In the predawn dark of Kwigillingok, the river didn’t rise it surged. Entire homes lifted off their foundations and drifted into the Bering Sea. More than 30 people have been rescued across two remote Yup’ik villages, and three remain unaccounted for after the remnants of Typhoon Halong slammed western Alaska with hurricane-force winds and catastrophic flooding. “We have received reports that people’s homes have floated away and that people were potentially in those homes,” said Jeremy Zidek, spokesperson for Alaska’s Division Of Homeland Security And Emergency Management. In Kipnuk and Kwigillingok communities accessible only by air or boat nearly 900 residents now huddle in school shelters, cut off from roads, power, and certainty.
Alaska State Troopers dispatched rescue aircraft through howling winds to reach Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, where boardwalks serve as streets and snowmobiles double as ambulances. In Kwigillingok alone, 18 people were pulled to safety; in Kipnuk, 16 more. But secondhand reports suggest others may still be missing. Search teams are working through the night as weather permits, coordinating with village elders and local leaders who know every cabin and creek bend. Governor Mike Dunleavy issued a stark promise: “Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm. Help is on the way.” Yet in a region where supply flights are weather-dependent and fuel costs soar, “on the way” can feel agonizingly slow.
These villages have long stood on the front lines of climate change. Permafrost thaws. Shorelines erode. Storms intensify. What once might have been a seasonal high-water event is now a life-threatening deluge. The nonprofit Coastal Villages Region Fund confirmed that nearly 600 people in Kipnuk and 300 in Kwigillingok are sheltering in schools temporary refuges with limited heat, food, and medical supplies. For elders who’ve lived here for decades, this flood feels different. Not just in scale, but in speed. “The water came like it had a mind of its own,” one resident told local radio, voice trembling. State emergency teams are now airlifting water, generators, and trauma kits but the psychological toll may linger far longer than the floodwaters.
Despite the devastation, local networks are already mobilizing. Hunters share fuel. Teachers organize childcare in crowded gymnasiums. Elders lead prayers in Yup’ik, their voices steady amid chaos. This Community Resilience is not new it’s survival, refined over generations. Still, the scale of this disaster strains even the strongest bonds. With no roads connecting these villages to the outside world, every gallon of water, every roll of insulation, must come by plane. And with another storm system eyeing the Aleutians, time is not on their side.
While a nor’easter pounds the East Coast flooding New Jersey beaches, canceling New York’s Columbus Day Parade, and triggering emergency declarations from Delaware to Long Island the crisis in Alaska risks fading from national view. Yet the two storms share a thread: rising seas, warmer oceans, and communities pushed to the brink. In Buxton, North Carolina, beachfront homes teeter on collapsing pilings; in Kwigillingok, they’ve already vanished. The difference is visibility. One disaster unfolds on cable news; the other, in silence, 400 miles west of Bethel. But for those watching their world float away, the loss is just as real.
This is not just a storm. It’s a symptom. The remnants of Typhoon Halong born in the western Pacific traveled thousands of miles only to unleash their final fury on villages that contributed almost nothing to the emissions driving such extremes. As rescue helicopters circle above flooded tundra and children sleep on gym mats in overheated classrooms, a quiet question echoes: how many more homes must float away before these places are seen not as remote outposts, but as vital parts of the American story? The Water Doesn’t Care How Far You Are From Washington It Just Rises.
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