Fall, Sail, & Fly...Road to Cold Bay (part 2)

As I mentioned in Part 1 of “Fall, Sail, & Fly…Road to Cold Bay” getting medical care when you live in the Bush can be rather tricky. Just getting into Anchorage to the hospital was a harrowing experience.

Keri was already in Anchorage at a conference, so he was waiting for me at the airport when I got in from Cold Bay. We went right to the emergency room with notes from the King Cove Clinic and a request to find out why I had blacked out and make sure there was no further damage. Alaska medical care works in strange and mysterious ways when it comes to Bush people. Since it costs a fortune for the trip (my round trip cost $1400) and it is difficult to get into town (Anchorage), doctors pay attention when they get a patient from the Bush. What would normally take two or three months to complete, these guys will cram into a single week.

Every day, I had multiple appointments at some medical building or another. They’d shuffle me into one room, and when they were done, would send me down the hall for the next one. It was a very impressive system. But, after a week of being poked, prodded, wired, scanned, and pictured, the medical experts all shrugged their shoulders and said, “Heck if I know why you blacked out.” Wow.

At first, we were very frustrated. We’d spent a fortune for an answer and hadn’t gotten anywhere. But once we got our heads on straight again, we realized that this was actually really good news. It means that my heart and my brain aced all of the tests. Now I just need to get the rest of me to catch up. Working fulltime while being a fulltime online student had really taken its toll. I’d cut back on sleep until it was nearly nonexistent, my eating habits were appalling, and I was chronically dehydrated. No wonder my body rebelled. So, I have become a health nut. I eat healthy, I drink lots, I exercise almost daily, and I actually sleep at night. And I haven’t felt so good in years!

But there is more to this story.

A couple of weeks after my terrifying experience getting to Cold Bay, there was a serious accident on the dock here in King Cove. It was storming, and one of the fishermen slipped while climbing a ladder. His foot slipped down on one side while his body fell down the other. He ended up with a compound fracture of both the bones in his lower leg, and he needed immediate medical help. It was dark and stormy, so they couldn’t get a plane or a helicopter in. Instead, they located a fishing boat that could come pick him up. The poor guy waited for several hours for the boat, and then it was a 2 ½ hour boat trip just to get him to Cold Bay where they could fly him out. He was lifted in and out of the boat with a crane whose regular job is to move crab pods.  

The truly insane part is that Cold Bay is only a few miles away from King Cove “as the crow flies.” The boats have to go around a big chunk of land, so it takes them 2 ½ hours; a flight goes the direct route and takes less than 10 minutes. Because of the frequent winds and storms we have here, medical emergencies can be a big problem. So the tribe has tried several different things. They bought a hovercraft, but that didn’t work because it turns out the hovercraft can’t operate in bad weather either. The ferry only runs every two weeks and only during the summer months…it docks here a total of 9 times this coming season…so unless you happen to have your emergency during one of the year’s 9 docking days, you are again up the creek. And sometimes even the fishing boats can’t get to Cold Bay. So the tribe spent millions of dollars building the first part of a single-lane gravel road that would run 20 miles from King Cove to Cold Bay.

The snag is that there is a small chunk of land standing in the way. There are 206 acres that belong to Fish and Game. The tribe offered to trade 56,400 acres of prime wetland if they could just have access through those 206 acres…that is 300 times the acreage being asked for…but Fish and Game has refused.

What I find interesting is that a few years ago, when a jetliner leaving New York hit geese and the pilot made a miraculous landing in the Hudson River saving everyone on board, Fish and Game went into the nearby preserve and attempted to kill 1,000 geese. Apparently, the decision-makers fly in and out of New York. I guess not many of them fly between King Cove and Cold Bay, because around here, people’s lives are worth less than a bird’s.

So, living in King Cove remains a risky proposition. I hope the birds appreciate it.

Follow up note:

Alaska’s senator (Senator Murkowski) is trying to get the Department of Interior to allow the road. If you would like to see her “speech” you can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGWXNKBA1ME&feature=youtu.be   It’s half hour long, but she has some interesting information.