It’s an easy comment to toss off; but he didn’t create the system, just effectively used it as it’s designed. All congressmen scramble for money for their states. I’m reasonably confident that you can’t name one that doesn’t; I think it would be seen as non-performance by voters, and would certainly be a disservice to the residents of the state.
The “bridge to nowhere” was an aberration in an otherwise notable effort to bring home jobs to a state that was a complete backwater when he took office. Anchorage went from a town of 60,000 when I was a kid to a city of over 250,000 in the 40 years Stevens was in office. That’s may be a result of pork, but it seems to be an indication that much of the money was used to create investment and jobs.
Alaska was our last state. Alaska was granted statehood on January 3, 1959. As a territory very little money had been put into developing Alaska. There was almost no infrastructure, roads, airports, schools etc. Turning a underpopulated wilderness territory into a modern US state took a lot of money. Stevens spent his career getting Federal projects to develop Alaska and make it a modern state.
I wouldn’t defend everything he did. But, Alaska owes him a lot. Even today the infrastructure in much of Alaska is almost non existent. That’s why they travel so much by small planes.
Not only had very little money been put into Alaska, large amounts of money were taken out in the form of natural resources such as fish, timber and gold. Seattle was the chief culprit in raping the territory, but WDC was as much to blame as anybody by legislating the affairs of the place from several thousand miles away. It was a habit that carried over into statehood, and in fact continues to this day. There is no other state in the union that is subjected to this amount of federal interference in its affairs and oversight of its resources. I guess it’s the downside to taking all that money.
Because it wasn’t known whether or not Stevens was even on board until quite some time after the crash? His family didn’t even know? Would it kill them to write a few names down before takeoff? Sometimes doing the minimum required by the authorities (especially in the US) just doesn’t cut it. I don’t care if you’re Chuck Fucking Yeager, you should list passengers at a minimum.
The plane was owned (or at least chartered) by a lodge. They knew who their guests were going to be and the pilot would have had a manifest. The only unknown might have been whether or not all of the people on the manifest actually boarded the plane. A flight plan is irrelevant, since the lodge knew they were coming, who was supposed to be on board, and when they should arrive. Stevens could have been called back to Anchorage for some reason and missed the flight, hence the initial uncertainty as to his presence. I flew all over Bush Alaska on much smaller planes than that one, and it was quite common for people to miss the flights. The pilot always had a manifest, and the destination always had the same. Shit happens; people miss flights.
Indeed. Alaska is the 49th state. Hawaii, admitted in August 1959, is the 50th and last.
However, Alaska beating Hawaii to statehood took many Hawaiians by surprise. They expected to be 49th, and there’s even an old label from that time called 49th State Records, founded by Honolulu record-store owner George Ching in 1948. It specialized in classic and modern Hawaiian songs.
My Father in Law has a good friend that guides in Alaska. He and his wife live 17 miles N. of Dillingham, I think on a lake. FIL (they’re visiting us this week) called him yesterday after hearing about Stevens. The friend said of the area that it wasn’t if a plane was going to crash into the mountain but when. He and his wife heard the plane fly by yesterday evening. It doesn’t get dark until 11:30 or so but the weather was overcast so they gave each other “the look.” Later they heard planes and helicopters so they knew something had happened. They got as close as they could and saw rescuers trying to access the wreck site but because of the slope and trees 5 drops of S&R personell were made a bit away, then they hiked up to the plane.
They’re involved somehow in emergency operation for the area and said thay were not part of the rescue themselves but will be involved in its analysis and making determinations on how things will need to be changed. They also said the pilot was a substitute, that no one familiar with the terrain would have been flying low in that area like he did.
When I was flying out into bush sites, we always asked the pilot how long he’d been flying in Alaska and if he had flown to our destination site before. They were never offended by those questions, as it’s a matter of life or death up there. The paper this morning said the plane plowed a 300 foot gash in the mountainside, which sounds like either the pilot saw it at the last minute and tried to turn away, or was flying parallel to it and never saw it until the wing caught. It must have impacted on the pilot’s side, as the kid in the co-pilot seat survived.