Ketchikan landslide knocks out substation, disaster declared, $1.59M bill

A landslide knocked out Ketchikan's Ward Cove electrical substation on Oct. 15, forcing city and borough leaders to declare a disaster and warn residents that power to the north end of the island could be at risk through the winter.

The slide hit the Ketchikan Public Utilities substation at about 4 p.m. during a storm that dropped more than six inches of rain over 24 hours and produced wind gusts up to 58 mph, according to National Weather Service data cited in the Ketchikan Daily News. Trees, rocks and mud moved the substation's control house eight feet off its foundation and damaged electrical cables, the cable vault, the ground grid, retaining walls and the security fence. No one was hurt, Ketchikan Fire Department Fire Chief Rick Hines said.

For now, the lights are staying on. KPU crews rerouted power through the Bethe and Point Higgins substations, according to the city's public information officer, Kim Simpson. But that workaround is not built to last. City officials said relying on it beyond a few months risks further outages, with the heaviest exposure falling on residents in the borough's North Tongass Service Area, the stretch of road and neighborhoods north of downtown that depend on the damaged substation.

The repair bill is an early estimate but a big one: up to $1.59 million, more than KPU and the city have on hand, according to the joint declaration signed Oct. 16 by Ketchikan Gateway Borough Mayor Austin Otos and City of Ketchikan Mayor Bob Sivertsen. The 12-kilovolt feeder breaker, the battery bank, a station light and the power transformer all need to be replaced. Simpson said repairs could take "a series of months," and that construction may bring lane closures on North Tongass Highway but is unlikely to close the road outright.

The declaration is not final yet. It needs sign-off from both the Ketchikan City Council, which was scheduled to take it up Oct. 19, and the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly, scheduled for Oct. 20. Once ratified, the declaration opens the door to state and federal disaster assistance for the repair costs, which local officials say exceed what KPU and the city can cover on their own.

The timing adds a twist for ratepayers. Just a week before the landslide, on Oct. 9, the City of Ketchikan's canvass board certified the results of a vote authorizing KPU to borrow up to $25 million for aging electrical infrastructure, including the Ward Cove substation. That borrowing is repaid through utility bills, not property taxes, which means Ketchikan households already approved tapping their own power bills to shore up the same system now damaged by the slide. How the landslide repair costs interact with that bond authority, and whether ratepayers see it on a bill, has not been detailed publicly.

Ketchikan is a city of about 7,632 people, according to the state's Community Database Online, with a median household income of $85,275 and seasonal sales tax that runs 3% in winter months and 5.5% from April through September. A sustained outage on the island's north end would land on a community where roughly 530 of the city's nearly 3,944 housing units already sit vacant and where the local economy leans heavily on tourism and the harbor.

Officials are not treating this as a one-time event. The joint declaration warns that additional slide damage to the Ward Cove substation is possible as fall and winter storms continue, with the potential to knock out power for a larger area of the island's north end. The National Weather Service had Ketchikan and nearby Metlakatla under a high wind warning for roughly 19 hours around the time of the slide, and forecasters were tracking another low-pressure system expected to bring more heavy rain and wind to Southeast Alaska in the following week.

As a precaution tied to a 2024 landslide in the same area, police shut down the Third Avenue Bypass from about 5 p.m. Oct. 15 to 8 a.m. Oct. 16, according to Ketchikan Police Department Deputy Chief Derek McGarrigan. No boats broke loose from the harbor during the storm, Harbormaster James Wilson said, and the borough's Department of Public Works reported only minor damage, limited to backstop netting at Norman Walker Field.

What happens next depends on the two votes this week. If the city council and borough assembly ratify the declaration, Ketchikan becomes eligible to seek state and federal help covering a repair bill local officials say they cannot absorb alone, a bill that, for now, falls on a utility whose customers just voted to take on new debt for the same aging grid.