Kwigillingok Residents Face Uncertain Future After Devastating Typhoon

Fri Nov 07 2025 11:53:17 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

As Typhoon Halong leaves destruction in its wake, seven residents in Kwigillingok, Alaska, refuse to abandon their community despite severe damage and ongoing recovery challenges.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong have devastated Kwigillingok, Alaska, uprooting homes and leaving one person dead, with two still missing. As winter approaches, seven residents, including Darrel John, grapple with the difficult decision of whether to stay in their community or relocate. The state is focusing on repairing the damage affecting over 1,600 residents, many of whom are living in temporary housing. Concerns persist about the long-term viability of their village amidst increasing climate-related threats.

KWIGILLINGOK, Alaska (AP) — Darrel John watched the final evacuees depart his village on the western coast of Alaska in helicopters and small planes and walked home, avoiding the debris piled on the boardwalks over the swampy land.

He is one of seven residents who chose to remain in Kwigillingok after the remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated the village last month, uprooting homes and floating many of them miles away, some with residents inside. One person was killed and two remain missing.

“I just couldn’t leave my community,” John said while inside the town’s school, a shelter and command post where he has helped solve problems in the storm’s aftermath.

But what will become of that community and others damaged by the severe flooding — whether their people, including John’s children, will come back — is an open question as winter arrives.

The office of Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy says the state’s focus is on repairing the villages and supporting the more than 1,600 people who were displaced. It could take 18 months. Hundreds are in temporary housing, many in Alaska’s biggest city, Anchorage, where they must accustom themselves to a world very different from the subsistence lifestyle they’re used to.

Even with short-term repairs, residents question whether their villages can persist where they are as rising seas, erosion, melting permafrost and worsening storms threaten inundation year after year. John hopes repairs can keep the community together long enough to come up with a plan to move the village.

Around the country, a few communities imperiled by human-caused global warming have taken steps to relocate, but it’s enormously expensive and can take decades.

“A lot of people have claimed they’re not returning. They don’t want to do this again,” said Louise Paul, a 35-year resident of Kipnuk, the hardest-hit village, who evacuated about 100 miles away to the regional hub city of Bethel. “Every fall, we have a flood. It might not be as extreme as this one was, but as the years have set in, we’re seeing it. The climate warming is increasing the storms and they’re just getting worse and worse.”

With climate change, storms have grown more intense. Shorter periods of ice coverage means less protection from erosion. Melting permafrost undermines villages. Kwigillingok spent years seeking state and federal help as well as working to raise some houses on pilings and to move others to higher ground. In Kipnuk, the Kugkaktlik River has cut ever closer. This year, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant for a rock wall to reinforce the riverbank — a step recommended by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2009 — amid the administration’s efforts to cut government spending. Some 144 Alaska Native communities face threats from warming, with an estimated $4.3 billion needed to mitigate damage over the next 50 years.