UPDATE Friday, 6/15/2024 – 5:25pm: The Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad is calling off their active search for 48-year-old Christiana Watt of Ketchikan. The volunteer rescue squad said in a public statement on Friday evening that since Watt was reported missing in the Ward Lake area on Monday, crews have covered Ward Lake and the surrounding search area, as well as Ward Cove, with ground teams, boats, remote-operated submersible vehicles, a drone, a diver, a helicopter, and dog teams. According to troopers and the volunteer rescue squad’s statement though, they “did not locate the subject and our search was suspended pending any new information.”
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UPDATE Thursday, 6/14/2024 – 6:35pm: Today concludes the third day of the search for a missing Ketchikan woman. Troopers say search crews have found no new leads.
Crews continued to focus their search today on the lake itself. They used sonar and a submersible remote-controlled vehicle outfitted with cameras.
The water search yesterday was temporarily suspended due to high winds and unfavorable conditions. Troopers say murky water continued to cause challenges today, especially for the remote-operated vehicle.
The U.S. Forest Service is still advising people to avoid the Ward Lake vicinity.
Alaska State Troopers are interested in talking to anybody who may have seen a white female, with long, brown hair, in the Ward Lake area in recent days or has any potential information on Christiana Watt’s disappearance.
Troopers say that at this time, they aren’t considering Watt’s disappearance suspicious. Search efforts are expected to continue Friday.
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The second full day of the search for a missing Ketchikan woman is wrapping up with few leads. 48-year-old Christiana Watt was reported missing around 8 p.m. Monday night near Ward Lake, a very popular recreation area north of town.
Crews focused their search today on the lake itself. Troopers said they used boats, dogs, and a remote-controlled underwater vehicle to search the waters, and a diver was on standby in case they found anything.
Jerry Kiffer of the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad said they were completing their ground search, having covered nearly 90 percent of the trails and woods in the designated search area surrounding the lake.
“We don’t have any real new information that will cause us to expand the search area,” said Kiffer over the phone. “We did expand the area to the lake itself, so we’re doing some searching with the dogs on the day use side of the lake, just offshore.”
Troopers said that crews also searched the shoreline around Ward Cove – where water flows out of Ward Lake into the Tongass Narrows. But the water search was temporarily suspended this afternoon due to high winds, according to troopers.
Kiffer said that by 2 in the afternoon though, they’d covered most of the main aquatic search area in Ward Lake using a tote camera array. That’s a group of cameras fixed to a torpedo-like sled, which is dragged across the lakebed. Kiffer said that doesn’t mean they’ve searched the entire lakebed. They based the initial underwater search perimeter off of an area the search dogs took interest in, as well as eyewitness accounts of someone swimming in the lake the day Watt was declared missing. Still, Kiffer said they haven’t found anything concrete.
“It’s not that big of an area, we’re used to working in larger areas,” he said. “It’s not that huge of an area – not confined, but very manageable. But so far, we just haven’t found much in the way of clues.”
On Monday night, Troopers located Watt’s car at Ward Lake with her phone and wallet inside. Kiffer said her phone had received a ping from her Apple watch indicating that she – or at least, her watch – was in the vicinity of the car around noon that day.
Kiffer said this stage of the search becomes extremely difficult when they lose the daylight. They planned to complete the day’s set search plan around 5 p.m.
The U.S. Forest Service is still advising people to avoid the Ward Lake vicinity. The road to the recreation area is closed during the day for the active search but Kiffer said visiting the area after hours can still leave scents that could distract search dogs.
Kiffer said the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad and State Troopers are interested in talking to anybody who may have seen a white female, with long, brown hair, in the Ward Lake area in recent days or has any potential information on Christiana Watt’s disappearance.
At this time, troopers aren’t considering Watt’s disappearance suspicious. Search efforts will continue tomorrow.
Anyone having contact or information regarding Christiana Watt is asked to contact the Alaska State Troopers in Ketchikan at 907-225-5118 and reference incident AK24055622.
