JUNEAU, Alaska: Officials in Alaska rushed Tuesday to evacuate and find housing for people from tiny coastal villages devastated by the remnants of Typhoon Halong. But the remote location and severe damage are limiting their options as they race against other impending storms and the onset of winter.
High winds and surging waters battered low-lying, isolated Alaska Native communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska, nearly 800km from Anchorage, over the weekend. The Coast Guard plucked two dozen people from their homes after the structures floated out to sea in high water, three people were missing or dead, and hundreds of people were staying in school shelters – including one with no working toilets, officials said.
The system followed a storm that struck parts of western Alaska days earlier.
Across the region, more than 1,500 people were displaced. Dozens had been flown to a shelter set up in the National Guard armory in the regional hub city of Bethel, a community of 6,000 people, and officials are considering flying evacuees to longer-term shelter or emergency housing in Fairbanks and Anchorage as they run out of room there.
Fuel storage depots intended to support communities in the region had apparently been damaged, threatening pollution that could harm the fish and game the Alaska Native residents rely on for subsistence. Some people in the area may have lost freezers full of food such as salmon and moose intended to get them through the winter.
