The 90-minute flight from Bethel, Alaska, west to the Bering Sea has also become something of a flightseeing tour of the dramatic damage left by a storm that was given a deceptively underwhelming name: The remnants of Typhoon Merbok, as it is now known, swept through here in September 2022 and left behind giant, chaotic piles of driftwood that are still scattered along the coastline like a giant game of pick-up sticks. The storm also destroyed fish camps, including drying racks, little cabins. Damaged boats and other hunting and fishing debris also still litter the tundra.
“There was so much wood and debris,” said Earl Atchak, as he steered his four-wheeler west, down a back road in Chevak, Alaska, toward the Bering sea coast. The community of nearly 1000 is roughly 18 miles from the coast, but the storm surge from Merbok brought so much floodwater, it could have been mistaken for a coastal village during the storm. What came with that highwater has drastically altered the landscape around the Cup’ik village.
“There’s still wood from more than 15 miles away,” said Atchak. All that driftwood poses a serious safety hazard for overland motorized travel, and the wood itself is completely useless, he said. “They’re rotten and wet.”
“So much debris,” said Atchak. Lots of it came from the subsistence fish camps located up and down the riverbank that were destroyed. “Anything from the camps, old motor oil, old plywood.” Atchak’s voice trailed off as he parked his four-wheeler at the top of a hill on the north side of Chevak. From here, the treeless tundra stretches for miles. “We had about 100-something boats that floated up here, and maybe less than half of them were retrieved,” said Atchak.
“We had about 100-something boats that floated up here, and maybe less than half of them were retrieved.”
Atchak, who is an artist, often takes his boat or four-wheeler out on the local waterways and across the tundra to find wood and natural materials for the traditional Cup’ik masks and dolls he creates. He pointed north toward a distant bend in the Ningliqvak River, a few miles away. There were boats all the way back there, he said, dozens of boats still scattered like forgotten bath toys across the land.
The massive storm devastated communities up and down the coast. The storm not only destroyed the routes that connect far-flung communities, but also the vehicles people use for travel. Boats, snow machines and four-wheelers – these are all the main means of transportation in rural Alaska, where road systems are limited, and communities are only accessible by waterways, overland trails and air. These are also the tools people use to find and gather food. The vast majority of Western Alaska’s predominantly Indigenous population is reliant on subsistence gathering, hunting, fishing and foraging for food. Fish, big game, berries, wild plants — they all make up a large portion of the regular diet here. Without the tools to gather them, freezers can go empty, and residents here are forced to rely on expensive store-bought food that can only be shipped in when the weather is clear enough for airplanes to fly.
Clear signs of Merbok’s impact still linger even in the heart of communities. In Hooper Bay, a house that was ripped from its foundation by flood water, sits awkwardly beside one of the community’s main roads. The family that owns it has been displaced since the storm, with no permanent or alternative housing solution. Two other local families still face a similar scenario.
In Newtok, a community already ravaged by climate change, storm waters spread garbage from the community’s dump site across the tundra, caused a fuel spill and further impacted critical infrastructure that was already damaged by melting permafrost and waterlogged, sinking, unstable ground.
The storm also wreaked havoc in communities farther north. In Golovin, some residents spent days shoveling several feet of sand out of their homes after the floodwaters receded. One house in Nome was torn from its foundation and floated down the Snake River. Eventually, it got lodged up against a bridge, memorialized by photos that still circulate on the internet more than a year and half later. The owners and the city have worked to salvage what they could from the building. And just four miles south of Nome, at a site known as Fort Davis, more than a dozen subsistence camps were leveled and at least 30 feet of beach was devoured by the raging waves of the Bering Sea.
One house in Nome was torn from its foundation and floated down the Snake River.
All this devastation began as a tropical storm in the Pacific Ocean, named Typhoon Merbok. It gained momentum as it crossed the Pacific and moved northward into the Bering Sea. Describing it as “the remnants” of a storm doesn’t do its power justice, said Alaska-based climatologist Rick Thoman. “Merbok came from a part of the subtropical Pacific, where we have never had to worry about typhoons impacting Alaska before,” he said. Thoman, who works with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, said storms like Merbok are very rare. “Typhoons that have affected Alaska almost invariably come from much farther southwest. They come up in over or just east of Japan.” Sometimes, however, those systems can get caught in westward prevailing winds that carry them across the Pacific toward Alaska: “Merbok was much, much farther east and had a much shorter path to move across the Aleutians and into the Bering Sea.” At the same time cold weather hadn’t yet set in enough for Alaska’s coastline to freeze, so Merbok caused extremely high rates of erosion when it hit.
Unfortunately, Thoman says this may not be the last time Alaska sees a storm of this calibre, as the climate continues to warm. “Historically, the waters in that part of the subtropical Pacific are just not warm enough to support typhoon development.” He said that’s changing: “Over time, that portion of the subtropical Pacific that’s much closer to Alaska … will become increasingly warm enough to support these storms.” In the future, he said, typhoons that start in the Pacific won’t typically move north like Merbok did. “But once in a while, one will. So, basically we’ve added another way to get big strong storms into the Bering Sea.” He compared it to being dealt an extra card in a poker game.
Almost two years later, debris left on the land still raises other concerns for full-time residents who rely on the landscape to feed themselves. Some of the boats that dot the tundra between Hooper Bay and Chevak today still have fuel tanks, batteries and even motors attached and there are lots of questions about what exactly might have leaked into the soil and surrounding waterways.
There has been some cleanup: A week after the storm, the U.S. Coast Guard hired a diving and salvage company for that work. Over the course of a week, they spent about 24 total hours out on the tundra surround Chevak, collecting gas cans and cleaning up spilled oil and fuel. They did not remove any of the boats from the tundra. Almost two years later, people flying over the region can still see them, stranded and sparkling, when the sunlight catches the upturned, battered hulls at just the right angle.
This story includes reporting first done for public media station KYUK, with support from Center for Rural Strategies and Grist.
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