Three people have died and six more are injured after a passenger van rolled-over in Atka Tuesday night. Alaska State Troopers say they learned of the single vehicle crash just after 6 p.m.
(Photo by Lauren Rosenthal, KUCB – Unalaska)
The people involved in the accident are employees of Atka Pride Seafoods which is a subsidiary of the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association (APICDA). In a press release, APICDA’s Ellen Krsnak said the accident occurred when they were traveling from the processing plant to the bunkhouse for dinner. The Coast Guard has transported several of the injured parties to Anchorage.
Megan Peters is the public information officer for the Alaska State Troopers. She said Troopers will be in the village today to investigate.
“When we do have our guys flying out to remote locations a lot of times cell phone service is bad or they don’t have a radio signal there, so while our troopers are there and learning stuff and they’re able to confirm things on scene it makes it difficult to relay information to a lot of people quickly,” Peters said.
She said if phone service is bad, she does not want to tie up the lines when the troopers are trying to deal with the actual incident.
Names of the injured and deceased are being held until families can be notified.
Zoe Sobel is a reporter with Alaska's Energy Desk based in Unalaska. As a high schooler in Portland, Maine, Zoë Sobel got her first taste of public radio at NPR’s easternmost station. From there, she moved to Boston where she studied at Wellesley College and worked at WBUR, covering sports for Only A Game and the trial of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
