Recognizing Igiugig, Alaska
Floor Speech
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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, it is Thursday, and as you know, it is one of my favorite times of the week.
The Presiding Officer has the good fortune of listening to a number of the ``Alaskan of the Week'' speeches when I get to come down to the floor--typically every Thursday--to talk about a person or group of people who are doing great things for my State. As I said, so many of my colleagues here--even some of the reporters--know this is the person we call our Alaskan of the Week, but sometimes we call them our Alaskans of the Week.
This week, we are going plural in a big way. This week, we are recognizing an entire community for how this community--the whole community--banded together to literally help save a young child who was sick and needed medical attention.
Before I get into the story, let me say that, in Alaska, community is everything. Living in one of the most magnificent places in the world is not without its challenges. We depend on each other. Communities often come together to help each other. Typically, in our rural communities, traditional knowledge is critical and so is hard-won ingenuity and determination to overcome many of the challenges in living in the great State of Alaska.
I would like to transport you to one of those communities. It is the village of Igiugig in Southwest Alaska. Rich in Native traditions, Igiugig is home to around 70 year-round residents, growing to over 200 in the summer months.
The name ``Igiugig'' originated from a Yupik word meaning ``like a throat that swallows water,'' referring to the village's location where the Kvichak River meets Iliamna.
Going all the way back to the purchase of Alaska from Russia over 150 years ago, Igiugig has maintained a commercial fishing and subsistence- based economy. They have been incredibly innovative with alternative energy there--wind and hydro--and most importantly, this community has maintained a strong sense of connection with each other, which is so important for communities like this. This is evidenced by what happened just a few weeks ago when a young girl needed to be airlifted out of the community to Anchorage--some 250 miles away--for medical help, and nearly every member of the community pitched in to help.
What happened? Here is what happened. On the night of August 28--so about 3 or 4 weeks ago--around 11:30 a.m., the Tribal administrator and village council vice president Karl Hill was sitting at home when he saw the LifeMed Alaska flight, which he knew was coming in to help this young girl, circling above the small runway.
Over 200 of our communities aren't connected by roads. They aren't connected by roads, so a lot of them have very small airports and landing strips.
Karl got this phone call when the pilot was above circling. There was a problem with the runway lights; they weren't working. He ran out to the airport to try to turn the lights on manually. That didn't work, so he got into his plane--he was one of only two pilots in the village with a plane. He got on the plane just to talk to the pilot, who was circling above, over the headset. That pilot who was on the medevac flight told him he was getting low on fuel. He wouldn't be able to circle much longer, and he couldn't land. But this young girl needed help as soon as possible.
In so many of our Native communities and rural communities, there is no hospital. There is barely even a medical clinic sometimes. So she needed to be medevacked.
While Karl communicated with the pilot over his headset, other community members began calling people in the community asking for help. Ida Nelson made calls and jumped on her four-wheeler and headed to the airport. Community leader Christina Salmon, whose sister is Alexanna Salmon--who was our Alaskan of the Week in 2017, by the way-- made around 32 phone calls. Health aide Amanda Bybee, Jeff Bringhurst, and so many others started calling and rallying this community, and they all came out. They all came out in any kind of vehicle with lights that they had--trucks, cars, ATVs, kids on four-wheelers, many still in their pajamas. This was in the middle of the night. They arrived to provide enough light on the runway for the pilot to see the landing strip. They staggered the vehicles facing east and running the whole length of the runway, lighting the medevac pilot's way.
They waited intensely. Ida Nelson told a reporter:
I was anxious and nervous. . . . I was like, ``so what if that was my baby (waiting for that) plane?'' What if it was my young girl who needed lifesaving help?
They waited for the plane to touch down, for the girl to be transferred, and for the plane to take off again. All of this happened with the lights provided by the community in a makeshift lighting of the runway.
By this time, it was around a little past 1:30, closer to 2 o'clock, but when the plane took off, the community, of course, was in a celebratory mood.
``We were pumped up,'' Karl Hill said. ``It was really an amazing feat that we were able to pull together so quickly'' in the middle of the night. He added, ``It was really a nice evening.''
That young girl who needed to be medevacked and airlifted in Anchorage is now back in the community, and she has recovered, thank God.
LifeMed Alaska, which provided the medevac, posted a photo on social media with the following caption: ``What appears to be a blurry, dark photo is actually a view of what an amazing community can do with a lot of determination,'' lighting a runway, saving a life. Indeed.
We are so proud to be a State full of such tight-knit communities that work together every day to make Alaska so special. We are particularly proud as we recount the events of August 28 in Igiugig and so grateful to everyone in the community who came out in the middle of the night, some in their pajamas, to make sure that young girl could get the medical help she needed.
Thank you to Igiugig for being such an amazing community with great determination, great heart, and great innovation. Congratulations to all of you for being our Alaskans of the Week.
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