Dozens Rescued, One Dead As Storm Slams Alaska

More rain and wind were forecast Wednesday along the Alaskan coast where two tiny villages were decimated by the remnants of Typhoon Halong and officials were scrambling to find shelter for more than 1,500 people driven from their homes.

The weekend storm brought high winds and surf that battered the low-lying Alaska Native communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the southwestern part of the state, nearly 500 miles (800 km) from Anchorage. At least one person was killed and two were missing. The Coast Guard plucked two dozen people from their homes after the structures floated out to sea.

Hundreds were staying in school shelters, including one with no working toilets, officials said. The weather system followed a storm that struck parts of western Alaska days earlier.

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Across the region, more than 1,500 people were displaced. Dozens were flown to a shelter set up in the National Guard armory in the regional hub city of Bethel, a community of 6,000 people, and officials were considering flying evacuees to longer-term shelter or emergency housing in Fairbanks and Anchorage.

The hardest-hit communities included Kipnuk, population 715, and Kwigillingok, population 380. They are off the state’s main road system and reachable this time of year only by water or by air.

“It’s catastrophic in Kipnuk. Let’s not paint any other picture,” Mark Roberts, incident commander with the state emergency management division, told a news conference Tuesday. “We are doing everything we can to continue to support that community, but it is as bad as you can think.”

Heartbreaking Moment

Among those awaiting evacuation to Bethel on Tuesday was Brea Paul of Kipnuk, who said in a text message that she had seen about 20 homes floating away through the moonlight on Saturday night.

“Some houses would blink their phone lights at us like they were asking for help but we couldn’t even do anything,” she wrote.

The following morning, she recorded video of a house submerged nearly to its roofline as it floated past her home.

Paul and her neighbors had a long meeting in the local school gym on Monday night. They sang songs as they tried to figure out what to do next, she said. Paul wasn’t sure where she would go.

About 30 miles away in Kwigillingok, one woman was found dead and authorities on Monday night called off the search for two men whose home floated away.

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The school was the only facility in town with full power, but it had no working toilet and 400 people stayed there Monday night. Workers were trying to fix the bathrooms; a situation report from the state emergency operations center on Tuesday noted that portable toilets, or “honey buckets,” were being used.

A preliminary assessment showed every home in the village was damaged by the storm, with about three dozen having drifted from their foundations, the emergency management office said.

Power systems flooded in Napakiak, and severe erosion was reported in Toksook Bay. In Nightmute, officials said fuel drums were reported floating in the community, and there was a scent of fuel in the air and a sheen on the water.

The National Guard was activated to help with the emergency response, and crews were trying to take advantage of any breaks in the weather to fly in food, water, generators and communication equipment.

Long Road To Recovery Ahead

Officials warned of a long road to recovery and a need for continued support for the hardest-hit communities. Most rebuilding supplies would have to be transported in and there is little time left with winter just around the corner.

“Indigenous communities in Alaska are resilient,” said Rick Thoman, an Alaska climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “But, you know, when you have an entire community where effectively every house is damaged and many of them will be uninhabitable with winter knocking at the door now, there’s only so much that any individual or any small community can do.”

Thoman said the storm was likely fueled by the warm surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, which has been heating up because of human-caused climate change and making storms more intense.

The remnants of another storm, Typhoon Merbok, caused damage across a massive swath of western Alaska three years ago.

An unprecedented coastal storm has forced more than 1,400 people from their homes in Western Alaska while emergency officials scramble to place stranded residents seeking shelter in the region’s hardest-hit areas, state disaster officials said Tuesday morning.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region over the weekend with hurricane-force winds that gusted over 100 mph and caused catastrophic storm-surge flooding, destroying homes and infrastructure in many communities across the region.

Alaska State Troopers said Monday evening that they had found a deceased woman in the village of Kwigillingok. Two others remain missing in that community of about 400 residents near the mouth of the Kuskokwim River where surging floodwater tore dozens of homes from their foundations, sending them adrift.

While officials were still assessing the extent of the damage Tuesday morning, one of their immediate priorities was moving residents of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok — among the hardest-hit communities in the region — from schools to “more suitable locations,” the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a situation report Tuesday. Kipnuk is a coastal community of 700 people roughly 100 miles southwest of Bethel.

Nearly 60 people from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok spent the night in a shelter at the Armory in Bethel, according to Mary Horgan, a spokesperson for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. The Bethel-based tribal health organization didn’t have a count for the number of people coming in Tuesday, “but we have been told that ‘hundreds’ of people are looking to evacuate at this time,” Horgan wrote in an email.

State officials say it remains unclear where more than 1,000 residents of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok who initially sought shelter at community schools after fleeing the storm and rising waters would be moved to.

The state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management on Tuesday said it was coordinating the response with local, state, federal, tribal and private entities through the state Emergency Operations Center.

Organizations like the American Red Cross had sent personnel to Bethel to help with shelter operations while others were working to help provide food and supply distribution, according to the state agency. The Alaska National Guard had also been tasked with assisting sheltering and managing donation logistics.

Teams had been sent to affected communities to assess storm damage to infrastructure, like airport runways and water systems. Some affected communities, including Napakiak, Toksook Bay and Quinhagak, have reported issues with water systems being down, flooded power systems or severe erosion, according to state officials.

The Association of Village Council Presidents, which advocates on behalf of the 56 federally recognized tribes of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, said Tuesday that it had called on President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency and send federal assistance to Western Alaska.

In its request, the group said that while Gov. Mike Dunleavy had declared a state emergency, the scope of the devastation required federal funding and manpower to aid recovery efforts.

“Western Alaska needs your intervention immediately, and we are ready to work with you to support our communities,” Vivian Korthuis, the group’s CEO, wrote in the letter. “Send federal aid. Help us protect lives and rebuild our communities and our future.”

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At least one death has been confirmed after a powerful storm tore through western Alaska over the weekend. Search and rescue efforts are underway across remote coastal communities to find missing residents. This comes after hurricane-force winds triggered record-breaking storm surge, displacing over 1,000 residents and tearing homes from their foundations. At least 51 people have been rescued in Kwigillingok and the nearby village of Kipnuk, a local tribal health agency and state officials said. The sparsely populated villages are more than 400 miles southwest of Anchorage.

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