Public Safety

A woman has been found dead in Kwigillingok, two days after a devastating storm hit the Kuskokwim Delta coast.

The woman’s name has not been released publicly. Alaska State Troopers say they’re working to notify her next of kin.

Reached by phone Monday evening, spokesperson Austin McDaniel said troopers are actively searching for two people who are still missing from Kwigillingok.

Kwigillingok was one of the hardest-hit communities in the Oct. 11 storm. Kipnuk, roughly 30 miles west, was also battered by high winds and record-breaking flooding, but troopers say everyone from that community has been accounted for.

Dozens of evacuees from the two communities are arriving in Bethel, according to the regional tribal healthcare provider. They’re being housed at Bethel’s National Guard Armory, which has been turned into a 100-bed shelter.

This is a developing story and may be updated with additional information.

The U.S. Coast Guard commander for Western Alaska compared the devastation in Southwest Alaska villages over the weekend to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“Several of these villages have been completely devastated, absolutely flooded, several feet deep,” Coast Guard Capt. Christopher Culpepper said at a news conference Monday. “This took homes off of foundations. This took people into peril, where folks were swimming, floating, trying to find debris to hold onto in the cover of darkness.”

The remnants of Typhoon Halong barreled into remote, coastal communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta on Sunday, bringing hurricane-force winds and record flood waters. Coast Guard and National Guard crews have rescued at least 51 people so far from two of the hardest-hit communities: Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. Three people remain missing from Kwigillingok. Hundreds of survivors are in community shelters.

“It’s been very scary — very, very scary — for folks,” said State Emergency Operations Center head Mark Roberts.

Roberts and other officials at Monday’s news conference said they’re still taking stock of the damage, but said the storm destroyed dozens of homes. Some of them floated off their foundations with families still inside. Several people called the state’s emergency operations center for help.

“The folks that were in houses that were floating and didn’t know where they were was one of the most tragic things our folks in the state EOC have ever faced,” Roberts said.

The storm also cracked Kipnuk’s runway so planes cannot land and snapped a lot of utility poles in half, leading to continued power outages, Bethel state Sen. Lyman Hoffman said.

Massive search and rescue effort continues

Locating every missing person is the state’s top priority, Roberts said.

Alaska National Guard Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Torrance Saxe said he has activated every member of the state’s National Guard and Alaska State Defense Force living in Western Alaska, totaling 60 to 80 people. State officials are also calling up more personnel largely from Fairbanks and Anchorage, he said.

“This may end up being the largest off-the-road-system response for the National Guard in about 45 years,” Saxe said.

Dozens of nonprofit organizations, businesses and faith-based groups, including the Salvation Army, Red Cross, Samaritan’s Purse and World Central Kitchen, are also coordinating recovery efforts with the state, Roberts said.

“We’re coming,” Roberts said. “We’re going to have folks there to help you.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has declared a disaster for the region, easing access to additional resources.

“We know you need help. We’re going to continue to get the help to you,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to get everything up and running as quickly as possible, and we will continue to help — not just today, tomorrow, but weeks and months on and until we get things back to what used to be at least considered semi-normal.”

Record flooding

The storm surge broke records in the hardest hit communities, said meteorologist David Kramer of the National Weather Service. At Kipnuk, the water reached 6.6 feet above the normal highest tide mark, he said.

“The previous record was 4.7 feet, and that was back in 2000. So almost two feet higher than what we have seen before,” Kramer said.

The surge at Kwigillingok was also several feet higher than the last record high water, Kramer said.

Despite its fierceness, this storm was more focused than Merbok, the big disaster that hit Western Alaska in 2022.

“Merbok was, I’ll say, more extended on the coast,” said Gen. Saxe. “This really did hit certain areas very hard, and we want to get our help there, as I said, very quickly.”

Coast Guard assess environmental impacts

In addition to its search and rescue mission, the Coast Guard is also focused on the potential for a marine disaster. By midday, the only pollution reported was a light sheen in the flood waters, but the area of storm damage includes dozens of bulk fuel tanks and other fuel storage facilities, Culpepper said.

“These facilities are those that which the communities rely upon for home heating oil, subsistence through winter, for travel, for fuel, for vehicles, boats, aircraft, and they’re critical assets,” he said.

Coast Guard teams will conduct assessments and decide where the greatest danger is, he said.

Dunleavy said spilled oil is a low priority for the state right now.

“We’ve got to take care of people quickly. We have to take care of their needs quickly,” he said. “We have to take care of water, food, sanitation, electricity.”

Oil and gasoline spills can be addressed later, he said.

‘More and more warming that is disrupting lives’

Dunleavy said he didn’t know how much climate change may have contributed to the intensity of the storm. Alaska has seen big storms in past decades, too, he said.

“We certainly had a couple stacked on top of each other last couple of years,” he said. “At least two under under my watch.”

Hoffman, who represents the region and grew up in Bethel, said its climate has changed, forcing the village of Newtok to relocate.

“There has been more and more warming that is disrupting lives in the Y-K Delta from the last 25 years that I can tell,” he said.

At least three people were still missing Monday, and 51 had been rescued from two Southwest Alaska communities hit hardest by the remnants of Typhoon Halong, according to the Alaska National Guard.

The massive storm flooded communities and destroyed homes Sunday when it slammed into the coast of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, bringing with it destructive winds and high waters. Officials have said that the hardest hit communities appear to be Kipnuk, Kwigillingok and Napakiak.

In an update Monday, the Guard said rescue teams from multiple agencies searched storm-impacted communities throughout the night. The storm blew and floated at least a dozen houses off of their foundations, some with families still inside.

As of Monday morning, U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Air and Army National Guard aircraft had rescued 51 people and two dogs from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. Three people were medically evacuated from Kipnuk to Bethel for medical care.

The three people unaccounted for are from Kwigillingok, the Guard said. Additional details were not immediately available Monday. Search efforts continued.

According to the National Weather Service, the wind had mellowed by Monday morning, as the storm moved north into the Beaufort Sea.

Carson Jones, lead forecaster with the Weather Service’s Anchorage office, said weather in the areas hit hardest over the weekend had returned to normal for fall on Alaska’s west coast.

“Kind of isolated rain showers, some snow showers, up farther north into the northwest area there, but throughout the Kuskokwim Delta, we’re mid-40s, light winds and isolated rain showers,” Jones said. “So the weather has calmed down significantly for those communities.”

Monday morning, Jones said, the storm was hitting the North Slope, where Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse were seeing wind gusting up to about 40 miles per hour.

The Guard asked anyone in need of immediate rescue to contact the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center at 907-551-7230. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has scheduled a news conference for 1 p.m. Monday with numerous state and federal officials. It will be live-streamed on the governor’s Facebook page.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

As the remnants of a typhoon were set to slam western Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration Thursday for communities hit by a powerful storm earlier in the week.

The state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a press release that flooding and storm surge damaged homes and infrastructure during Wednesday’s storm. Kotzebue was under a mandatory evacuation, which has since been lifted. According to officials, there are no reports of injuries at this time.

Carter MacKay is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. He said initial forecasts overestimated tide levels by one to two feet, which was good for low-lying communities like Kotzebue and Shishmaref.

“As an overall trend, there was an abundance of high water and erosion across the west coast with some areas of damage, but it wasn’t widespread impacts,” MacKay said.

The declaration activates public and individual assistance programs across the Bering Strait, Lower Yukon, and Kashunamiut school regions, as well as the Northwest Arctic and North Slope boroughs. Those programs help repair public infrastructure and provide aid to families whose homes were damaged.

State emergency officials are deploying response teams and have requested help from the Alaska National Guard and State Defense Force.

Incident Commander Mark Roberts said in the release that preparations made before the storm helped keep people safe, but warned that more bad weather is on the way. Flood warnings are in effect across western Alaska through Monday as another storm, the remnants of Typhoon Halong, approaches the Bering Sea.

MacKay said the weather service is already shifting its focus to the upcoming storm.

“It’s looking a little bit worse in terms of really strong winds gusted about 70 to 80 miles an hour,” MacKay said. “So wind gusts could be even stronger with this next one moving in, which could lead to potentially more significant coastal impacts.”

Residents are urged to stay alert, follow local instructions and keep emergency plans ready.

A grand jury indicted a Juneau man Thursday on two counts of felony assault for allegedly attacking two Juneau Police officers during an arrest earlier this month. 

James Carteeti, 45, of Juneau, is currently out of custody on bail. 

According to charging documents, officers originally responded to Carteeti’s Mendenhall Valley apartment in early October after neighbors complained of loud music and movement coming from his place. Carteeti already had a warrant for his arrest for a different crime.  

Charging documents say Carteeti turned off the music when officers arrived and began to yell. He allegedly became hostile and slammed his door closed. 

It was then that the officers opened his door and told him he had a warrant for his arrest. Police say Carteeti began punching and kicking the officers as they tried to arrest him. The incident left one officer with bent glasses and a red mark on his face. Another officer was taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital for an evaluation of his injuries. 

Western Alaska is bracing for another strong storm system this weekend as the remnants of Typhoon Halong are expected to move into the Bering Sea late Sunday into Monday. The storm will potentially arrive just days after a strong low pressure system prompted a mandatory evacuation in Kotzebue.

According to the National Weather Service, the upcoming storm could cause strong winds, high surf and coastal flooding across the Bering Strait region.

Typhoon Halong is currently off the coast of Japan. National Weather Service Meteorologist Carter MacKay said the typhoon is expected to move east before turning north toward the Bering Sea.

“The confidence is high that it will work north into the Bering, but exactly the track of where it goes once it gets to the Aleutians is a bit more uncertain,” MacKay said.

MacKay said models predicted that tides would drop several feet below normal before surging back up as the system passes through the Bering Strait.

“It actually shows water receding to like 2-to-6 feet below the low tide line. So it’s drawing out a lot of water from our coastal communities only then to, pretty much a day later, bring it all back with the winds,” MacKay said.

The weekend’s potential storm is reminiscent of 2022’s ex-typhoon Merbok, which caused millions of dollars in damage across Western Alaska. But MacKay said it was too early to accurately compare the two storms.

Rick Thoman is a climatologist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness. He said the region has been hit with several big storms this week, and he’s also watching this next one.

“To have another one come along, seems like it’s worth starting to get folks thinking about, ‘Okay, what if we have another big storm over the weekend,'” Thoman said.

Nome officials met throughout the day Wednesday to discuss the storms. Emergency shelters and supplies will be made available in case of extreme flooding.

The city is encouraging residents to build emergency kits with water, warm clothes and food in case they have to evacuate. The city also advises residents to take pictures of property and secure any loose items outside.

Residents can find the latest forecast by visiting weather.gov/afg.