Alaska’s governor on Thursday asked for federal help in recovering from the remnants of Typhoon Halong, which lashed villages along the Bering Sea this week, saying it could be 18 months before people forced from their homes could return.
Flooding from the typhoon overwhelmed western Alaska, and particularly communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, with the strength of a Category 2 hurricane on Oct. 11 and 12. In some spots, water levels rose as high as seven feet above normal, wiping out homes and leading to the evacuation of more than 2,000 people. At least one person died from the storm, and two people are missing.
Most of the evacuees are Native Alaskans who live in unincorporated villages far from government services or even roads. Days after the storm hit, people were still being evacuated by military transport planes and helicopters.
“I’m looking at people getting off flights right now,” Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said Friday from Bethel, Alaska, the first stop for evacuees. “They’re just all so tired.”
The governor, Mike Dunleavy, wrote President Trump on Thursday requesting that he declare a major disaster in the state and rush both logistical and financial help. He described the damage as catastrophic in nature.
Mr. Dunleavy, a Republican, noted in his letter to the president that over the past 12 months, he had declared 14 state disasters in Alaska, including landslides, floods and two glacial lake outbursts that flooded parts of Juneau. He said the Alaska Air and National Guard were in the middle of the “largest domestic/humanitarian evacuation operation in state history” and were still working to move storm survivors inland.
Emergency crews in Alaska have warned that in many cases, entire villages will need to be rebuilt.
“These are very small, isolated, remote communities,” Mr. Zidek said. “They’re also very tight-knit communities that rely on subsistence hunting and fishing.”
Five months ago, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant intended to protect one of the hardest-hit communities, Kipnuk, from extreme flooding. The grant was issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Trump administration officials said it was “no longer consistent” with the agency’s priorities. It was not clear whether the work funded by the grant would have prevented damage this week in Kipnuk, which is built on permafrost that is melting.
Mr. Zidek said one of the challenges with helping people return home was the remoteness of the villages hit hardest by the storm. Simply restoring power will take time, he said, and winter is coming.
“We’re going to need a lot of help, and this is going to take a long time,” he said. “Fortunately or unfortunately, here in Alaska we’re really good at responding to disaster.”
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