Hundreds of Northwest Alaska residents spent Wednesday night in shelters after a powerful fall storm brought high waters and coastal flooding concerns before flooding began to recede into Thursday.
In Kotzebue, 109 people spent Wednesday night at a local shelter, while 287 did so in Kivalina, according to Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Earlier this week, the National Weather Service issued flood warnings and advisories for every coastal community from the Yukon Delta to Utqiaġvik and predicted that a storm would bring high winds and potential storm surge flooding between Tuesday and Friday.
State officials hadn’t received reports of any injuries as of Thursday morning and planned to continue to monitor the situation as water levels dropped, Zidek said.
Officials in Kotzebue issued a mandatory evacuation order for the city’s roughly 3,000 residents Wednesday afternoon, later adding the order was declared out of an abundance of caution and was “precautionary but necessary to minimize danger, support safety efforts, and prevent the potential loss of life.”
Kotzebue officials said Thursday morning that city offices were resuming normal operations.
Kivalina, located about 80 miles northwest of Kotzebue on the Chukchi Sea, issued a non-mandatory evacuation order Wednesday afternoon amid rising water levels.
Overall, reported damage or other impacts from the storm “haven’t been significant” and were mostly coming from the Northwest Arctic Borough, Zidek said. Schools were all open Thursday, except for those in Kivalina and Kotzebue, he added.
The state received reports of some road damage and seawall or berm erosion in Kivalina and Kotzebue, as well as some water incursion into buildings, but no major flooding, Zidek said.
On Thursday afternoon, Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration for areas affected by the storm to assist damage recovery efforts.
“I want to commend the people along the western and northern coast for all the preparations that took place prior to the storm,” Mark Roberts, the state’s emergency operations center incident commander, said in a statement.
Coastal residents and state officials are preparing for another strong storm system that was expected to affect much of the same swath of Alaska’s coast over the weekend as the remnant of former typhoon Halong moves into the Bering Sea.
The National Weather Service issued a high wind watch for Saturday evening through late Sunday stretching from south of Hooper Bay to north of Shishmaref.
In a Thursday morning advisory, the weather service said the storm could bring south winds of 30 mph to 60 mph, with gusts up to 80 mph, that could “move loose debris, damage property and cause power outages” and make travel difficult.