In the wake of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s visit to their wind-swept Alaska Peninsula community in the Aleutians, King Cove residents are hanging on to the hope that Haaland will say yes to a land exchange and gravel road leading to the all-weather Cold Bay Airport.
Residents see the road as a necessity for medical evacuations during inclement weather, when it’s too dangerous for small aircraft to transport patients from King Cove to Cold Bay. In such cases the only other way to get patients to that all-weather airport is a three-hour ride on a fishing boat.
Della Trumble, chief executive officer of the King Cove Corp., said on Wednesday, April 27, that she’s not sure how she feels at this point. “It’s gone on way too long,” said Trumble, of the community’s campaign to put through the road, “All we can do is remain hopeful and wait and see.”
Aleut people have lived in King Cove for over 4,000 years. For the past four decades tribal and community leaders have been advocating for safe ground access for medical evacuations to the airport at Cold Bay.
The King Cove health clinic has no full-time doctor. For a higher level of care patients must travel 625 miles to Anchorage via the Cold Bay Airport. Stormy weather prevents air ambulances from flying into King Cove and the Coast Guard, if available, flies into King Cove to assist with medevacs. Since December of 2013 there have been 175 medevacs. The deaths of patients who were not transported due to weather conditions had climbed to 18 since 1980.
On April 20 Haaland flew into King Cove accompanied by Sen, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to listen to residents’ pleas for the road corridor, which if approved would pass through a very small section of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Several conservation entities have maintained that putting a road through Izembek, which they consider ecologically unique, would do immeasurable harm to eel grass that migrating waterfowl feed on as they migrate north every year. The conservation entities oppose the swap of lands owned by the King Cove Corp. for acreage in Izembek.
“We’re not asking for a lot,” said King Cove community health aide Bonita Babcock told Haaland during her visit. “We’re just asking for the federal government to care about our people enough to permit a dirt road across our ancestral land so that we can get our patients over to a medevac plane (in nearby Cold Bay, the hub airport in the Aleutian Islands, about 25 miles away).”
Babcock told Haaland that her taking time to come to King Cove was a big deal. “Please take our feelings and know that this is coming from the bottom or our hearts. We’re doing our best to serve our patients, but we just need a little help,” she said.
Haaland also heard from many other residents, including Etta Kuzakin, president of the Agdaagux Tribe, who related her own traumatic medevac in 2013 when she was pregnant with her youngest daughter. She had gone into premature labor during a storm and was stabilized at the clinic, while waiting for an air ambulance. The Coast Guard helicopter from Kodiak finally arrived and transported Kuzakin to Anchorage, where her daughter, Sunnie Rae, was born 30 minutes later.
King Cove Mayor Warren Wilson shared a story about his 80-year-old mother who was medevaced after contracting cellulitis. Because air ambulance planes are unable to land at the King Cove airport after dark, the Coast Guard was called and transported her to Cold Bay. A few hours later, an air ambulance plane arrived and flew her to an Anchorage hospital, where she was able to fully recover.
While in King Cove Haaland also visited the local school, where the King Cove Unangan Dancers performed for her. The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, conducted an ancestral naming ceremony. Haaland was named Agdaagum Ax^aasniikangin (translation: Mother Bear). She became emotional during the ceremony and spoke about it at the King Cove Senior Elder Center. “I’ve had a wonderful time visiting with all of you and seeing the kids dance for us. That was really lovely. I got a name, which is a tremendous honor to me.”
In her remarks during the visit Murkowski said federal and state officials take the obligation for health and safety of residents very seriously.
“You are a long ways from Washington, D.C., but you are of no less value than anybody else in America,” she said. “Anyone else in America would have the ability to have a small, connector road, linking them to safety. Thank you for speaking from your heart and for sharing the best of King Cove with our very important visitor.”
