June, Alaska — JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Officials in Alaska on Tuesday scrambled to evacuate and find housing for people from small coastal villages devastated by a hurricane… Remnants of Typhoon Halong. But the remote location and extensive damage limit their options as they race against other impending storms and the onset of winter.
High winds and high waters battered isolated, low-lying Alaska Native communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska, about 800 kilometers from Anchorage, over the weekend. The Coast Guard recovered twenty people from their homes after the structures I floated out to sea As water levels rose, three people were missing or dead, and hundreds of people were staying in school shelters — including one that had no working toilets, officials said.
This system came on the heels of a storm that struck parts of western Alaska days ago.
Across the region, more than 1,500 people have been displaced. Dozens were airlifted to a shelter set up at the National Guard Armory in Bethel, a community of 6,000 people, and officials are considering moving evacuees to long-term shelter or emergency housing in Fairbanks and Anchorage as they run out of space there.
Fuel storage depots intended to support communities in the area appear to have been damaged, threatening pollution that could harm the fish and game that Alaska Natives depend on for a living. Some people in the area may have lost refrigerators full of foods like salmon and moose to get them through the winter.
The worst affected communities included Kipnok, with a population of 715, and Kwijelenjok, with a population of 380. These communities are located outside the state’s main road network and can only be reached at this time of year by water or air.
“It’s catastrophic in Kebennock. Let’s not paint any other picture,” Mark Roberts, incident commander for the state Division of Emergency Management, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “We’re doing everything we can to continue to support this community, but it’s as bad as you think it is.”
Among those waiting to evacuate to Bethel on Tuesday was Priya Paul, of Kibnock, who said in a text message that she saw about 20 homes floating away in the moonlight Saturday night.
“Some houses were flashing their phone lights at us as if they were calling for help, but we couldn’t even do anything,” she wrote.
The next morning, she recorded a video of a house submerged almost to the roofline as it passed in front of her house.
She said Paul and her neighbors had a long meeting in the school’s local gym Monday evening, singing songs of praise as they tried to figure out what to do next. Neither she nor most of the others knew where they would end up.
“It is extremely heartbreaking to say goodbye to members of our community not knowing when we will see each other,” she said.
A woman was found dead in Kuijelinguk, and authorities on Monday night called off the search for two men after their home was swept away.
In Kuijelinguk, the school was the only facility at full capacity, but it did not have a working toilet, and 400 people remained there Monday night. Workers were trying to fix the bathrooms; “Honey buckets are being used,” a situation report issued by the state Emergency Operations Center on Tuesday noted.
The Office of Emergency Management said that an initial assessment showed that every house in the village was damaged by the storm, with about thirteen houses swept from their foundations.
Power systems in Napakiak were flooded, and severe erosion was reported in Toksuk Bay. In Naitimote, floating fuel drums were reported in the community, and there was the smell of fuel in the air and a sheen on the water, officials said.
Officials have activated National Guard members to assist in emergency response, and crews are trying to take advantage of any breaks in the weather to airlift food, water, generators and communications equipment.
Officials warned that there is a long road to recovery and the need for continued support for the most affected communities. Most of the rebuilding supplies will have to be transported, and there is little time left as winter approaches.
“Alaska Native communities 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 literally every home is damaged, and a lot of it is uninhabitable with winter now at the door, there’s only so much any individual or any small community can do.”
Thoman said the storm was likely fueled by warm surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, which are warming due to human-caused climate change making storms more intense.
The remnants of another storm, Typhoon Merbok, caused damage throughout the region A huge swath of western Alaska Three years ago.
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Johnson and Attanasio reported from Seattle.