Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Sept. 27, 1967

Cable TV will be a reality on Oct. 1, operator Bob Becker said Friday. At that time video transmissions will be made regularly for those who have hooked onto the line.

Becker said that most people who have already signed up for cable installation will have been connected by Oct. 1 and that there was still time for others to sign-up before he completed present hook-ups and left town. His plan is to return to town at intervals and hook up others who have expressed interest.

Background music is already operating on one channel.

Sept. 24 1992

Biologists and fishermen in Haines say the state abused its emergency authority in rebuilding the Haines Highway near 13 Mile and destroyed valuable fisheries habitat while bypassing local review.

State transportation officials have deflected the criticism as a misunderstanding and defended their work, saying that later habitat mitigation will mean a "net gain" for anadromous fish.

"This is the most dramatic impact we've had on habitat in many, many years and (Fish and Game supervisors) have not even come up to view it," said Haines-based state commercial fisheries biologist Ray Staska.

Extensive fill was placed in the Klehini River and 31 Mile Creek to build a new roadbed for the realigned roadway. Local biologist said that earthwork went against their previous recommendations for choosing a new highway route and nearly eliminated a stream that had offered about 3,000 feet of salmon spawning and rearing habitat.

Sept. 27, 2007

Dave Pahl is planning to display a new "dog-saving hammer" at his Hammer Museum after a Hoonah man saved Pahl's Australian shepherd from a sinking truck last Friday by breaking a window with a hammer-shaped piece of driftwood.

Pahl was hooking a trailer to his truck at the Small Boat Harbor ramp when the vehicle jumped over a tire chock and rolled into the harbor. Dean "Deano" Sharclane and Charles Wheaton, who were on the dock looking for deckhand work, heard the commotion and saw Pahl's wife, Carol Pahl, next to the sinking vehicle.

Wheaton, who can't swim, urged his friend to help. "I said 'Deano, nobody's doing nothing. You know what to do. Go do it.'"

The 51-year-old Hoonah man stripped off his coat and dove into the water, swimming from the dock to the boat ramp, where the truck was partially submerged. The family dog Polly remained trapped inside.

Trying and failing to open the truck's doors, Sharclane started beating on the driver's side window, when somebody threw him a piece of driftwood.

"If it wasn't shaped like a hammer, I don't know if I could have broken the window," said Sharclane, who shattered the glass on the third hit.