Ex-typhoon Halong shifted course, and turned deadly in the YK-Delta

A joint search and rescue mission was concluding, Monday, when state authorities announced at least one woman had died from a rare and devastating coastal storm that slammed into Alaska’s western coast over the weekend. 
Alaska State Troopers said the victim’s body was found in Kwigillingok, one of the hardest hit communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the region where remnants of Typhoon Halong lingered the longest in the Bering Sea.  
After having notified next of kin troopers released the identity of the victim as 67-year-old Ella Mae Kashatok . Her body will be transported to the State Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy.   
Two other men from Kwigillingok, who troopers say are related to the victim, remain the last, overall, unaccounted for.  But the search for their bodies was called off Tuesday after 8.5 hours of flying across nearly 90 square miles. 
The focus now is on providing shelter to the estimated 1,400 villagers who have been displaced by the ex-typhoon.  It remains unclear just how many homes have been destroyed by Sunday’s early morning weather system, which delivered hurricane-force winds and fast-rising floodwaters.  It knocked many homes from their foundations, sending several to float upriver or into open water – some with entire families trapped inside. 
“Several of these villages have been completely devastated, absolutely flooded, several feet deep,” said U.S. Coast Guard Captain Christopher Culpepper at a press conference, Monday, hosted by Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy.  “This took people into peril where folks were swimming, floating, trying to find debris to hold onto in the cover of darkness at night.” 
By Sunday evening, 51 people and two dogs had been evacuated by helicopters from two of the most storm-struck communities: Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. The Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation said “hundreds more” are expected to be flown out by week’s end.  
The volume is unprecedented.  
“This may end up being the largest off-the-road system response for the National Guard in about 45 years,” said Alaska National Guard Major General Torrence W. Saxe.  
He emphasized the scale – an operation involving the National Guard, the Coast Guard, and the Alaska State Troopers all working jointly with the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center.  Meanwhile, two task forces have been set up in Kotzebue and Bethel using what Maj. Saxe called a ‘hub and spoke system’ to coordinate response efforts. 
As of Tuesday, 57 evacuees were sheltered at the armory in Bethel, but officials say it is nearing capacity.  Other facilities are being sought after in other cities, such as Anchorage and Fairbanks, to start evacuating those stranded by floodwaters. 
Some 400 people in Kwigillingok and close to 700 in Kipnuk are waiting for relief at their respective village schools which are running on generators. But power and cell service is limited. And there are reports that the toilets have stopped working at the school in Kwigillingok.  
“No one wants to be in a shelter, and particularly a shelter where the sanitation facilities are not working well,” said State Emergency Operations Center head Mark Roberts. “Let’s not hang any other picture. It’s catastrophic, and we are doing everything we can.” 
For now, the effort is to try and make these shelters as comfortable as possible.  Two Village Public Safety Officers have been assigned to Kipnuk and ‘Kwig,’ as the adopted shorthand goes.  And more than 10,000 bottles of water and 5,000 ready-to-eat meals have been delivered there as well as to four other villages: Tuntutuliak, Chefornak, Nightmute and Napakiak.  Meanwhile, health aides have been flown in to help patients with their medical and prescription needs. 

Shifting Storm
According to David Kramer from the National Weather Service, remnants of ex-typhoon Halong set record-breaking storm surge levels and experienced winds speeds comparable to a Category Two hurricane in some areas. 
Initially forecasted to travel north, toward the Bering Strait, instead, the low-pressure system veered east to the Y-K Delta region which Kramer said allowed for long-duration south to southwest winds.  
“It was a very deep low. It was extra tropical, so it had a lot of strength with it coming in.  And it strengthened as it moved through much of the southern and central Bering [Sea], so it was able to pull in more storm surge than a typical Bering low would.”
This trajectory meant a sustained fetch or wind-driven water event for  Kipnuk and Kwigillingok which bore the brunt of this concentrated weather system.
In Kipnuk, waters reached more than 6.5 feet above the normal highest tide line, roughly two feet more than a previous record set in 2000.  In Kwigillingok, the situation was similar, though the difference, more dramatic.  High water levels scaled above six feet, or almost four feet higher than last year’s floodwaters in the village, and five feet more than after ex-Typhoon Merbok in 2022. 
Meanwhile, wind speeds in some places reached hurricane category 1 and 2 levels.  The highest velocities were felt in Saint George and Toksook Bay, registering speeds at around 100 mph, and Kusilvak at 107 mph, according to the weather service.  Several other villages endured gusts of 70-80 mph.  
A new forecast for the region now warns of more rising waters and rough surf for Wednesday, though not nearly as strong as ex-Typhoon Halong. Gusts are expected up to 35-45 mph and water levels could increase by 1 to 2.5 feet in some places.  
Kwigillingok is one community that will be targeted, again.

Searching for Solutions
Twice daily, the tight-knit network of coastal villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have been providing updates by telephone conference call.   There, village leaders describe the trail of destruction. In Kipnuk, a deep crack had split open the airport runway, hampering transportation into and out of the village. In Tununak, next to Toksook Bay, homes were reportedly hanging on the edge of a seawall that had nearly buckled to the wind and waves. In Kongiganak, north of Kwigillingok, the power was down, and a boardwalk leading to the school had washed out, cancelling classes.  East, in the village of Quinhagak, the worst reported losses were freezers filled with subsistence catches, damaged fish houses, and submerged boats. 
The U.S. Coast Guard is using drones to inspect impacted shorelines for oil spills after the National Response Center reported general sheening in the vicinity.  It means dozens of fuel facilities relied upon to heat homes and run snowmachines for winter hunting could be compromised.   
Several officials, Monday, acknowledged the painful reality:  Time is passing and winter is near.
“We have a very short time,” said Incident Commander Roberts.  “It’s October already. I think you remember Merbok was September. So we’ve lost time already.  The governor has ordered and we’re stepping on the gas.”
Governor Dunleavy said he will visit the damaged villages when the time is right – perhaps in a matter of days.  But he has vowed sustained support for storm victims now and in the future.  “This is not just a photo op,” he said.  “We will help folks on the ground with immediate needs. We will help folks on the ground with midterm needs, and we will help folks on the ground with long term needs.”
On Tuesday, The Association of Village Council Presidents, the organization representing 56 tribes across the Y-K Delta, formally requested President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency and deploy immediate federal assistance to Western Alaska.
If and when requested by the governor, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security said it will make a formal request to the Trump administration for federal assistance, as well.
But the Trump administration has steadily been curbing the flow of disaster funding and climate resilience initiatives.  Early in his administration, Trump froze nearly $10 billion in disaster recovery and short-term housing aid, and by June, he publicly stated that the federal government wanted to eliminate Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, saying, “We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it back to the state level.” 
FEMA also stopped accepting new grants from its hazard mitigation program, the one that Kipnuk was awarded for repairs from last fall’s flooding, and that now seems to be tied up in red tape.  
On the eve of ex-Typhoon Halong’s arrival to Alaska, reports emerged that FEMA had also failed to deliver roughly $11 billion in reimbursements to 45 states.  Alaska is not one of them, but it has called into question the general flow of federal funding for extreme weather events, overall. 
There is also the lingering government shutdown to consider. 
For his part, U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan worked to downplay these concerns.  Speaking by telephone, he said he has been in direct communication “on a regular basis” with FEMA’s acting administrator, David Richardson, as well as with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.  But the senator stopped short of promising storm victims that federal help is on the way.
Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, joined Sullivan on the call to tout past gains in climate relief legislation for Alaska.  But much of this funding, secured after Merbok, has either been canceled or put on hold by the Trump administration. 
“Some of the infrastructure funds that had been directed in ways that I think could be helpful for us in the state related to climate resilience, particularly, have been pulled back,” she said, referring to her decisive vote of Trump’s budget-slashing reconciliation bill in late July. “This is why going back and underscoring to the administration why they’re so important, not necessarily for today’s storm – but so that we’re better prepared for future storms.” 
The time to act is now. Except there are fewer options than before.