When the town of Skagway went to sleep on Friday, they had daily ferry service. By mid-morning the next day, that service was gone.
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities issued a notice on Saturday that there would be no ferry service to Skagway for the “foreseeable future.”
The department cited major structural damage to the state-owned ferry docking facility.
Skagway’s borough manager, Emily Deach, heard the news Saturday morning. She got a call from a DOT&PF engineer.
“They let me know that there’s an issue with the vehicle ramp and possibly the pedestrian ramp,” Deach said.
Deach said she’s not an engineer herself, but she gave a brief summary of the issue.
“My understanding is that what’s happening is the float is being pulled to the west a lot,” she said. “And because of the state of the float, and how the vehicle ramp is attached, it’s putting pressure on the mechanisms that are holding the ramp in place. So what they discovered was that those mechanisms were failing.”
Deach said DOT&PF is working with local company Hamilton Construction on a temporary fix.
The release from DOT&PF says an “an estimated timetable for structural repairs will be shared as soon as damage assessments are complete.”
Deach said the municipality is ready to help in any way that it can.
“We’ve offered all of our resources, anything they might need,” she said. “Because I think we all understand, and I think DOT and AMHS understands that this is a big deal for the community.”
The Skagway ferry dock is about 45 years old. In 2014, the dock sank and had to be refloated.
The municipality and the DOT&PF have been working on engineering plans to replace the dock. They recently co-submitted an application for a federal Port Infrastructure Development Program grant. They won’t hear until the fall if that application was successful.
In the meantime, nobody knows when the ferry that Skagway relies on will make an appearance. Last year, Skagway’s ferry transported 16,500 passengers.
Some of those passengers are Skagway School students. The high school cross country team is scheduled to leave on the ferry this Thursday for a meet in Sitka.
