{"id":28757,"date":"2015-10-02T21:49:28","date_gmt":"2015-10-03T04:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/budget-cuts-could-cost-alaska-state-troopers-a-helicopter\/"},"modified":"2015-10-02T21:49:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-03T04:49:28","slug":"budget-cuts-could-cost-alaska-state-troopers-a-helicopter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/budget-cuts-could-cost-alaska-state-troopers-a-helicopter\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget cuts could cost Alaska State Troopers a helicopter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE \u2014 <\/strong>Alaska State Troopers have already grounded one of their two search and rescue helicopters due to budget cuts, and officials say if changes aren\u2019t made they may not be able to afford the other chopper.<\/p>\n<p>The Fairbanks-based helicopter Helo 2 has been grounded indefinitely since July, and currently troopers can only afford to keep the Anchorage-based Helo 3 in use through June 2016, KTVA-TV reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOverall it\u2019s about $250,000 per year for a helicopter to operate in Fairbanks,\u201d said Alaska Wildlife Trooper Maj. Bernard Chastain.<\/p>\n<p>Troopers have had to contract with outside companies for search and rescue missions both because of bad weather and because of the high cost of using a helicopter.<\/p>\n<p>Keith Essex with Alpine Air said their helicopter is similar to the ones troopers use, but that their operators don\u2019t have the same emergency training and experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they do need our help more often, we\u2019re here to help,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Search and Rescue coordinator Lt. Steve Adams said despite the costs, rescue missions will still be accepted, though outside companies can sometimes cost more money and take more time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s been times where we cannot effect the search and rescue with our own resources, and we\u2019ve had to ask for assistance or a charter aircraft, but we don\u2019t turn down search and rescue,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE \u2014 Alaska State Troopers have already grounded one of their two search and rescue helicopters due to budget cuts, and officials say if changes aren\u2019t made they may not be able to afford the other chopper. The Fairbanks-based helicopter Helo 2 has been grounded indefinitely since July, and currently troopers can only afford to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-28757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28757"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}