Fired Alaska Workers Speak Out About Chaos

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Created on Monday, 10 March 2025 15:30

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By CORRINE SMITH Alaska Beacon

Federal workers across Alaska regions, agencies, and areas of expertise have been fired as part of the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency” cost-cutting efforts, leaving many in a state of uncertainty, frustration and limbo. 

Three of those former employees spoke with the Alaska Beacon about the work they did, the experience of losing their positions and their insights into how the job losses will impact Alaska.

Kitty Sopow is one, fired from her job with the National Weather Service based in Nome. 

She was given warning of her impending termination — a complete surprise after more than four years with the agency. The next day, a Bering Air plane carrying 10 people went missing.

“So they needed me,” she said. “They didn’t fire me.”

“Everybody was able to be in the incident command center and ask questions to the meteorologist,” she said, recalling that day. “Because there was a storm coming, and there was literally only a handful of hours in which the helicopters could be utilized safely before there was like a four-day weather storm. So, I’m not going to not do that work. That’s what I’m here for.”

There were no survivors. The plane, Bering Air Flight 445, was found southeast of Nome in the Norton Sound. The cause of the crash is still being investigated.

Sopow is a trained anthropologist, and worked as a social scientist with the National Weather Service, which she described as a community liaison role. For the last four years, she’s worked in offices across the state including Metlakatla, Anchorage and Nome, coordinating between meteorologists with the forecast offices, and community groups, research scientists and other public offices to best communicate weather information. “I really, really need to stress to the American people and the government and NOAA and Elon (Musk): Weather is a social product. Forecast is a social product. The reaction to weather is a social product,” she said.

She said in the days after the crash, her supervisor said they could correct her status as a probationary employee and at-risk for termination. She was mistakenly identified as still being an intern with the Pathways Program, an initiative to incentivize college graduates to pursue careers in federal service. But it was unclear if correcting that status would keep her from being fired. She and other agency employees spent days in limbo, wondering if they’d be fired, as well as evicted from federal housing.

“The amount of chaos that we all went through, even those of us who didn’t get let go, was brutal,” she said. “An incredible lack of communication, that was just ping-ponging us.”

By mid February, Sopow had had enough. “I’m living in the Arctic by myself. All I know is my work is telling me I’m fired, not fired, fired, not fired. Meanwhile, the price of eggs is like 30 bucks, and there’s airplanes falling down around me,” she said. “I’m feeling like I just need to run. And so I did. I literally did.”

Within days she packed all her belongings, and moved to Montana with her boyfriend and his family. She is planning to apply to a doctoral program at the University of Montana to continue her education in applied anthropology and climate risk communications. She was already planning to apply as a federal employee, and so the firing is further complicating that process. 

While there are still employees within rural stations of the National Weather Service, Sopow said the mass firings are a major loss in local knowledge.   

“What we’re now losing is the ability for a person who’s familiar with the region, who has been to Nome, has been to Kotzebue, and recognizes, ‘This is a drift,’ ‘This is what that piece of coast looks like,’ and ‘This is what infrastructure is missing there.’” she said. “Because, remember, a lot of these weather emergencies happen because of lack of infrastructure to support it. Yes, climate change is impacting the coast, and yes, we are also impacting the coast, but it’s all together.”

Sopow said the loss in federal housing, especially in rural areas where there are severe housing shortages, is a shock for many — and added to that is the loss of health care coverage. 

“The people that are losing their jobs — they still have kids, they still have to insure them. Now, COBRA is going to be so expensive,” she said, referring to a federal program allowing temporary extension of employer-health insurance. “At least give us something. I didn’t even get a severance package. I just got let go.”

The number of employees cut in Alaska’s National Weather Service offices is unknown, but dozens were terminated in mass cuts across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency on Feb. 27. Across all agencies, an estimated 1,378 federal employees with probationary status were expected to be fired in Alaska, among up to 200,000 nationwide. 

Kayleigh McCarthy is a former federal employee and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, who worked summer seasons at the Anan Wildlife Observatory near Wrangell, in Southeast Alaska.

She had a degree and a passion for biology and conservation, and worked her way up starting in 2021 from a Student Conservation Association internship, to a temporary then permanent seasonal employee, developing her knowledge around the Anan site – known as a unique opportunity for viewing both black and brown bears.

“Bear viewing is pretty overwhelmingly popular with a lot of the cruise ships or other tourists that come through,” McCarthy said. 

Every summer season, she worked with a staff of three, for up to 10 hours per day, with eight days on and six days off, staffing the observation deck, answering questions, and preventing direct run-ins with bears. 

“So we would watch out for any bears that the guests couldn’t see, letting them know whether they had to wait, and wait for a bear to cross, or whether it was all clear for them to come on up to the deck,” she said. 

The viewing deck could sometimes pack up to 60 visitors on busy days. “Occasionally, the job did include pulling people away from the railing when they were getting too close to bears, reminding them to not lean over,” she said. “Or try and pet the bears or anything like that.”

Beyond crowd control, McCarthy’s role included monitoring the bears and wildlife area, administrative tasks, and maintaining the facility, everything from trail maintenance to packing out the viewing deck’s toilet tank, “which was a glamorous part of the job,” she said sarcastically, but an essential one.

The experience inspired her to pursue a master’s degree in wildlife biology and conservation from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2024, with a particular focus on the Anan Observatory site. “My bosses at the site were, like, ‘Well, we really haven’t had a research project done since the 1990s,’” she said. “Especially because the site got quite a makeover within the last few years. They got a brand new deck. They got a brand new photo blind and staircase to go down to it. … And so they knew that there was going to be pressure to probably increase the visitor capacity at the site,” she said. “Because of all that money that was put into the site.”

McCarthy was in classes in Fairbanks when the firing news came down on Feb. 16. Like many other workers, the letter from the Office of Personnel Management cited performance issues, which she said was untrue. “Heartbroken, angry, upset,” she said of processing the news. “It really hit pretty hard to actually receive that termination letter and to know that it was official.” 

She said her master’s thesis research will continue, and she hopes to contribute that work to the future management of the site. On a personal level, she had also hoped to eventually put down roots in Wrangell, where she met her boyfriend, who was born and raised there, and continue her career there. But all that is up in the air now. 

“It’s a job at a place that I really love, with people who I really care about, doing work that I think is important,” she said. “I can’t even count how many times I’ve had guests at the site say, ‘Thank you so much for what you’re doing. Your work is so important. We really appreciate you being here,’” she said. “And so it’s not just that I feel that it’s important, but clearly those who come and visit also think that it’s important to have these public lands, to have these experiences, to connect people with nature like this.”

Aaron Lambert is a former federal employee with NOAA Fisheries, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, based in Juneau.

He has a master’s degree and specialized training for his role as a fisheries management specialist, with a focus on salmon forecasting and in-season management. He analyzed the salmon runs in the federal waters of the Cook Inlet, a new federally managed fishery after more than a decade of litigation.

In that role, he looked at all five species of Pacific salmon running through the inlet, their abundance and their numbers returning to reproduce, to ensure future stocks. And while Kenai River sockeye are bountiful, the chinook runs are declining as well as coho, and so there’s a careful balance for both state and federal fisheries managers in deciding catch limits for fishers. “And these are all things that are taken into consideration when you’re doing a stock assessment,” he said. 

“It was a perfect job. It fit my salmon knowledge, my forecasting knowledge,” Lambert said. “I have a 6-month-old daughter who’s in daycare in the bottom of the federal building, so I could go down and see her over lunch. Yeah, it was all around a perfect job.”

He was midway through the winter process of presenting models and recommendations to the federal regulatory agency, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, gathering public comment and feedback, when the news of the firings came down. 

“Essentially, I spent the last few weeks just waiting for an email to come and, you know, you’re reading the news and the Internet,” he said. “And they started doing weekly all-hand meetings to try to give information out. But things were changing so quickly, even from the morning to the afternoon, that it was hard for them to really share much information that was really meaningful.”

Finally he got a termination email from Vice Admiral Nancy Hann on Feb. 27, citing guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and his probationary status, which read in part, “the Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs.”

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “I was hired specifically because I have a unique skill set, in salmon forecasting and in-season management, and everybody through the top of my chain of command at the regional office recognized that my skills were very needed there, that my knowledge was very specialized and needed, and that my performance has been exceptional …. So it’s hard to accept, yeah.”

Lambert said in the meantime, he’s found temporary work in a state fisheries management position in Juneau. And fortunately his daughter is able to stay enrolled in daycare at the federal building.

But without his role, he said it’ll leave more work for other staff in the agency. “So me not being there, essentially, next year, the stock assessment will be conducted by, well, if they do it, it’ll be conducted by someone else who will be pulled off a different project, essentially,” he said. “I was also about to start working on fisheries disaster declarations and other policy work.”

Across the federal fisheries of Alaska, from the Bering Sea to the Gulf of Alaska, he said the loss of fisheries scientists and managers is immense, both for the staff and for the entire fishing industry. “Whether it’s in-season managers who are actually directing those fisheries, or people writing policy and setting the TACs,” he said, referring to the total allowable catches. “That could all be impacted as well. So whether or not those fisheries proceed, or if they do, sometimes they’re using the previous year’s harvest specs (specifications), so that could impact sustainability in the future.” 

Lambert said he plans to pursue an appeal, and possibly litigation. He added that despite the stated goal of “efficiency” by the Trump administration, it’s making peoples’ lives harder. 

“It feels like there is an active dismantling of federal processes. And instead of creating efficiencies and making things work better, this is adding a lot of work and stress to people there, and these are all people who work insanely hard, have very little downtime, and really love their jobs and really believe in the NOAA mission,” he said.

“You hear the administration talk about how people never check their emails and aren’t really working,” he said. “These are the hardest-working people I’ve ever met.”

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https://alaskabeacon.com/corinne-smith

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