For some of the hundreds flying out of the villages in Western Alaska, it's not a question of when, but if they will be able to return.
That included residents of Kwigillingok, who were boarding military helicopters Thursday, Oct. 16 with the few possessions they could carry.
Northern Journal reporter Nat Herz, working with Bethel radio station KYUK, flew into the Kuskokwim Delta village on the morning of Oct. 16. Herz said that the devastation was visible miles away from the village.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Nat Herz: Eleven or 12 miles from the village, we started seeing these white spots on the tundra. And a guy I was traveling with kind of pointed out, he was like, 'That's just trash, that's debris,' that had floated all the way from the village. And as we got closer we saw overturned boats, overturned snowmachines, and kind of, finally, saw the village. Everything's super waterlogged and wet and soggy here. And, you know, the village, it's barely above the ocean, barely above the river that comes through town here. And, yeah, pretty waterlogged at this point, although it feels like the flood waters have largely receded.
Casey Grove: Are the folks that have evacuated, are they able to take much with them or is it just kind of what they can carry?
NH: I think they are able to bring, at least a couple bags. Yesterday, I think folks in Kipnuk were being told they couldn't bring their dogs along, which was really hard. Today they were actually being told if they were able to keep their dog close or in a kennel or whatever they could actually bring dogs. I mean, I think a lot of people lost the vast majority of their stuff anyway. But certainly this is people leaving their homes not sure if they ever will come back with basically, like, the clothes on their back and maybe a piece of luggage or two. It's devastating.
CG: Wow, yeah. And I mean, for the people that have stayed behind, what are you hearing from them, and what did they say about why they're staying?
NH: I mean, I don't know enough yet to totally understand. It doesn't feel like, between here and Kipnuk, people are really expecting that large numbers are going to be here through the winter right now, just because everything is so messed up and there's just not that much time before freeze-up. I think there may be some folks that kind of keep the lights on and maybe do some, like, real essential repairs.
And then, as far as the kinds of stuff they've experienced, it's pretty just unimaginable, like homes being lifted up off their foundations and floated away with people inside them. And that's, I think, that's kind of the worst of it.
I was just talking to a guy who was evacuating his family from his house to the school, which was sort of the shelter here in the village. And, you know, he described he was in a sort of a convoy of four-wheelers, and he was the last one and had to cross this torrent of rushing water that felt like it was about to sort of sweep them away.
I think the level of trauma that adults, who feel a level of responsibility, have experienced, but also the children, who maybe don't totally understand what's going on here, it's hard to fathom. One woman I was talking to about what she'd experienced, we were having what felt like a pretty normal conversation about a hard subject, and then I asked her, you know, if she expected to come back or wanted to come back. And she just immediately started sobbing and said, 'No,' and was just wailing, like, 'No.'
I think it just feels like some really scary, gnarly stuff happened here that people are going to be processing and living with for probably the rest of their lives.
But I just would say, like, also the level of resiliency to live here. This is a subsistence, mixed sort of subsistence [and] cash economy here, but people are living on the land, they they know how to survive here. And I think the way that people are pulling together just to support each other through this emotional trauma. I've been watching just these really long hugs all day. And there's really kind of wonderful communal meals at the school. Folks are helping each other out to get their subsistence foods out of their freezers before they thaw. People are figuring it out as well as suffering and processing the trauma.
CG: Yeah, that seems really hard. So it also seems like there's a huge question about, not only would they be able to rebuild by winter, which is right around the corner here, but maybe a big question about whether they can rebuild at all?
NH: I think, sort of from an official standpoint, I don't want to speculate on whether it's the local tribal government or the regional tribal organizations that are coordinating some of the response, or the state of Alaska or the federal government might be sort of choosing or contemplating.
I think there's certainly a lot of people, a surprising number of people I've talked to today and yesterday, who basically said, you know, 'We do not expect to go home, or don't expect to go home for a long time, or expect that maybe one day we'll return to our village in our home there as like a summer place. But, you know, we're moving inland.'