A mass evacuation is underway for Kipnuk and Kwigillingock, where a thousand people were sheltering in schools after Sunday’s huge storm.
Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Kipnuk tribal administrator Buggy Carl said he was focused on one thing.
“Right now, just trying to convince everybody to go before the next storm hits,” he said.
Shelter conditions in the two communities were rough. The toilets weren’t working at the Kwigillingok school. Power and telecommunications were spotty in Kipnuk, and fuel to heat the school was running low. Nearly all the homes in both towns were damaged. It’s unsafe to stay, Carl said. Still, some people are reluctant to leave.
“I know their mindset, that their heart is here,” he said. “They don't know anywhere else to go.”
It’s more than just familiar. Carl said it’s where they know how to make a living as subsistence hunters and harvesters. Carl said he heard some say they were afraid to go somewhere else.
“And then there is a possible thought that we will be able to come back, for those who want to come back, and still continue to help clean up,” he said.
Carl said houses that were pushed off their foundations are scattered across Kipnuk. He was in a house with 14 family members during the storm, six of them children, when the four-bedroom house started drifting around 2 a.m. At one point he yelled at his family to brace when it looked like they were going to strike another house. He estimates his home traveled half a mile before it came to rest.
“We only floated down a few minutes. It felt like hours, because the time was really slow,” he said. “My adrenaline was like out of the roof.”
Kwigillingok tribal court administrator Brea Paul said a substantial portion of her town has already been flown to Bethel.
“We're going to be one of the last families to leave so we can let the ones with no homes go first. But as of right now, we don't know where we're gonna go. We don't know what to do,” she said.
The first evacuees were taken to the Bethel Armory, but that shelter quickly filled.
On Wednesday afternoon, evacuees were seen boarding a C-17 transport plane at the Alaska Army National Guard hangar in Bethel.
A Guard spokesperson said that 300 people from both Kipnuk and Kwigillingok were being evacuated to Anchorage.
The Alaska National Guard said the evacuees were being flown to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, where agencies will be available to direct them to shelter, food and medical care.
