A deadly 2023 landslide in Wrangell, Alaska left residents without electricity, internet, television, and phones, making radio the sole source of information. KSTK received up to $90,000 from the Next Generation Warning System grant program, created by Congress in 2022 to reimburse rural and tribal public media for replacing and upgrading emergency-alert equipment. Stop-work orders and withheld federal payments have resulted in KSTK spending only about half of its award. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting sued FEMA alleging withheld funds, and subsequent congressional clawbacks further undermined station budgets and project progress.
When a deadly landslide tore through part of Wrangell, Alaska, in 2023, there was only one place people there could go for information. "We're on an island, and there's one road, and everybody that lived south of that road lost everything they lost their electricity, internet, television, phones," says Cindy Sweat, the general manager of KSTK, the community's public broadcaster. What was left, Sweat says, was the radio.
Months later, KSTK was awarded up to $90,000 in federal funding to improve that critical alert system. The money came from the Next Generation Warning System grant program, which Congress created in 2022 to reimburse the cost of replacing and upgrading equipment at public media stations that serve rural and tribal areas. But more than a year after KSTK's funding was announced, the station has only spent about half of the money it was awarded.
In March, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has been administering the program, sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency in federal court, alleging the Trump administration withheld grant funding CPB needed to pay back public media stations for investments they had made in emergency-alert systems. Then this summer, Congress clawed back public-media funding, blowing a hole in KSTK's budget.
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