Western Alaska residents from the storm-ravaged communities of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok continued to land in Anchorage at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) on the night of Oct. 16, carrying backpacks and plastic bags filled with their belongings as they exited a military transport plane.
Hundreds of miles from home, not knowing if or when they would return, they then boarded school buses bound for emergency shelters or, in some cases, to stay with friends or family.
Nearly every home in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok was made uninhabitable by record-high floodwaters brought by the remnants of Typhoon Halong, which slammed into the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta early Sunday, Oct. 12. One woman died in Kwigillingok and two others from her family remain missing.
In the week after the storm hit, evacuees moved by boat, ATV, or on foot to shelter in their communities’ schools. Then, military helicopters or small planes flew them to Bethel, the regional hub, where they slept in the city’s National Guard Armory. On the final leg to Anchorage, they rode in a C-17 plane.
With only about 100 seats along the sides of the massive jet, the National Guard got special approval to hold more passengers, who sat on the floor.
National Guard personnel offloaded at least eight pallets of luggage when it arrived at JBER. On the pallets were piles of clothes, other belongings thrown in suitcases, and spare cardboard boxes. The feet of a teddy bear peeked out of one garbage bag.
The Oct. 16 flight was the third of its kind this week, each carrying as many as 266 evacuees after efforts to move displaced residents from Bethel to Anchorage began Wednesday, Oct. 15. The National Guard expected more to arrive Oct. 17 and Oct. 18.
Alaska National Guard Col. Christy Brewer said the goal is to get everybody who wants to be evacuated to Anchorage. Some displaced Kipnuk and Kwigilligok residents decided to stay in Bethel or go to other communities.
“Those who are willing to stay behind or who want to stay in their communities, we support that as well,” Brewer said. “And we're doing what we can to help shelter them and transport them to where they need to be.”
Evacuation operations will continue for as long as needed to get people to safety, Brewer said. The National Guard is still dropping food, water, and other supplies to storm-impacted villages that haven’t been evacuated, and they are continuing to deploy maintenance staff to repair damaged power generators, she said.
It’s unclear where the evacuees in Anchorage will go in the long term, but, for now, some are staying in shelters at the Alaska Airlines Center on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus and at the city’s Egan Civic and Convention Center downtown. Both are managed by the American Red Cross. Hundreds of additional disaster workers from across the country are headed to Alaska to help, said Erin McCann, a deputy coordinator with the American Red Cross.
That manpower extends beyond just the Anchorage shelters, McCann said.
“Some will go to Bethel, and then we're hoping to do distribution of emergency supplies out in the affected villages,” McCann said. “And during that process, folks will actually get out to all the affected villages when they are out.”
The Anchorage shelters are currently equipped to hold a total of up to 2,000 people, said Dave Riley, deputy operations section chief with the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
First, Riley said, the emergency response in Anchorage is to provide immediate shelter and medical aid, but it’s also aimed at the longer road ahead for the evacuees.
“Winter is coming pretty fast,” Riley said. “How do we shelter them and be respectful of them and their communities and their culture for the long term, until we get to where we can rebuild their homes?”
Local, state and federal officials are still working on a long-term plan.
In the meantime, the state is prepared to provide individual assistance to help secure hotel rooms, apartments, and houses, “so we can give them kind of a life back again,” Riley said.