Western Alaska Yup’ik village floods as river rises from series of storms

Storm-ravaged residents of the western Alaska village of Napakiak were bracing for the third storm in a week Tuesday, days after a minister had to use a front-end loader to free people from flooded homes.

Napakiak, a Yup’ik village of about 350 residents in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, was flooded Sunday after heavy rains swelled the Kuskokwim River.

Conditions ahead were “pretty brutal,” with winds and lots of rain, said Job Hale, minister of Armory of God Baptist Church. Then the water suddenly began to rise as the river’s currents pushed into the city.

It caught everyone by surprise because it wasn’t a normal spring or fall flood that residents prepare for, Hale said. People rushed to move vehicles to higher ground, retrieve firewood from under their raised houses and secure water tanks.

“I have a front-end loader, which came in really handy because there were more people who were stuck in their homes,” Hale said. Even though the houses are tall, the water level was 3 feet (about 1 meter) or more and was going up through the floors.

Three times he maneuvered the front-end loader toward people’s doors, and they climbed into the bucket to walk on dry land.

It was also used to rescue a person who needed medical help, Hale said, adding that several residents told him they couldn’t remember flooding this bad in years.

The water began to recede Sunday evening, but parts of the city were still flooded two days later.

Erosion has long been a problem in many Alaskan communities, including Napakiak, where it’s not unusual to lose 100 feet (30 meters) of riverbank a year.

Related: An estimated 290 homes were damaged by flooding from Alaska’s glacier-capped lake

Erosion is caused in part by climate change, with rising temperatures melting permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, making riverbanks unstable.

It is so widespread in Napakiak that the village school had to be closed this year because it is about to fall into the river. Plans are to demolish the building and have students attend classes in temporary buildings until a new school is built further from the river next summer, Superintendent Andrew Anderson said.

In an ironic twist, Sunday’s flooding forced the cancellation of a farewell party for the old school.

Weekend storms caused coastal flooding in several other western Alaska communities, but no health problems or major property damage were reported, state emergency officials said.

Sunday’s was the second storm to hit the Bethel area, the hub community for Southwest Alaska, about 400 miles (640 kilometers) west of Anchorage. Napakiak is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of Bethel, but there are no roads between the two communities until winter, when the river becomes a highway after it freezes.

A third storm was expected later Tuesday as the remnants of Typhoon Ampil were forecast to affect parts of Alaska’s west coast.

This storm doesn’t appear to be as strong as the weekend event, but Christian Landry, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage, said the Bethel area will see another round of rainfall and strong winds overnight as the system will move north towards Nome. .

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Storm flood Alaska