Author: Joe Viechnicki, KFSK

A home in the Scow Bay area in Petersburg was destroyed by fire early Tuesday morning, February 16 but all three occupants were able to escape the blaze.

Today, February 16 is Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska, marking the anniversary of the signing of an anti-discrimination bill passed by Alaska’s territorial legislature in 1945. The holiday honors the civil rights leader born Elizabeth Wannamaker in Petersburg July 4, 1911. She was instrumental in the passage of that law during a time when women were rarely a part of the political world and decades before the national movement for African American civil rights.

The state of Alaska has issued the first of several expected preliminary decisions to transfer some land to the Petersburg borough. It’s part of a large land entitlement that goes along with the creation of the borough government in 2013.