Communities throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta are assessing damage and making repairs in the wake of ex-typhoon Halong.
Last month, KYUK’s Sage Smiley traveled with a delegation of federal, state, and tribal officials to Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, which took the brunt of the storm. She sat down with KYUK’s Evan Erickson to talk about what she heard from officials and people in the communities.
Read a transcript of the conversation below. It has been lightly edited for clarity and flow, but may contain transcription errors.
KYUK (Evan Erickson): Hello, Sage. How are you doing today?
Sage Smiley: I'm alright. Thanks, Evan.
KYUK: So yeah, let's just jump right in – tell me about this trip.
Smiley: So I traveled to Kipnuk and Kwigillingok with the [Alaska] National Guard on a Chinook helicopter with about two dozen federal, state, and tribal officials. There were a lot of people there. It was organized by Sen. Dan Sullivan's office, and there were officials from the Office of Management and Budget, from the federal government, from FEMA Region 10, the Coast Guard, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Red Cross, Calista, Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, and a few state legislators as well – Lyman Hoffman, Nellie Jimmie, Bryce Edgmon. And then there were also some people who didn't come on that helicopter trip specifically, but also attended a discussion afterward, like [Association of Village Council Presidents] (AVCP) and City of Bethel officials. I think the goal seemed to be to really get as many people out to these communities that were the most impacted by ex-typhoon Halong, and talk with people who are helping lead and organize cleanup and repair efforts in both communities and really hear what's happening on the ground.
KYUK: It looks like this came about two weeks after the storm, on Oct. 25, this visit. What did you see out there? Can you describe it for people who have no idea what it looks like out there at this moment?
Smiley: In Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, there's obviously been a lot of destruction. The storm caused flooding, caused – especially in Kipnuk – houses to all get smashed into each other. You can see the high water mark on the school in Kipnuk, there's grasses that are up to the lower steps of the school, and these communities were physically very devastated by this storm. But also, I saw a lot of movement in the villages. So I mean, in addition to the houses that have been smashed together, in addition to the little white crosses from grave sites strewn across the tundra, I also saw people rebuilding boardwalks in Kipnuk wearing high-vis gear, and things are definitely changing quickly on the ground in both villages, in large part led by the people who are staying behind and helping repair and assess damages.
I also met with and spoke to people from the [Alaska] Department of Transportation. When I was there, there were about two dozen people in each of the two communities, Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, and some were doing more individual recovery efforts at their homes or the homes of family members, and others were working on a broader community level to repair critical infrastructure like boardwalks from the airport to the school in Kipnuk, for example, or were working on water or sewer or electrical projects and restoring those things. And I know since I've been there, there's been a lot of movement in those communities with continuing to rebuild and shore up that critical infrastructure with an eye to the fact that there are people who are hoping to stay in those communities over the winter, even as dozens of people have been evacuated and are potentially staying in Bethel or in Anchorage over the winter or for the longer term.
KYUK: So there are very different levels of infrastructure and home damage in these communities, but about two dozen people in each community are sticking around, as far as you saw?
Smiley: Yeah, as far as I'm aware, in Kipnuk and Kwig specifically, they had just done a count, and I think they said there were 27 people there on the day that I was there, and then within a few days, there were about 50. So I do know people are, whether it's permanently or whether it's just to salvage what they can, people are going in and out of the communities and trying to rebuild and reclaim what they can from the storm damaged infrastructure.
KYUK: And so for those people coming in and out, staying there and coming in and out from Bethel, what, what do you – what's your sense of the priorities for people that are a part of this effort?
Smiley: Yeah, so I think one of the things that struck me the most was the fact that communities have really widely varying priorities. When I was in Kipnuk, they were rebuilding boardwalks and focusing on cleanup, and people there said they need help with that most of all, there was serious infrastructure damage there. Fran Anaver was at the school in Kipnuk. She said she was salvaging what she could from her house, which flooded.
Fran Anaver: Kitchen stuff that can't be washed, like pots, not ,not all of them, just enough to help me cook and feed my family.
Smiley: She said she was staying with family in Bethel while figuring out what comes next. But in Kipnuk, she said that what the village needed was more people to help repair things.
Anaver: Right now, there's very few workers that are in Kipnuk, trying to see what they can retrieve and fix. And I think to me, they have enough supplies and water, but I know they're trying to do the best they can, like, access to the airport, access to the [electrical] plant, the necessities of everyday life.
Smiley: Other people in Kipnuk said they just needed people to help cook for workers who are trying to rebuild. Infrastructure there was struggling from storm damage and the strain on the school with people staying there. While we were in the school cafeteria, the lights went out twice because the generator at the school was having issues. Fran Anaver said that what's been on her mind, though, in all of this, has been her students. She's a twice retired teacher and was substitute teaching for second and third grade in Kipnuk before the storm hit,
Anaver: They've been on my mind, culture shock, being in a new school, new faces. And you know, out there in the village, they can run out and play wherever. But anyway, hopefully they're adjusting to where they are.
Smiley: In Kwigillingok, though it was kind of a different story. They're doing cleanup and salvaging what they can, but people in the community were super clear. They want to move the whole village. Lucy Martin is the tribal resilience and planning assistant in Kwig, and she came along on the trip.
Lucy Martin: I was excited to see Kwig again, since I had time to process my feelings, all the hurt, all the anger, all the sadness, I felt more at peace going back to Kwig, even just for an hour.
Smiley: She says a huge part of her job has been helping plan and communicate about relocation, which is even more important now.
Martin: Relocation efforts have been in the talks for many years, and this storm made it more you know, we should have done this yesterday.
Smiley: She said she hoped state and federal officials left with a sense of the people of the region.
Martin: How strong our Yup’ik people are, how resilient we are, that we can survive all the elements that Mother Nature brings.
Smiley: And Lucy Martin says in her mind, getting people in Kwig new homes now is the priority. Our representative in House District 38 Nellie Jimmie also came on the trip, and she weathered the storm in her home in Toksook Bay.
Rep. Nellie Jimmie: All my daughter and niece and I could do is just sit in our home and wait to see what happens if our house tips off the foundation, if our windows cave in, if we get structural damage.
Smiley: Rep. Jimmie said she's been impressed by the people in the region coming together and the drive of people to rebuild and get back to the way things were and maintain ancestral ways of life.
Rep. Jimmie: We've all been through a traumatic episode in our lives, but we've all gotten through it together, and I am just so grateful to see how everyone is helping out, going to other villages from their own village after they made sure their villages were up and running. [Yugtun]
Smiley: In her view, the storm underscored the importance of schools as places of gathering and emergency shelters.
Rep. Jimmie: Because that's the only building that the people have to go to.
Smiley: We also traveled with state Sen. Lyman Hoffman, and he summed up what he's been hearing from constituents this way.
Sen. Lyman Hoffman: Well, I think they want to stay. They want to rebuild. They're resilient, and they have many different solutions, but they want, you know, they want to try to protect their Native foods that are in their freezers.
KYUK: So yeah, there appears to be plenty of question marks that remain, and that will continue to remain. And so after visiting, what do you feel like officials were saying they're most focused on prioritizing.
Smiley: There were definitely a lot of priorities coming from community members, and we heard a lot of that on the trip, and federal officials definitely were broadcasting that they were there to listen and see what's happening in person. Like I mentioned earlier, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan's office organized the trip, and he was pretty clear that the goal was to get folks who have influence over response, money or policy wise out to see what's happening in person.
Sen. Dan Sullivan: If you're a federal official and you go back to Washington, DC, and you're saying, ‘Hey, I was just out in these villages, these people are working their tail off. They're not waiting for anybody's help. They're working hard,’ I think that's very powerful.
Smiley: Sen. Sullivan said there were a lot of lessons in preparedness, including how to rebuild. Some of the structures in Kwig that fared best were houses on pilings driven deep into the ground.
Sen. Sullivan: We’ve got to learn the lessons right, and make sure that the structure and engineering is on pilings. And that's just another takeaway that sounds obvious, but you see it when you're on the ground.
Smiley: He also brought up the idea of using old National Guard armories as staging grounds for disaster response, and said he saw potential for local response to be headed up by local National Guard. Another person we were on the trip with was Natasha Singh with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), and she said they're focused on responding to what communities have requested, which so far has been immediate disaster response, getting people out of shelters and into houses and basic infrastructure. But it's also a moment that she said highlights the broader climate threat the region is facing. Last year, ANTHC put out a report that identified nearly 150 communities in Alaska that need to partially or fully relocate because of climate factors like permafrost degradation, flooding, erosion, and other factors like that.
Natasha Singh: Definitely this storm and the devastation it caused is a prime example why we have to talk about the increase in frequency and impact of the storms that will have on our villages in the immediate future. And these storms will continue to happen, they'll be worse and they'll happen on a more frequent basis. And how do our villages prepare themselves to deal with them? Many of our villages have been having that discussion.
Smiley: This region falls in FEMA Region 10, and Vincent Maykovich is the regional administrator for that area. Here's what he said, after visiting the villages.
Vincent Maykovich: It's just a tremendous amount of damage, and you can obviously see the amount of impact that that's going to have for a very long time.
Smiley: After seeing Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, he said it's clear agencies need to move quickly to help communities and community members who are rebuilding or who have been displaced by the storm.
Maykovich: Time is of the essence. So we know that all of the people from both villages and all the other impacted villages throughout the Y-K Delta and all the other storm impacted areas, and that we're just about to freeze up, right? So being in a shelter, or even temporary shelter, away from your natural resources and your natural way of life is very difficult, so we're going to do everything we can to expedite the process to get back to their communities.
Smiley: He said, from his FEMA perspective, the biggest priority is stabilizing people wherever they are.
Maykovich: So for the folks that are still in the village and that want to stay there, we want to make sure that we have the ability to provide a stable, warm, safe [...] environment.
Smiley: So there were a lot of different perspectives and priorities from officials. Some obviously have a lot more longevity and experience in Alaska than others, and there were some with a lot more specifics to share about plans than others. But I think what was interesting, and a thing that I left wondering was, you know, the communities have these broad requests from people to help cook, for people rebuilding, to an entire community relocation. And I think that the way that this response happens, those answers are maybe going to be a long time coming in terms of what the actual capacity on the state, on the tribal, on the federal level, will be to meet those community requests, because there isn't a set federal system for dealing with, for example, a community request to relocate because of climate impacts.
KYUK: Yeah. And on top of that, it sounds like there's a lot of ideas being floated around at once, and some are short term and some are longer term as well. So can you talk, maybe dig a little deeper into what the potential roadblocks to responding to the storm are, especially now that it's pretty much bitter cold out, I would say.
Smiley: Yeah. So there are a lot of agencies coming together to respond to this disaster, and there's a lot of energy to do things right now. I heard a lot from federal officials commending the initial state of Alaska response, as well as individual efforts of community members to get out there and start rebuilding or taking stock of damage rather than waiting for assistance. But I also am hearing that with a lot of agencies with different mandates, there are some bumps in the boardwalk, so to speak. For example, in Kipnuk, I talked with Hudson Horwath, who was there to help with boardwalk repairs.
Hudson Horwath: There's a lot going on. There's a lot of debris. The boardwalks have been damaged. There's a lot of critical infrastructure that we're trying to get back on place now, and so that's our main concern, and priority is to get those critical infrastructures back going.
Smiley: It's a huge project to repair boardwalks in villages hard hit by the storm. Horwath said the contract for lumber was over $3 million.
Horwath: So that was just kind of step one, was the resources. And then now we're here, on this side, trying to track and see where it needs to be placed.
Smiley: As someone who works for the state Department of Transportation, those boardwalks are the main focus for Horwath and the people that he's working with. But he said in some cases, there are other barriers that are physically in the way – houses, electrical things, environmental concerns, and he said there have been times when coordinating with other people on other projects that are blocking DOT from doing their work has been tough. And then there's also the talk about money being an issue for recovery as well. The federal disaster declaration that was approved on Oct. 23 includes $25 million toward disaster relief, according to President Trump, but state Sen. Lyman Hoffman, who represents this region and has for decades, said he was a bit concerned about that $25 million number.
Sen. Hoffman: I don't know if it’ll go very far. You know, if you look at the schools that I've been funding, they're costing anywhere from $50 to $80 million dollars just to build one school. So the costs out here are staggering, and the dollar doesn't stretch very far.
Smiley: As I walked with Sen. Hoffman through Kwigillingok, he said he's more broadly concerned about the energy and longer term commitment that might exist to help these communities with what they need and with what they identify as priorities.
Sen. Hoffman: I'm concerned that in a month or three months or a year, there's still a lot of work that's going to be needed, and hopefully the attention that he's given today will persist.
Smiley: And Rep. Nellie Jimmie, who also represents this region, said something pretty similar.
Rep. Jimmie: I am hoping, once this federal funds come through, that it's not the last, and that more federal funds keep coming through for our people.
Smiley: All in all, this was a really fascinating trip to be on. There were a lot of people who have a lot of influence and say and perspective on disaster relief in the same room, visiting these communities, and I think that it's going to be really important for communities and for KYUK to keep following up on what actually happens further down the road with disaster response. As our representatives are saying, there is a lot of energy for this right now, but these communities are going to need energy on disaster recovery for months, potentially years, and that's something that we're definitely keeping in mind in the KYUK newsroom as we continue to cover the impact of ex-typhoon Halong.
KYUK: Yeah, and this day where you got to ride along with these officials in the Chinook helicopter, all packed into one day. Do you think one day was enough for these officials from far away to wrap their heads around this situation and the gravity of what's going on?
Smiley: It's hard for me to make that call, but I do think that, like the federal officials were saying, there is a lot of value in seeing things on the ground. Whether they were able to get a full sense of the scope of perspectives on recovery and what that looks like for these communities, I don't think that I'm equipped to say, but I'm glad that so many people were able to see exactly what's going on, see the houses smashed into each other, see the electrical poles leaning and the extent of recovery that needs to happen in these communities. There's a lot that we don't know yet, including what the total cost of responding to this disaster will be. There are estimates floating around that responding to [ex-]Typhoon Merbok cost upwards of $200 million and that didn't include communities requesting to fully relocate. And we know that Newtok’s relocation to Mertarvik cost anywhere between $47 to $300 million, so this is a potentially very, very expensive cleanup effort, response effort, and we just are not going to know how much is able to be committed to these communities and how much actually will make it to these communities for a while yet.
KYUK: Yeah, well, thank you for going out there in person and trying to get your head wrapped around it yourself and sharing it with KYUK.
Smiley: Thanks, Evan.
