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A historically powerful storm slammed into Western Alaska Friday night and into Saturday, bringing major flooding and high winds to a huge swath of coastal communities. By Saturday evening, the state said it had received no reports of injuries or deaths related to the storm. Alaskans described water flooding homes and roads. Wind tore off roofs. Houses floated off their foundations. Boats sank. The water has begun receding in many areas, but further north, the peak of the storm surge is forecast to hit later Saturday night.
As levels drop, more damage will be revealed. The storm is the remnants of what was Typhoon Merbok. Hundreds of people across multiple communities are sheltering in schools, which are serving as emergency evacuation centers. In other communities, the storm overwhelmed efforts. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration Saturday morning for affected communities.
Below is our live blog, reported in collaboration with KYUK and KTOO, of accounts on Saturday from Alaskans impacted by the storm, as they took stock of the damage and as some braced for the weather to worsen. Gene Stone, the superintendent, said the district has been providing food, shelter and basic necessities at the school.
He said about people spent the night at the Hooper Bay school on Friday. About hundred were expected on Saturday. The district was also sheltering about 70 people from Kotlik, a community northeast of Hooper Bay. It knocked storage sheds down, stripped siding off of buildings and peeled back the roof of the old Covenant church.
He credits community leaders for pulling people together. The school has its own power generator, which kept running when a power outage hit the rest of Hooper Bay.
He said the district is using supplies from its school lunch program and has plenty of food to feed people for now. Stone has taught in Hooper Bay and has experienced flooding from fall storms before, but says the combination of high winds and high water has been the worst in recent memory. Stone said there will be no classes taught at the Hooper Bay school on Monday to give its staff time to figure out what to do next.
The principal is currently out on medical leave, leaving a new assistant principal in charge. Stone says she and other staffers are doing a good job of meeting the needs and making the health and safety of the entire village their top priority.
City of Nome staff said on Facebook Saturday that several streets had flooded due to storm surges, and they urged residents to avoid those areas and limit non-essential travel for their own safety.
Nome Mayor John Handeland told the Anchorage Daily News that an unoccupied home which had been swept into the Snake River and collided into a bridge over the river — seen in a photo posted online by state transportation officials — was likely to fall apart without damaging the bridge. He said that as the remnants of Typhoon Merbok dissipate, water levels in Nome were expected to fall.
In Toksook Bay Friday night, lifelong resident Noah Lincoln took his four-wheeler out toward the cliffs to watch the waves roll in. Intense wind gusts whipped across the town. Lincoln spread his jacket wide and leaned forward, wondering if the wind was strong enough to lift him into the air.
It was. But that may have been the most serious injury reported from Toksook Bay, according to Lincoln. The city mayor also says there were no serious injuries reported. The houses in Toksook Bay are built on higher ground, and none of them were flooded. However, high water pushed some boats in the harbor up the hillside, and one home near the shore had to be evacuated. The city mayor said wind caused minor damage to one of the businesses in town and some smaller structures, including sheds and porches.
The town did not lose power. There were no mass evacuations, injuries, or severe property damage, according to the mayor. The main concern is erosion. In Toksook Bay, houses are built on cliffs overlooking the sea.
Lincoln estimated those cliffs may have eroded by a foot or more last night. Lincoln said that it was the worst storm he has ever experienced. Hurricane force winds in the fall are unheard of, he said. According to the National Weather Service, the storm is the strongest to hit Western Alaska in the month of September since at least , when records of storms like this began.
The berm was all that protected the small village from the sea. Resident Gloria Andrew also underscored the importance of the berm, made of gravel, sand and driftwood. She estimated the berm was destroyed between about 8 a. The winds are expected to shift and the seas to pound the coastline again. Shaktoolik is a village of roughly people and it sits on a gravel-sand spit between the Tagoomenik River and Norton Sound. Sookiayak called on the community to evacuate to the local school early Saturday morning.
People set up cots and air mattresses in the building, said Andrew. By late Saturday afternoon, Sookiayak said he had not heard of any storm-related injuries, and said everyone was accounted for. He said aside from the berm, he was also concerned about the storm-fueled erosion that occurred a few miles from town, tearing into the coastline. The Alaska Red Cross is preparing to mobilize disaster assistance teams to communities hit hard by the Bering Sea storm. Taylar Sausen, regional director of communications for the Alaska Red Cross, said logistics are the primary focus right now.
The Alaska Red Cross has been coordinating with city and tribal governments as well as Native corporations, who are in touch with their shareholders. Sausen hopes disaster response teams can start heading to communities on Monday but said, depending on flood damage and the weather, it could take more time for help to arrive. In Scammon Bay, city administrator Larson Hunter said conditions are finally beginning to calm down.
Although there was still significant flooding along their stretch of river, the village itself avoided the worst effects of the storm. Most of the town is built up to a hillside, which prevented any homes from flooding.
Beyond their good fortune, the town was also prepared for high water due to another extreme flooding event in November This year, Scammon Bay city administrators preemptively informed residents of the flood risk and advised them to stage their boats further from the water. Although some boats still floated free from their anchor point, there were far fewer than in Nedza said her primary concern is for other communities in the far-flung district.
Those included Golovin due to its extensive flooding and Shaktoolik, where she said a protective berm has largely been washed away by the storm. Nedza said U. Lisa Murkowski had already reached out Saturday to superintendents in districts affected by the storm to offer that assistance. Hundreds of residents take shelter at school in Hooper Bay, where the coastal flood warning extends into Sunday.
More than additional people have taken shelter at the Hooper Bay School, bringing the total number of people seeking refuge there to more than , nearly a fifth of the town.
Hooper Bay, pop. Vice Principal Brittany Taraba said the school handed out more than lunches today. The school has opened most of its classrooms for sleeping areas tonight. Taraba said morale has been relatively high, and the community has come together in the face of the storm, which has moved at least three houses off their foundations in Hooper Bay and flooded large parts of the village. She said residents have donated recently caught and processed moose to feed evacuees at the school. When Taraba spoke to KYUK, kids sheltering at the school were watching a movie and playing games in the gym.
Crowley Fuels, one of the major fuel providers in the region affected by the Bering Sea storm, said it has not had any known structural damage to its infrastructure or equipment, like fuel tank farms. Torey Vogel, a spokesperson for Crowley, said the company has initiated its emergency action plan to safeguard against adverse impacts to the affected communities and the environment.
Vogel said Crowley serves more than communities across the state. It provides fuel for homes, vehicles, planes, and equipment. He said there may be an oil spill. Stamm said AVEC crews are waiting for the storm to subside to assess the damage. The entire town of Napakiak is under about 4 to 5 feet of water, according to City Council member Walter Nelson and local contractor Job Hale.
The water is receding, but very slowly. Both Nelson and Hale said advanced warning and community outreach helped residents prepare for the storm. Over the past few days, the tribe and the city went house-to-house, passing out pamphlets on what to expect from the storm. The roads are built higher than the rest of the village and are less prone to flooding. These roads are still mostly dry, and Hale said even rabbits and birds have started to take shelter on them. Most houses have also remained dry.
But beyond that immediate good news, there are serious concerns about the erosion this level of flooding might cause. According to Hale, high water eroded at least 3 feet of shoreline on Friday even before the worst of the flooding began.
Napakiak has been moving buildings away from the eroding river bank for decades. In recent years, that erosion has accelerated, as a warming climate has melted the permafrost, raised water levels, and amplified storms.
The village is undergoing a managed retreat from the river because of erosion. The school sits only yards away from the Kuskokwim, and construction began this summer to demolish the back half of the building before it fell into the river. For now, Nelson said he was glad that people have been able to save their vehicles and stay safe. Several regional air carriers serving Western Alaska have suspended flights Saturday in response to the massive storm.
Juliana Peterson, a customer-service manager with Grant Aviation, said just 10 flights were completed by the airline on Friday. All morning and afternoon flights Saturday were canceled, with evening flights on a weather hold pending updates from the National Weather Service.
Alaska storm coming
The storm that slammed into western Alaska over the weekend was the result of several factors all converging to make it so destructive. Thoman says, as ocean temperatures continue to creep upward, similar, huge, devastating storms hitting Alaska could become more likely. That might sound like just a meteorological technicality. And when they transition to the mid-latitude structure, they expand greatly. They grow in size. And that was a key portion of the impact.
The center is passing west of St. Casey Grove : Tell me more about that. What did we see as far as the wind speeds and the water levels? RT : Wind speeds in most places, Well, to the extent we know, were not super high.
The highest gusts, for instance in Nome, 59 miles an hour at the airport. But, certainly, many places had winds of 55 to 65 miles an hour. Some exposed places had wind gusts up above 80 miles an hour.
And where that moved into south- or west-facing coastlines, that water just piles in there and is pushes it up. So it was really the duration of the winds in most places, rather than the absolute highest gusts.
CG : Gotcha. So there were major impacts, obviously. But certainly people lost their homes, and there was quite a bit of advance warning. Really, I mean, you could see this coming from a long ways away. There were computer models. But does it seem like there was much of a response, I guess, before the storm? RT : Yes, this was very, very well forecast by the large scale models.
Was every detail correct? Of course not. But certainly the models were showing the threat of a major Bering Sea storm. By Monday afternoon, it was clear that something big was going to happen somewhere in the western Alaska coast.
And by Tuesday, the models had converged on a track that was very close to what actually happened. But I think the important thing that we need to keep in mind is in rural Alaska, we need to provide as much lead time as we can. We need to give people the heads up. And I think, you know, this is a stormy part of the world.
Storms happen in western Alaska. And when something is really out of the ordinary, we need to make sure as many people know about that as long in advance and know this was not just another storm. CG : Yeah, speaking of another storm, I guess, just in the sort of short-term future, there was some speculation that there was another typhoon forming that may come towards us. What is that storm called? And is that actually going to hit Alaska, do you think?
At this point, though, that does look like that is going to dissipate long before it gets to Alaska. There is a slight chance that it could move along the Aleutians as a very weak storm, but definitely nothing like what we just saw.
CG : Well, then, looking forward further into the future, you know, years into the future, can we expect these kinds of storms to happen more as the climate continues to warm? RT : Well, to get a storm like this, as we talked about, you have to have all the pieces fall in place.
But the water is warm enough this year, and we are certain that in the coming years, coming decades, the oceans will continue to warm. Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. Alaska Public Media. A screenshot of an aerial view of the incoming September storm that hit Western Alaska. Alaska News Nightly: Friday, October 7, Anchorage School District considers closing schools to help fill budget gap.
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