June, Alaska — JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — More rain and wind are expected Wednesday along the Alaska coast where two small villages were destroyed by the tornado. Remnants of Typhoon Halong Officials were scrambling to find shelter for more than 1,500 people displaced from their homes.
The weekend storm brought high winds and waves that pounded low-lying Alaska Native communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the southwestern part of the state, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Anchorage. At least one person was killed and two were missing. The Coast Guard recovered twenty people from their homes after the structures I floated out to sea.
Hundreds were staying in school shelters, including one that did not have working toilets, officials said. The weather 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.
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.
Ball and her neighbors held a long meeting in the local school gym Monday evening. She said they sang songs while trying to figure out what to do next. Paul wasn’t sure where she was going.
“It is extremely heartbreaking to say goodbye to members of our community not knowing when we will see each other,” she said.
About 30 miles (48 kilometers) away in Kuijelinguk, a woman was found dead and authorities on Monday night called off the search for two men whose house had been swept away.
The school was the only facility in the city 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; A situation report issued by the state Emergency Operations Center on Tuesday noted the use of portable toilets or “honey buckets.”
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 Nightmute, officials said drums of fuel floated through the community, and there was the smell of fuel in the air and a sheen on the water.
The National Guard has been activated to help respond to emergencies, 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 coming, there’s not much that 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.