A year after ex-Typhoon Halong, repairing from the storm folds into preparing for what comes next.
“You got to sit back and say, let's not take everything for granted. You could have a good community today, but tomorrow it might be a completely different scenario,” said Napaskiak resident Earl Samuelson.
A year ago today, daily life in dozens of Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta communities was suddenly interrupted when the remnants of Typhoon Halong slammed into the coast. More than 1,500 people were forced from their homes. Many displaced from the hardest hit communities still have no idea if or when they may be able to return.
The crisis has shined a light on what is still missing from disaster response, and what tribal communities need to protect a way of life bound to the land.
Samuelson said his community of around 450 people on the lower Kuskokwim River fared relatively well in Halong.
“My yard ended up in my neighbor's yard. My neighbor's yard ended up in my yard, that kind of thing,” he said.
But Samuelson said an ice storm that followed knocked out the power, froze the community’s well, and cut off local water supplies for around two months.
Growing up, he said he learned a lot from Elders in the community with a knack for predicting the weather.
“Then as they were getting older, they started telling us the weather is too hard to predict now,” Samuelson said.
Samuelson, a pilot and veteran search and rescue volunteer who coordinated resources during Halong, said each storm brings new lessons.
“[Ex-Typhoon] Merbok, we learned from that one. We were a little better on this one. We might take a few more storms to where we get this thing down,” Samuelson said.
Evacuation
After Halong, the largest airlift evacuation in state history was matched only by the largest ever emergency response in the hub of Bethel. The city swelled with local and outside volunteers, agency officials, pallet loads of donations, and hundreds of evacuees from the hardest hit communities of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. Within four days, the vast majority had left Bethel for Anchorage on C-17 transport planes – a brand new reality.
Around 280 people from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok have relocated to Bethel since Halong. According to the city, many have been able to find their own places, but 15 households are still hosting evacuees a year later. The city said Halong highlighted the serious need for housing in Bethel, whether that’s because of disasters or simply wanting to be closer to services in the hub community.
In Kipnuk, 90% of buildings were damaged or destroyed and nearly all of the 974 people the tribe said were living there at the time of the storm evacuated. At the one-year mark, locally staffed crews are working to make the community livable again. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said it expects repairs for as many as 150 homes to be completed by Thanksgiving, giving families the option to return if they choose.
Kipnuk Tribal President Daniel Paul, who has spent most of the past year in the village, said water, sewer, and electrical systems are running smoothly. He said the tribe plans to meet soon to discuss whether to lift a no-return order for the village. While Kipnuk’s tribe voted to relocate the community earlier this year, Paul said rebuilding remains the priority. It’s what’s funded, for now.
“Rebuild first and then relocate later. Money talks and money walks,” Paul said.
In Kwigillingok, tribal administrator Gavin Phillip said more than 40 homes drifted away in the storm. Phillip said the greatest lesson from the storm comes from knowing that his community of 374 people would have been safer if evacuation orders had been followed. Two people died, and one remains missing after the house they were living in was washed away.
Phillip said today, around 20 people are staying in the community. Repair work is currently paused, but Phillip said the village’s water line needs repairs, boardwalks need to be built, and more snowmachines and ATVs are needed to support the eventual return of people to the community.
Relocation
Kwigillingok’s tribe was already planning for relocation when the storm hit, and Kipnuk tribal members voted overwhelmingly after Halong to relocate. Both communities have selected potential sites on higher ground. But questions of barge access, construction of new schools, and gaining ownership of the lands from the federal government or neighboring tribes loom large.
It took nearly 30 years from when the initial land exchange proposal was made to complete the only full-scale climate-driven relocation to date in Alaska – from Newtok to Mertarvik.
In the interim, the two communities are exploring the idea of temporary resettlement. On a recent Talk of Alaska episode, Kipnuk’s environmental coordinator, Rayna Paul, said tribal members from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok surveyed about a potential site to live while relocation plans are firmed showed a preference for the Mat-Su Borough.
Like rebuilding or relocating, the idea of a temporary settlement in a rural area where displaced families may have greater opportunities to thrive and protect cultural traditions is full of unknowns.
Jeremy Zidek, a spokesperson with the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said the state's request to FEMA for Halong – permanent housing construction funding to replace 219 homes severely damaged in Kipnuk, Kwigillingok, and other villages – has been denied for reasons that remain unclear.
“We feel it's a very important program to be activated, and we're working very hard to make sure our appeal is as thorough as possible,” Zidek said.
Zidek said the state simply doesn’t have the funding to build new homes – he said each one could cost over $1 million. Zidek said a total of 675 homes across the region still need repairs.
In April, FEMA’s continued temporary housing assistance will run out, leaving the 189 households without rental relief. Zidek said the state is asking for an extension of the program.
Over the past year, FEMA has paid out more than $100 million to people impacted by the storm in individual, housing, and other needs assistance, according to a press release.
FEMA did not respond to detailed questions from KYUK about individual and public assistance and the agency’s response in the wake of ex-typhoon Halong in time for this story.
Tuntutuliak Elder Henry Lupie said individual assistance funds in his lower Kuskokwim River community have been spent quickly to replace the tools for survival.
“Since subsistence is the main livelihood, people concentrated on getting their vehicles like the outboard motor and snowmachine,” Lupie said.
Zidek said FEMA staff based in Alaska over the past year are phasing out of the state because of residency requirements that limit how long they can stay in the state. Disaster case management is being handed to Tidal Basin Group, a private firm that Zidek said played a major role in getting evacuees in Anchorage from hotels into rental units.
“The direct case management is going to go beyond just housing. It may be helping connect them with employment opportunities. It may help them navigate other government programs. It may connect them with services that they weren't aware of because they haven't needed them up to this point,” Zidek said.
Beyond housing and more traditional assistance, Zidek said the state has been able to aid Kipnuk and Kwigillingok with the reinternment of dozens of graves washed away in the storm. He said state public assistance is covering the costs of bringing materials and heavy equipment to Kwigillingok. The state is still working with Kipnuk’s tribe on their reinterment plans, he said.
Inundation
People in coastal communities describe the morning after Halong like being in the middle of the ocean. Satellite images from NASA show saltwater inundation of the coastline reaching more than 15 miles onto the tundra in some areas.
In Nightmute on Nelson Island, Tribal Administrator Clement George said tomcod normally harvested in the ocean have been appearing in blackfish traps set far inland for the first time anyone can remember. And what had been the preferred areas for harvesting blackfish have vanished.
“We used to set blackfish traps south of Nightmute. Now we can't get to them because some of the land floated off and then covered those rivers,” George said.
Down the coast at the traditional subsistence site known as Umkumiut, scraps from the dozens of seasonal homes destroyed in the storm litter the hillside. A Catholic church built in 1969 still faces away from the sea after being spun around by Halong.
George said people from Nightmute will continue to rely on Umkumiut for as much as three-quarters of their subsistence harvests – salmon, herring, seals, shellfish, and others – but no one has so far wanted to build back what was lost.
“I had a cabin down there. It was wiped out. Nobody did any rebuilding. Doesn’t make sense for us to rebuild on where they were destroyed,” George said.
George said his focus is on Nightmute, where contractors were able to rebuild more than a dozen homes floated in Halong initially thought to be destroyed. The tribe is also putting the finishing touches on four new homes on the hill above town. But repair efforts have delayed other projects meant to bring piped water and sewer, a new landfill, and a rock quarry to the community of around 250 people.
The Association of Village Council Presidents Regional Housing Authority had 86 of its homes damaged in Halong-impacted communities. The tribal nonprofit said by email that Halong showed that the established 100-year floodplain for the communities it serves needs to be updated. It delineates areas where a flood has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.
The tribal nonprofit said until FEMA publishes new studies showing how the altered coastline may affect flooding, it will continue incorporating local knowledge of historic storm levels into its project planning.
Education
Schools were some of the only buildings to come through Halong relatively unscathed, even in the hardest-hit communities. Lower Kuskokwim School District Superintendent Jason Hlasny said the storm drove home the central role of village schools.
“Whether there's a funeral or a wedding or a feast or an emergency situation, our schools are the center, often, of a community. They are the backbone,” Hlasny said.
Around 1,300 people sheltered in LKSD schools across the region for at least two days after Halong, according to the State Emergency Operations Center. At Kipnuk’s school, water supplies dwindled and the power demands of 600 people nearly overwhelmed its generator. At Kwigillingok’s school, evacuees went without working restrooms for multiple days. Hlasny said LKSD has increased its check-ins with schools and is ensuring they have enough emergency food supplies to sustain the community for more than 24 hours.
In Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, schools have become the headquarters for rebuild efforts after LKSD decided in August not to reopen them.
Hundreds of students have been displaced. Around a dozen students are still living in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok and taking online classes through the district. More than 150 students displaced by Halong are enrolled in schools across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region. Nearly as many are enrolled in Anchorage schools, according to the district.
Preparation
The remnants of typhoons have become closely associated with widespread destruction in Western Alaska, with Halong and Merbok the most recent examples. But climatologist Rick Thoman said the vast majority of high-impact storms from the Bering Sea aren’t ex-typhoons. The record November 1974 storm in Nome, which brought water levels nearly 12 feet above the high tide line, wasn’t spawned by a typhoon.
“What these ex-typhoons are doing, they're adding one more way it can be stormy. We didn't need any more ways,” Thoman said.
In the 50 years leading up to the 2022 ex-Typhoon Merbok, there had only been one recorded in Alaska.
“Since 2022, we've had three in four years. We'll see what happens this year,” Thoman said.
It’s difficult to measure readiness for the next big storm in Western Alaska. When Halong hit, the tribal consortium representing Y-K Delta communities – the Association of Village Council Presidents – was working closely with the state to develop small community emergency response plans. AVCP was suddenly thrust into action and played a vital role in communication and coordinating resources in the months after the ex-typhoon.
In a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing held in Bethel in the spring, AVCP called for a tribally led region-wide emergency response system tailored for Western Alaska. Chair Thaddeus Tikiun Jr. said the ideal system would make Bethel a hub for five regional response centers, and would require permanent funding from the federal government.
“We cannot keep responding to Arctic typhoons and other disasters with a patchwork system and expect it to work,” Tikiun Jr. said at the hearing.
But little has been shared about the status of the proposal since. AVCP did not respond to a request for comment in time for this story.
Individual communities are left to plan for themselves. In Quinhagak, where Halong peeled back as much as 60 feet of the Bering Sea coastline, the local village corporation is working to build its search and rescue and emergency response capabilities.
“At the end of the day, our community has to respond locally because help's not going to come right away,” said Lynn Church, who heads the Qanirtuuq Corporation subsidiary Nalaquq.
Church said the community’s volunteer corps has grown and a younger generation is stepping up – using mapping technology, getting certified as drone pilots, and as emergency trauma technicians.
Church said the next step for Quinhagak is a seat at the table in emergency planning and response.
“Who's the point of contact with the state troopers, Coast Guard, and National Guard? Who's going to be our point of contact, and how are we going to be on the same page?” Church asked.
Church said it’s Quinhagak’s best attempt to get out in front of the potential devastation from future storms.
“We're working as one and taking advantage of the technology because we don't want to be environmental refugees in Anchorage. We want to stay home. We love our way of life,” Church said.
But without data-driven, accurate weather forecasts, experts say the threat of another scenario like Halong remains.
Climatologist Thoman said Halong was uniquely challenging for forecasters. He said global models did a good job forecasting its track into the Bering Sea, but failed to forecast the storm’s eastward shift.
A lack of weather balloon launches at sites across Western Alaska may have played a role. And he said since April, weather stations at all of the region’s airports have gone through periods of days or weeks with no observations. That’s only one of multiple sources of observations that are needed, he said.
“I'm not just talking more FAA weather stations,” Thoman said. “We need ocean observations. We need current observations, especially where these local effects matter so much.”
The land will keep changing. Thoman said sea level rise, permafrost thaw, erosion, and further inundation of the land are inevitable. And as storms creep later into the season, Thoman said people have to prepare to address crises in even more difficult conditions.
“This is a great instance where people's lived experience tells them all they need to know, right? This is not how it used to be here, and now it is, and it’s not going back,” he said.
National Weather Service meteorologist Aviva Braun said the storm taught meteorologists a lot about what to look for in other ex-typhoons that move from the North Pacific into the Bering Sea. She said forecasting the impacts is a work in progress.
“There's still a lot to learn because the coastline was completely reformed in Halong … We keep on putting like the asterisks on our notes that this is pre-Halong land survey information,” Braun said.
Braun said the agency is calibrating its approach by calling communities to get local observations as new storms unfold.
“With every single storm, we're doing better. We're strengthening relationships. We're strengthening communication,” Braun said.
Samantha Watson contributed reporting to this story.
