shaking lasted up to one minute.

The quake occurred offshore in the subduction zone where plates of the Earth's crust grind and dive. By contrast, California's most famous fault line, the San Andreas, is a strike-slip fault. Quakes along strike-slip faults tend to move horizontally.

In Adak, city clerk Debra Sharrah was upstairs in her two-story townhome getting ready for work when she heard a noise.

"I thought it was my dog running up the stairs," she said. "It kept making noise and then it got louder. So then all of a sudden the rumbling started."

The four-plex of townhomes was shaking and swaying as Sharrah and her dog, Pico, dashed out the door. It seemed like the building moved for a long time, but the only thing disturbed in her home was a stepstool that fell over.

"Nothing fell off my walls, and the wine glasses didn't go out of the hutch or anything," said Sharrah, who moved to the island community from Montana's Glacier National Park area almost two years ago.

In Atka, Nevzoroff manages the village store and expected to find goods had flown off the shelves. But nothing was amiss.

"Everything seems to be okay," she said.

The communities are located in a sparsely populated region and both played roles in World War II.

Atka residents were displaced during the war, relocating to Southeast Alaska so the U.S. government could demolish the village to prevent the Japanese from seizing it as they had other Aleutian communities. After the war, the U.S. Navy rebuilt the community and residents returned. Today, the community is a cluster of solidly built utilitarian buildings scattered over rolling hills that turned emerald green in warmer months.

Adak, 110 miles to the west, had been home to U.S. military installations that allowed forces to wage a successful offense against the Japanese after they seized the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu. After the war, Adak was transformed into a Naval air station that served as a submarine surveillance center during the Cold War. Later, the facilities were acquired by the Aleut Corp. — a regional native corporation — in a federal land-transfer agreement. It became a city in 2001 and today retains its military appearance.

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Major quake recorded in Alaska's Aleutian Islands

ANCHORAGE, Alaska A magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Alaska's Aleutian Islands with a jet-like rumble Friday that shook homes and sent residents scrambling for cover.

"I heard it coming," said Kathleen Nevzoroff, who was sitting at her computer in the tiny Aleutians village of Adak when the major temblor struck at 8:25 a.m. local time, getting stronger and stronger. "I ran to my doors and opened them and my chimes were all ringing."

There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the earthquake, which occurred in a seismically active region. It was strongly felt in Atka, an Aleut community of 64 people, and the larger Aleutian town of Adak, where 320 people live. The quake was followed by multiple aftershocks, including one measuring magnitude 5.1.

The earthquake didn't trigger a tsunami warning, but Michael Burgy with the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said the center is monitoring for potential tsunamis caused by landslides, either on land or under water.

The Alaska Earthquake Information Center said the primary earthquake was centered 67 miles southwest of Adak, about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Shaking lasted up to one minute.

The quake occurred offshore in the subduction zone where plates of the Earth's crust grind and dive. By contrast, California's most famous fault line, the San Andreas, is a strike-slip fault. Quakes along strike-slip faults tend to move horizontally.

In Adak, city clerk Debra Sharrah was upstairs in her two-story townhome getting ready for work when she heard a noise.

"I thought it was my dog running up the stairs," she said. "It kept making noise and then it got louder. So then all of a sudden the rumbling started."

The four-plex of townhomes was shaking and swaying as Sharrah and her dog, Pico, dashed out the door. It seemed like the building moved for a long time, but the only thing disturbed in her home was a stepstool that fell over.

"Nothing fell off my walls, and the wine glasses didn't go out of the hutch or anything," said Sharrah, who moved to the island community from Montana's Glacier National Park area almost two years ago.

In Atka, Nevzoroff manages the village store and expected to find goods had flown off the shelves. But nothing was amiss.

"Everything seems to be okay," she said.

The communities are located in a sparsely populated region and both played roles in World War II.

Atka residents were displaced during the war, relocating to Southeast Alaska so the U.S. government could demolish the village to prevent the Japanese from seizing it as they had other Aleutian communities. After the war, the U.S. Navy rebuilt the community and residents returned. Today, the community is a cluster of solidly built utilitarian buildings scattered over rolling hills that turned emerald green in warmer months.

Adak, 110 miles to the west, had been home to U.S. military installations that allowed forces to wage a successful offense against the Japanese after they seized the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu. After the war, Adak was transformed into a Naval air station that served as a submarine surveillance center during the Cold War. Later, the facilities were acquired by the Aleut Corp. — a regional native corporation — in a federal land-transfer agreement. It became a city in 2001 and today retains its military appearance.

View the original article here

Major quake recorded in Alaska's Aleutian Islands

ANCHORAGE, Alaska A magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Alaska's Aleutian Islands with a jet-like rumble Friday that shook homes and sent residents scrambling for cover.

"I heard it coming," said Kathleen Nevzoroff, who was sitting at her computer in the tiny Aleutians village of Adak when the major temblor struck at 8:25 a.m. local time, getting stronger and stronger. "I ran to my doors and opened them and my chimes were all ringing."

There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the earthquake, which occurred in a seismically active region. It was strongly felt in Atka, an Aleut community of 64 people, and the larger Aleutian town of Adak, where 320 people live. The quake was followed by multiple aftershocks, including one measuring magnitude 5.1.

The earthquake didn't trigger a tsunami warning, but Michael Burgy with the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said the center is monitoring for potential tsunamis caused by landslides, either on land or under water.

The Alaska Earthquake Information Center said the primary earthquake was centered 67 miles southwest of Adak, about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Shaking lasted up to one minute.

The quake occurred offshore in the subduction zone where plates of the Earth's crust grind and dive. By contrast, California's most famous fault line, the San Andreas, is a strike-slip fault. Quakes along strike-slip faults tend to move horizontally.

In Adak, city clerk Debra Sharrah was upstairs in her two-story townhome getting ready for work when she heard a noise.

"I thought it was my dog running up the stairs," she said. "It kept making noise and then it got louder. So then all of a sudden the rumbling started."

The four-plex of townhomes was shaking and swaying as Sharrah and her dog, Pico, dashed out the door. It seemed like the building moved for a long time, but the only thing disturbed in her home was a stepstool that fell over.

"Nothing fell off my walls, and the wine glasses didn't go out of the hutch or anything," said Sharrah, who moved to the island community from Montana's Glacier National Park area almost two years ago.

In Atka, Nevzoroff manages the village store and expected to find goods had flown off the shelves. But nothing was amiss.

"Everything seems to be okay," she said.

The communities are located in a sparsely populated region and both played roles in World War II.

Atka residents were displaced during the war, relocating to Southeast Alaska so the U.S. government could demolish the village to prevent the Japanese from seizing it as they had other Aleutian communities. After the war, the U.S. Navy rebuilt the community and residents returned. Today, the community is a cluster of solidly built utilitarian buildings scattered over rolling hills that turned emerald green in warmer months.

Adak, 110 miles to the west, had been home to U.S. military installations that allowed forces to wage a successful offense against the Japanese after they seized the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu. After the war, Adak was transformed into a Naval air station that served as a submarine surveillance center during the Cold War. Later, the facilities were acquired by the Aleut Corp. — a regional native corporation — in a federal land-transfer agreement. It became a city in 2001 and today retains its military appearance.

View the original article here

The battle over Alaska's salmon

24 July 2013 Last updated at 00:28 GMT By Stephen Sackur BBC News, Alaska Alaska's fishing community and mining industry are engaged in a bitter battle, with fishermen arguing that a planned gold mine risks poisoning the waters where Pacific salmon spawn. The debate has forced Alaskans to consider what kind of future they want for their wild and sparsely-populated state.

In summer camps across America youngsters hike, swim and toast marshmallows by the fire. But they play by different rules in south west Alaska.

In Dillingham, a small town at the mouth of the Ishugak river, children as young as six go to camp to learn how to gut and bone a sockeye salmon.

Youngsters who show promise with the filleting knife are introduced to the joys of the smokehouse. Nobody goes home without a strip of dried salmon to chew on.

Kim Williams, mother of six, camp leader, subsistence fisherwoman and stalwart of the Yupik tribe, says it is vital to pass on practical skills to the next generation.

"Our people have lived off fishing for thousands of years," she tells me, as a rich aroma of woodsmoke and singed salmon meat hangs in the air. "It's our past and our future."

Kim and her family catch salmon the old-fashioned way. They string up a net close to the bank of the Ishugak and haul it in when they see fish thrashing in the mesh.

It is a satisfyingly simple art, and it works.

But the salmon harvest is also a billion-dollar business. Commercial fishermen from Seattle and beyond haul in tens of millions of fish between June and September.

The catch is sliced, diced, canned, frozen, smoked and salted with relentless efficiency in processing plants along the Kvichak estuary. Then it is shipped all over the world.

Continue reading the main story Insight and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers from around the worldBroadcast on Radio 4 and BBC World ServiceThe indigenous fishermen, the commercial fleet and even the sports anglers who breeze into Dillingham in their private planes all abide by the strict rules imposed by Alaska's fish management team.

If the numbers of salmon reaching the spawning grounds are down, then fishing permits are suspended. First priority is always given to the long term sustainability of the world's greatest wild salmon run.

But for how much longer can that be guaranteed?

A cloud of uncertainty hangs over this corner of Alaska.

It comes in the form of a plan to dig one of the world's biggest copper and gold mines in the upper reaches of the Bristol Bay catchment area.

The Pebble mining company - part owned by the British minerals giant Anglo American - wants to extract billions of tons of copper ore from a hole in the ground at least two miles wide and half a mile deep.

The mine could be worth up to half a trillion dollars.

Pebble's boss John Shively invites me into his helicopter to tour the site. We swoop over an intricate tapestry of lakes, hills and narrow streams.

An empty land where bears, caribou and wolves have no need to fear human predators.

"The pit will be over there" he says pointing along a shallow valley. "And the waste will be held in reservoirs over there."

John Shively believes a giant copper mine generating billions of tons of potentially toxic waste is exactly what this wilderness needs.

"If I thought this mine would poison the water, and harm the fishery do you think I'd be here?" he asks.

"This mine will give the local tribes what they really need. Jobs and the chance of a better life."

That is not the way the fishing folk of Bristol Bay see it.

They have heard independent scientists question the wisdom of storing billions of tons of dangerous waste in vast reservoirs close to a geological fault line.

And they worry about the leaching of copper compounds and sulphuric acid into the river network.

Outside her smokehouse on the Ishugak river Kim Williams puts it simply: "The salmon is our source of life. We cannot put it at risk."

She has even been to London to tell Anglo American's board to dump its interest in Pebble mine.

The battle between fishing community and mining industry has divided opinion. Even the dominant Republican Party is hopelessly split.

Rick Halford, a former president of the state senate and architect of a raft of pro-mining legal reforms has had a change of heart.

"I never met a mine I didn't like" he tells me ruefully, "until now".

He invites me to enjoy the magnificent view from his lakeside home outside Dillingham.

"I'm no tree-hugger," he says "but Pebble is the wrong mine, in the wrong place".

A proud and sustainable fishing community locked in a conflict with a mining industry promising a once in a lifetime opportunity bonanza.

Alaska has a choice to make, which will do much to define the future of America's last frontier.

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