In October 2025, Marie White traveled from Bethel to her hometown of Kwigillingok to celebrate her 67th birthday among her daughters and grandchildren, who lived in the village.
Less than two weeks later, White was back in Bethel. Her family said that a storm was bearing down on the village of around 400 people.
"They were calling me that there is a big storm and the water's really coming in fast. And I keep telling them, 'Go to school right now. Go to school,'” White said.
Two homes that White’s daughters and their families sheltered in floated away. Everyone eventually made it to the school safely.
This year, the extended family is packed into White’s apartment in Bethel to celebrate her birthday once again. The two-bedroom apartment is where most of the family spent the first month after ex-typhoon Halong, sleeping head to toe in the living room.
Since the storm, the daughters displaced from Kwigillingok have found work and places to stay in Bethel. The eldest, Patricia Twitchell, said that it hasn’t been easy.
"The rent is so expensive here, but we help each other, all of us," Twitchell said.
Twitchell was a week into a job at the village laundromat when the storm hit. Now she works as an assistant at a Bethel alternative school. Her sister, Jennifer Lewis, transferred to the Bethel Post Office. Her youngest sister, Frieda Evon, works at the hospital pharmacy. Their husbands have also found some work in town.
In the first months after the storm, the sisters’ families were prioritized for low-income housing through the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) and received an outpouring of donations through Facebook posts. They said that state and federal assistance helped them to purchase a truck and replace some items lost in the storm, like fishing nets, but they’re on their own when it comes to rent. None have been able to get rental assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and none said that they understand why.
Twitchell said that there have been challenges and firsts with the move from Kwigillingok to Bethel.
"I did not know anything about driving when we got here," Twitchell said.
Twitchell passed her permit and driving tests on the first try, but she said that each step into life away from the village has been uncertain.
"We didn't know what we were going to do. We thought we were going back home, like right away, not wait for a year," Twitchell said.
Evon said that her two boys just started first and second grade in Bethel. For weeks after the storm and the evacuation from Kwigillingok, they cried for their old school and their old home. Evon said that she and her older son both have nightmares about the flood.
"We thought it was going to be a normal flood, like the ones in the past. That's why lots of people stayed home," Evon said.
Evon's family was renting a cousin’s home while they put the finishing touches on a new place in Kwigillingok that was severely damaged. The village home that Lewis and her family were living in was destroyed in the storm.
Twitchell said that she hopes the regional housing authority will transfer ownership of the now-unlivable home she was renting. She said half-jokingly that she’ll find a way to move it to higher ground herself.
"If they convey it over to me, I could cut the poles off and move it," Twitchell said.
"It's a start"
A week after ex-typhoon Halong, Twitchell said that she felt a duty to fly back to Kwigillingok to volunteer in the search for two of her friends still missing after the storm. The body of 67-year-old Ella Mae Kashotok was recovered the day after ex-typhoon Halong. But the search for Kashotok's son, Chester, and adopted brother Vernon Pavil has taken longer. Chester’s body was recovered in June, and Pavil remains missing.
Twitchell walked over the tundra across the river from town, towing a plastic sled to gather items of value and whatever could be salvaged from the mostly spoiled subsistence harvests that had floated away in the storm.
"I saw lots of salmonberries, blackberries, dry fish everywhere," Twitchell said.
Twitchell saw specks of white in the distance near the riverside. She knew they were caskets. As she approached, Twitchell saw the pink artificial flowers she had stapled to her grandmother’s grave the prior spring.
"I opened the broken side of the cover. I took out the styrofoam, took that tarp off, and then I just sat there," Twitchell said. Maybe I sat there like a half-hour. I forgot who I called, and I said I found, I found her grave."
White said that she still isn’t ready to return to Kwigillingok or see how it’s changed.
"Most of where I grew up, it's all floated away. Only the upper part is good. All the graves floated away. She found my mom's casket, and I don't know where my dad's casket is," White said.
But White said that talking about the loss is a first step.
"I never say anything about this, and I'm glad I did that because it's a start. I might be able to go Kwig[illingok] sometime," White said.
Kwigillingok’s tribe voted to move the community to higher ground after the storm. White’s daughters said that they haven’t heard anything about that future planning since the vote. They just want to get their families home.
"I think the tribe needs to open the village for the school, the post, the clinic to open," Twitchell said.
Twitchell gestured to her older son, Nolan.
"He'd be hunting right now, at home, and he'd be gone all day," Twitchell said. "Subsistence make me want to stay home. My mom knows."
In August, Nolan had the chance to spend a week with his family in Kwigillingok hunting birds and harvesting berries. His grandmother said that it means a lot to see her grandchildren begin to make sense of what happened.
"I was happy for them because I know they will heal from there, seeing what happened down there, and then they can talk about it," White said. "Most of the Kwig[illingok] people that were traumatized, they still can't talk about what they went through. We can’t still understand why it happened. [icugg taugam aturluku]. That's what my mom and dad used to tell me. [Ellaita atullruit]. Everything we go through, everything we went through, it's not [guq] new," she said.
For White’s family, celebrating her birthday this year is bittersweet. Twitchell said that her parents’ birthdays are among the few occasions that get the entire family together. She hopes that the next time around can be in Kwigillingok.
