Anchorage Assembly to weigh asking Congress to let disaster aid support relocation

The Anchorage Assembly is scheduled to vote Tuesday, Oct. 20, on a resolution that would urge Congress to modernize federal disaster assistance and give communities facing recurring or escalating hazards more flexibility, including relocation or redesigned infrastructure when rebuilding in place is unsafe or unsustainable. The vote comes about a year after Typhoon Halong struck the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Assembly Chair Anna Brawley, who represents West Anchorage, Assembly Members Janice Park of Midtown and Sydney Scout of North Anchorage, and Mayor Suzanne LaFrance submitted the measure. It names Kwigillingok and Kipnuk as two of the hardest hit villages and says many residents still face displacement and difficult decisions about the future of their communities.

The storm killed one person in Kwigillingok, and two others remain missing. It severely damaged 471 homes and destroyed 208 more, and about 1,600 people were displaced, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Halong record. The resolution calls the evacuation one of the largest in Alaska history and says Anchorage became a place of refuge for displaced residents.

The resolution says federal recovery programs under the Stafford Act generally help repair or replace damaged facilities based in significant part on their pre-disaster design and location. Recovery policy, it says, should not force communities to restore infrastructure in places that may no longer be safe.

It also urges state and federal agencies to give residents a meaningful role in decisions about their recovery and to use local, traditional and cultural knowledge. And it asks for more state and federal investment in housing, infrastructure and behavioral health, including culturally led services.

Alaska News previously reported that villages hit by Halong can get federal money to rebuild but not to relocate, because the disaster declaration left out hazard mitigation. In May, the Alaska Senate unanimously backed relocating Kipnuk and Kwigillingok without funding a move. During a House floor session May 19, Rep. Nellie Unangiq Jimmie, D-Toksook Bay, said both villages had voted to relocate. "That sentence does not come close to carrying the weight of what it actually means to say," Jimmie said.