Accidents don’t blemish snowy holiday weekend

Andrew Wellner

Frontiersman

WASILLA — If the unofficial traffic accident numbers out of Wasilla are any indication, the Thanksgiving weekend proved a relatively slow one.

“We had no fatalities or major injury accidents over the weekend, and actually fewer tickets and arrests,” Wasilla Police Department Deputy Chief Greg Wood said.

Wood said he was impressed by the figures in his department’s press releases. A quick tally showed about a half dozen accidents from last Tuesday through Sunday. Two were low-speed, parking lot-type accidents.

“That seems a little slow for me as far as wrecks, and I like it,” Wood said.

Especially, he said, for a weekend that brings out the most shoppers in the Valley’s commerce center with snow falling all the while.

So does that mean people are slowing down?

“I think they’re just paying attention altogether. I don’t know that ‘slowing down’ would be accurate,” Wood said.

Other Valley agencies report similar numbers. Palmer Police Department, in its batch of reports from the past week, didn’t list a single accident over the weekend.

With the Alaska State Troopers, numbers were expectedly higher — the agency’s larger coverage area means there are more roads to cover. But it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Troopers didn’t report a single accident call on Thanksgiving Day, but had 14 between Wednesday and Sunday.

Two of those were moose collisions and three were chalked up to drivers leaving the road and going into ditches. Four drivers were hospitalized, three treated for minor injuries.

The weekend, at least in Wasilla, also saw the latest incarnation of a program Wasilla Sgt. Kelly Swihart has been running since the summer. Dubbed the Multi-Jurisdictional Task Force, the program draws officers from all Valley agencies to run overtime patrols during high-traffic holidays and weekends.

Wood said this go-around the program ran somewhat lean. Four days of planned enforcement were scaled back to two. He chalks it up to the flu or whatever bug it is that’s been going around the Valley lately.

“There were two days, or 24 hours, there where we didn’t have people that we thought we were going to have,” he said.

Troopers and Palmer had the same staffing problems, Wood said. The Houston Police Department, which participated in the past, currently doesn’t have any officers on staff.

But Palmer managed to send some extra hands, as did the state’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement office.

And, Wood said, the Task Force is coming back strong in December, planning events for multiple weeks during the month. He’ll get the word out so people know the task force will be active.

“We’re not out there to catch people, we’re out there to hinder or deter them from driving drunk or not wearing seatbelts,” Wood said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.