Kipnuk is being pieced back together, one boardwalk at a time

In a village like Kipnuk, the boardwalks are the streets. Built on wet coastal tundra where ordinary roads can't hold, the elevated walkways are how people get from home to church to the airport — and last October, the remnants of Typhoon Halong tore through them, shoving water some six feet above normal, damaging or destroying about 121 homes and forcing helicopter evacuations. Now more than 12,000 feet of new boardwalk have gone back in, reconnecting the airport, the church, the council building, and the homes between them — the village stitching itself back together.

The harder work is the houses. Crews are jacking storm-shifted homes back onto their footings, tearing out water-logged floors and insulation, and treating what's left against mold before families can move home. More than a hundred workers were on the ground in Kipnuk this week.

The bulletin announcing the boardwalk milestone was also the state transportation department's last regular recovery update, now that the federal disaster declaration has concluded — though the rebuilding is far from over, in Kipnuk and other communities the storm hit. And money is still a worry: pauses and delays in federal disaster funding have added strain to an already long recovery.