KWIGILLINGOK, Alaska — When the remnants of Typhoon Halong arrived in the low-lying village of Kwigillingok, on Alaska's southwestern coast, late in the night on Oct. 11, Noah Andrew Sr. says the water rose and his house rocked.
"When we started floating away," says Andrew, who's 74 years old, "water started to come into the house … through the door. And we tried to stop it by putting towels [down], but that didn't stop it." The water got ankle deep. Andrew estimates the house floated 2 miles with him inside, fortunately inland and not out to sea.
Now this lifelong Kwigillingok resident and Russian Orthodox priest says he's ready to leave. "I don't want to come back here again. I don't want to go through what we went through again."
Human-caused climate change, from burning fossil fuels, has people around the U.S. considering whether to resettle in safer places. For some Alaska Native villages, the issue is urgent. The remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated the villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok in October. Authorities say 678 people remain evacuated from these communities, where the Yup'ik language Yugtun is many residents' first language.
Kwigillingok has navigated the effects of climate change for decades as permafrost beneath the village thawed and erosion and flooding became more severe. In recent years, the village has sought to relocate to higher ground and further inland, hoping to keep the community together. But there's no plan to make that happen and no committed funding.
The federal government established many of these villages around schools, without planning for climate change. Now, if residents move back, they face safety hazards as a warmer climate brings more flooding, erosion and thawing permafrost.
Hundreds of people evacuated after the storm and are now living in larger cities, such as nearby Bethel or Anchorage, which is 400 miles away. Community members warn that the longer residents remain in larger cities, the more they risk losing their language and connection to the land, subsistence hunting and fishing — all foundations of Yup'ik culture.
Climate change brings new danger to the tundra
Kwigillingok is a village of about 400 people that is so remote that there are no roads to get there. Bush planes landing on a dirt runway bring visitors, and snow-crusted boardwalks connect homes across the tundra. There are no cars or trucks. Residents use all-terrain vehicles and snow machines to get around.
Autumn flooding is common, locals say, but the October storm was different.
"Compared to all the floods that I've gone through in my lifetime, this is the first time I've watched the water level rise as fast as it did on that night," says Darrel John, a lifelong Kwigillingok resident who works at the preschool-through-12th-grade school.
John says his home is built on pilings and sits about 10 feet off the ground, so while it shook in the storm, it remained in place. He says family members were among those in the 45 houses that were carried away. Many houses in Kwigillingok are built on wood foundations, laid on the tundra. After the storm, John's family was safe, but elsewhere in the community, one person died and two others remain missing.
"I don't want my grandchildren to go through this again," John says, explaining why he and most of the village support relocating.
Moving to escape the consequences of a warming climate is an issue for many around the globe. In the U.S., a few cases have involved relocating entire Indigenous communities.
Southwest of New Orleans, the Isle de Jean Charles band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe began retreating inland a decade ago. Scientists predict the island will be underwater by 2050. The Alaska Native village of Newtok started a 9-mile move across the Ninglick River in the early 2000s to escape the sinking, waterlogged tundra.
This enterprise of moving entire communities has had mixed results. The Isle de Jean Charles and Newtok moves cost more than $198 million combined. Without any specific government agency responsible for such relocations, communities struggled to find that funding and spent years in limbo. And while residents no longer face the same safety risks, they've dealt with other problems.
In Louisiana, residents are frustrated with air conditioners and plumbing in their new homes. In Alaska, Newtok's relocation cost more than $150 million to move about 300 people. But just a few years in, some buildings are deteriorating because of design flaws and there's inadequate water and sewer facilities.
Despite these experiences, Kwigillingok residents say they want to relocate their village 27 miles northeast, further inland and on higher ground. And the remnants of Typhoon Halong appear to have only strengthened that resolve. Now residents say they hope the state and federal governments will be ready to help.
"I'm hoping that this storm, you know, will open their eyes [and] open their ears," John says.
Calls for more study before moving
While Kwigillingok residents say they want to move now, state and federal officials have a different agenda. With disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they are focused on rebuilding what was damaged and want more discussion and study of the relocation issue.
"It's a complex question to get the answers for," Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said at an October press conference. "Not only what do you do to make a community prepared for the future, but where do you get the money and how do you do that?"
But as the Alaska newsletter Northern Journal reported, the state has been aware of these issues for years. Two years ago, the state helped write an Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium report. It found that 144 communities across the state face various threats, from flooding and erosion to thawing permafrost, because of climate change. Addressing those risks will cost about $4.3 billion (in 2020 dollars) over the next five decades. The report also sets out priorities and implementation strategies.
Still, Dunleavy says that more research is needed and that this will begin after recovery from the storm.
"On the question of relocation, that's going to be a discussion that's going to probably unfurl this winter [or] this spring and may take some time to really get resolution as to what that ends up going," Dunleavy said.
How long that discussion takes place is more than a safety question for residents of Kwigillingok. It's also a cultural one. In villages such as Kwigillingok, Yugtun remains the primary language, and residents still rely on subsistence hunting and fishing, an essential part of the local culture.
"It's spoken because people use it in their communities and homes," says Ann Fienup-Riordan, a cultural anthropologist who works for the nonprofit Calista Education and Culture, which offers support and education to Alaska Native people. The longer residents remain evacuated to cities where English is the primary language, the more difficult it is to keep the Yup'ik language alive, she says.
Elders and community leaders across western Alaska say the federal government has a responsibility to Yup'ik villages that need to relocate, in part because the Bureau of Indian Affairs chose many current village sites when it built schools and required families to move to be near them.
"These year-round villages that were established in the 1950s, because of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, are new or relatively new," Fienup-Riordan says. Some sites were picked, she explains, because that's how far a barge could travel to drop off lumber.
Before that, many Yup'ik families still moved seasonally. With less fixed infrastructure, settlements shifted as river channels and coastlines changed, Fienup-Riordan notes. They settled only when education requirements were established and communities were consolidated around schools.
Now, if Kwigillingok's plan to move to the new location happens, residents say, they would continue to use the current village site — more in line with the way such sites were traditionally used.
"We can always come back to Kwigillingok to use this — use the homes — as subsistence gathering sites like, you know, seal hunting, building fish camp and so on," John says.
As winter has set in, recovery in Kwigillingok, as well as elsewhere, has slowed. That leaves Kwigillingok's evacuated residents waiting to learn whether they'll be moving inland to higher ground before the next storm comes.
NPR Climate Desk editor Rachel Waldholz contributed reporting to this story.
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