Back on April 26, the ITC announced their independent investigation into the Ramy Brooks dog abuse matter would continue, and they noted that investigating by phone hadn’t proved effective so far. Not surprising — telephone communication with the smallest villages in Alaska can be difficult. In some villages, there’s only a handful of phones available, shared by the community. Plus, who wants to be, basically, deposed by one or more lawyers investigating alleged animal abuse? (”Who? Oh. Tell them I’m not home!”)
In any case, the only solution to the investigation-by-phone problem is to get feet on the street at the scene of the alleged events. That means flying, Alaska bush style. And that means money.
So what does it cost to fly off to an Alaskan village for a day? Well, the investigator(s) — from the “law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine” in Anchorage — would likely first catch a flight to Nome, probably on Alaska Airlines. On short notice, that’s about $490, round-trip, based on a quick fare search on the web.
From Nome you’d have to transfer to a smaller regional carrier, such as Bering Air, and fly directly (or indirectly, if they make multiple village stops) to Golovin, tucked away on the northern edge of Norton Sound. That’ll run another $190 roundtrip.
Given weather difficulties in Alaska, your safest plan might be to fly up to Nome and stay overnight, making a day trip or two to Golovin, then fly back to Anchorage. Luckily, tourist season isn’t in full swing, so rooms at the Nome Nugget Inn would probably run just about $100 a night, for a total of $200.
An investigator’s gotta eat, too. Figure a bush Alaska eating allowance of perhaps $75/day (investigating is hungry work) and you’ll add another $150 to your total.
So far, we’re looking at travel costs of $1,030 per person, assuming everything goes to plan.
What the investigator(s) are paid for their time in the field and their time in prepping the report and meeting with race officials is unknown. Perhaps its pro bono work from a major race fan. But if it’s paid time — at lawyer rates — the ITC could easily be looking at bills of $3,000 or much more tacked on to the $1,000 in flying-around money.
Let’s say two people make the trip and all the reporting work is paid for rather than donated. Travel costs would run about $2,000 and reporting fees would likely rise to about $5,000, for an investigation total of about $7,000. This is, of course, all theoretical — so far we have no specific reports from the ITC on the costs of the investigation or how many people are participating or, well… anything else beyond their statement.
Meanwhile, as we’re dreaming of visiting remote Alaskan villages and spending money we don’t have in our own wallets, let’s hope the ITC is getting their report, deciding what to do in response, figuring out the new race rules for 2008 and planning to handle unexpected media events faster and more smoothly in the future.
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