Of those accidental deaths, drowning is the third-highest cause. Many times, the cold temperatures cause bodies to sink to the bottom of the water rather than float to the top, adding another challenge to finding missing people.
The Alaska Triangle, first named in 1972, connects the state’s largest city of Anchorage in the south, to Juneau in the southeast panhandle, to Barrow, a small town on the state’s north coast. Roughly 1 in every 250 people have vanished in the Alaskan Triangle and since 1988, there have been over 16,000 disappearances in the Alaska Triangle. Statistically, Alaska has more annual missing person reports than anywhere else in the country twice the national average. It also has the highest number of missing people who are never found. In 2007, for instance, 2,833 people were reported missing, and when compared to the state’s comparatively low population of around 670,000 at the time, that equates to about 4 in every 1,000 people a staggering amount. In 2007, Alaska state troopers added 2,833 missing person notices to their Missing Persons Clearinghouse that maintains all related information. In a state with just over 670,000 residents, that figure averages out to about four in every 1,000 people.Īlong with missing persons reports, state troopers oversee search and rescue operations. In 2007, they performed 42 missions related to overdue hikers, 85 related to overdue boaters and 100 related to overdue snow machine operators who were temporarily missing. The Civil Air Service also assists with search and rescue missions, and Alaska's branch received the most state funding and saved the most lives in 2006 out of all other state branches.