Early on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 12, Lt. Blake David Brostrom and his United States Coast Guard helicopter crew flew from Kodiak to the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta coast to survey storm damage.
They first flew over southern Kuskokwim coast communities, including Quinhagak, before getting the all-clear from community leaders indicating that all residents were accounted for and had been evacuated locally. Then they headed toward Kwigillingok.
“And we immediately [saw] a drastic difference between the other villages,” Brostrom said. “It was very flooded. We saw a lot of damage. We saw homes that were as much as 3 miles away from where they should have been, ripped off of their foundations.”
Communicating by radio, the crew worked with local searchers on the ground. They sent a crew member down in a harness to search for people in floating homes and offer medical aid. Brostrom said that many Kwigillingok residents had been shuttled by boat or ATV from their homes to tiny areas of high ground that had formed as the water receded. The helicopter crew ferried groups from the little islands to the evacuation center at the school.
“And I remember looking back and I saw one kid. He waved to me, and I was like, ‘Hey buddy.’ Brostrom said. “[...] He just seemed very, like, his face was both happy, but at the same time there was this huge sigh of relief that we were able to get people into a safe location.”
Between the villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, the State Emergency Operations Center said that 51 people and two dogs were rescued by joint efforts between the Coast Guard, Alaska State Troopers, Alaska Army National Guard, and Alaska Army Air Guard.
Brostrom said the way some houses had drifted — displaced so far from their foundations — was to a degree he’d never seen before.
“Our homes are like our sanctuary, right? Whether it's like your family photos, the house you grew up in, your family, all the love that you have inside that home, gone overnight,” Brostrom said. “It is very tragic, and it is going to be a long and emotional process [of recovery].”
Brostrom said that he worked off the Florida coast during Hurricane Ian in 2023. The amount of backup and resources able to reach places as remote as Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, he said, is starkly different. The response to Hurricane Ian had three National Guard Chinooks and a total of 11 helicopters issuing response, along with large numbers of local law enforcement.
“Versus here it was just like, it was four helicopters,” Brostrom said. “And that’s what we had.”
On a road system — or with one nearby — it’s easier to bring resources to a community in need. But Brostrom said that the remoteness of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok made for less backup. Brostrom said that the small team compensated with tight communication, conversing by radio between helicopters and being each other’s support to successfully evacuate residents and carry out a search party.
Tobias Crowley is an aviation maintenance technician who was on another Coast Guard helicopter crew. It was his first time to the Y-K Delta and said that he quickly got a sense of Kwigillingok’s location.
“There's not a lot out there,” Crowley said. “And then slowly we come upon this village, and we don't know what it was supposed to look like, but we just see these – it started with just a few houses, and then we flew over those and quickly realized those aren't where they're supposed to be.”
On Monday, Oct. 13, after people were moved to shelters in their communities, crews shifted to evacuating people in need of medical attention to Bethel. The Coast Guard helicopters also dropped hundreds of pounds of supplies, including food and water, medicine, batteries, and dog food, along with medical personnel, to Kipnuk and Kwigillingok before heading back with evacuees. The Coast Guard helicopters could fit about six community members at a time.
Garrett Grounds, an aviation survival technician with the Coast Guard, recalled watching Kipnuk residents take in the extent of damage to their community from the air.
“I think the severity of the event was pretty apparent, but watching some of the reactions to some of the people we picked up once we got airborne, seeing the full scale of it from the air, definitely made a big impact,” Grounds said.
Evacuation efforts from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok into Bethel continue. The State Emergency Operations Center said that they expect Bethel’s shelter to reach capacity in the coming days. Then they will have to consider evacuating community members from the damaged villages to Anchorage or Fairbanks.
This story was produced with contribution from Nat Herz of Northern Journal.
