The Haines Borough, its school and police department, came under new management in 2014, a year marked by lopsided weather patterns, infrastructure worries and chronic crime.

Acts of courage brightened a townscape clouded as much by economic uncertainty as by months of rain.

Luke Marquardt ran back into a house fire to save a friend. Novice fishermen Chris Olsen and Blake Ward plucked gillnet captain Woody Pahl from rolling seas during a nighttime storm,…