On October 17, 2025, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy asked the White House for a major disaster declaration after flooding from the remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated remote villages on the state’s west coast. He warned that many of the more than 2,000 people displaced by the storm would not be able to return home for at least 18 months, a timeline that suggests a long and expensive recovery.
The damage was especially severe in Kipnuk, where an initial assessment found that 121 homes, or 90% of the total, had been destroyed. In Kwigillingok, where three dozen homes floated away, more than one-third of the residences were deemed uninhabitable. Dunleavy said the surge arrived with the force of a Category 2 hurricane and left villages that are usually reachable only by air or water facing conditions unlike anything in the state’s larger towns and cities.
One person was killed and two others remained missing, while rescue crews used military aircraft to evacuate people from flood-ravaged communities. More than 2,000 people had taken shelter in village schools, in larger communities in southwest Alaska or in Anchorage, where about 575 evacuees had already been airlifted and were staying in a sports arena or convention centre. Officials expected as many as 1,600 people to arrive in Anchorage.
The state’s response was now as much about housing and logistics as it was about immediate rescue. Officials were trying to move evacuees out of shelters and into hotels or other short-term accommodation before thinking about longer-term housing. The Alaska Native communities hardest hit by the flooding rely heavily on hunting and fishing, so relocation to Anchorage or other cities also means an abrupt shift in food, work and daily life.
Local voices in Anchorage reflected that strain but also the scale of the mutual aid on offer. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance said the city would do everything it could to welcome people from western Alaska, while state representative Nellie Unangiq Jimmie said the evacuees remained on Alaska land and among family. The request for federal aid now puts the focus on whether Washington will move quickly enough to support communities that may not be able to go back before another winter arrives.
The response in Anchorage shows how a remote coastal disaster quickly becomes an urban housing crisis. With hundreds of evacuees already in the city and more expected, officials were trying to move people out of shelters and into short-term accommodation before winter makes the task even harder.
For Alaska Native villages, the loss is not only physical. Families that depend on hunting and fishing now have to figure out how to live in a city economy, where food, work and transport all look different. The federal disaster request is therefore only the first step in a recovery that may force whole communities to rethink where and how they can live.
Dunleavy’s request therefore becomes more than a funding plea. It is a bid to keep communities functioning through a winter they may not be able to spend at home, and to give evacuees enough stability that they can decide whether to rebuild, relocate or start over elsewhere in Alaska.
