Typhoon trauma will disrupt lives for years

“In sum: an immense disaster, one that’s wrought deep trauma on Western Alaska’s Indigenous residents and that’s raising existential questions about the future of their low-lying communities amid a changing climate and a tightening state budget.”

“The region sits on a broad, dead-flat plain next to the Bering Sea, and weather experts say they expect warming ocean temperatures to fuel more storms like the typhoon — which came just three years after another fall storm caused widespread damage.”——-Nat Herz, Northern Journal.

There’s been a lot of first-rate reporting on the disaster in Western Alaska, the terrible storm that brought pain and loss to thousands of Alaskans. Public radio reporters in Bethel, Anchorage and Juneau, as well as reporters at the Anchorage Daily News and the Alaska Beacon have done exceptional work in informing Alaskans and the rest of the country.

One of the best overall accounts I’ve read is this one from independent reporter Nat Herz, who was in Bethel on a personal trip when the remains of the typhoon knocked houses off foundations and ripped through villages with a vengeance.

The people who had to be evacuated are now refugees, a reality that ought to change the politics in Alaska about climate change, where many Republicans, starting with the governor, remain in denial.

The scale of this disaster is something that we haven’t come to grips with yet. Aside from the immense personal losses suffered by hundreds of families, whose lives may never be the same, the villages may never be the same.

The communities blasted by the storm will require many hundreds of millions from the state and federal governments if they are to be rebuilt or moved. This is going to be one of the major issues in the 2026 elections in Alaska.

Herz writes, “The questions I’m left with after nearly a week of watching the disaster and response unfold revolve around what will come next — not so much in the near term, but in the medium and long term.”

It’s going to cost a great deal of state money, even if the federal government covers the majority of the bills. We’re going to need higher taxes and new taxes to help pay the bills and/or the elimination of the Permanent Fund dividend. The refugees, many of whom are now in Anchorage, had to leave their homes with almost nothing.

What will become of them and where will they go? The upheaval is not just a matter of money, but of culture, community and tradition. It will take a long while for the shock to die down and adjust to the changed circumstances.

“Since Sunday morning, I’ve been slowly piecing together a sense of the devastation that’s been wrought. It’s taken a few days, as first rescuers, then survivors began arriving back in Bethel; then, on Thursday, I took a commercial flight to the hard-hit village of Kwigillingok,” Herz wrote Friday.

“I wanted to see for myself what had happened, and to witness the evacuation of dozens of people by bush plane and military helicopter. I watched and listened to deeply emotional scenes — adults weeping and hugging as they recounted the disaster, and children clinging to their parents and plugging their ears as they prepared to board a huge military helicopter.

“One conversation stuck out — an informal chat I had on the front steps of the school that was serving as the village’s shelter. A middle-aged woman had been calmly telling me about the storm and its impacts until I asked whether she plans to come back to Kwigillingok, after evacuating. 

“She immediately began sobbing, wailing the word: “Noooooo.”

Herz’s reporting gives all of us a lot to think about. Here is his story.