The Haines Borough Assembly has little choice but to pursue suspension or revocation of the Alaska Excursions tour permit for canoe tours at Davidson Glacier. The assembly also should consider suspending the company’s ATV tour at Glacier Point.
Detailed and unsolicited statements made to the assembly by a dozen or more former employees in February established that Alaska Excursions has a company culture of disregard or delinquency relating to the safety of its tours in Haines and Skagway.
The complaints described perilous incidents on the company’s zipline and glacier tour that endangered guides and clients, as well as a poor company record on equipment maintenance and safety instruction.
In addition, in a single incident, Alaska Excursions last year injured 28 passengers on a Unimog tour in Skagway, requiring a mass casualty response.
During consideration of a permit for a new ATV tour at Glacier Point, Alaska Excursions owner Robert Murphy assured assembly members that he would address tour safety concerns prior to the 2018 season.
The most damning fact – both for Murphy and for the borough – is that a former Alaska Excursions guide, Alton Smith, in February, told the assembly that the most dangerous part of the Glacier tour was a canoe motor failing above the rapids. According to a recent state trooper report, that’s exactly what led to the death of a client on that tour last summer.
Murphy and the Haines Borough were given fair and explicit notice of the tour’s hazard. That, apparently, was not enough.
It’s not clear what will be enough for Murphy to establish real safety protocols for his tours.
Following a raft of testimony in opposition, Murphy was given the opportunity this spring to address the concerns raised by former employees last winter. The recent tragic and needless death makes it abundantly clear that he did not do that. This death was not an accident. Accidents, by definition, are unexpected. This death was a foreshadowed eventuality, if not an inevitability.
In law, the most severe penalty is reserved for the most egregious violations, when a person or party is aware of a law or norm, and flouts it.
Robert Murphy’s company was made explicitly aware of safety shortcomings in its tours, including at Glacier Point, but evidently did not take significant action to address them. Because it appears that Murphy, in effect or in fact, flouted those concerns, his company should be held to the borough’s most severe penalty – suspension or revocation of his tour person.
If the borough assembly does not meaningfully address the death on this tour, we make a mockery not only of previous borough action on reckless tour operators (Dave Button), we made a mockery of the borough tour permit process as well.
For, if we are not using borough law to protect the lives of our visitors, why should we be regulating tours at all?
Title 5 of borough code pertaining to tour permits says at its very start that the purpose of the code is to “protect public safety and welfare” and to “ensure the safe, efficient and fair operation of commercial tours.”
Title 5 goes on to say that the borough manager may, at any time, revoke or suspend a permit for “causing a hazard.”
We are within our legal allowance, and morally bound by human decency, to stop a company that has been very painfully proved to endanger its clients.