Julia Stone is one of about 320 evacuees from Western Alaska staying, indefinitely, at a mass shelter in Anchorage. Most of the time, she said, she’s just thankful she and her loved ones are safe. But at night, lying on her cot, it’s different.
“I think about home,” said the 54-year-old. “I think about people struggling and people having trauma and nightmares, what they went through, and what we went through. It was chaos.”
She evacuated Kipnuk with her two sons and three grandchildren four days after Typhoon Halong flooded her village, floating some houses off their foundations, snapping utility poles and toppling fuel tanks. Now, she’s staying at the Alaska Airlines Center in Midtown Anchorage. She’s one of many all sleeping together on cots. But over and over she said — she can’t complain.
“Everybody's been helping each other,” she said. “People that work for the Red Cross and everybody in there. God bless them all. I'm very thankful.”
Other evacuees staying at the shelter said similar things — they’re so thankful, but it is so hard. With every sentence, they moved between deep gratitude and deep grief.
Taylar Sausen, with the Red Cross, said while her organization is working hard to make sure the evacuees have what they need, it can’t provide what she hears they want most — answers about what the future holds.
“I think that is the biggest question,” she said. “‘What's next for us?’ and ‘Can we go home?’ And that is not something that we know at this time.”
For now, there’s a whole complex web of logistics to put in place in Anchorage. The Red Cross is managing the two mega shelters in partnership with the state and multiple other groups.
There’s the basics, like food, clothes, toiletries and diapers. There are medical and behavioral health screenings. There are showers at the Alaska Airlines Center, but at the other shelter — downtown at the Egan Center — people have to either take a shuttle or use one of the outdoor trailer showers. There’s also a shuttle to take people to do laundry.
There are systems to set up, too — a hub for reuniting with friends and family, and with pets left behind. There’s Wi-Fi, and some public-use computers, totes that lock so people’s possessions are safe, even a temporary postal service.
And Sausen said they’re doing what they can to bring a little joy into the shelters with things like movies and art for the kids, half-court basketball games and a community potluck.
Still, with the evacuees all packed in, there isn’t much privacy or quiet. Sausen said that part can be tough for people.
“We know that congregate sheltering, this sort of mega sheltering, is not ideal,” she said. “This is not how people want to live for any extended period of time.”
The Red Cross will keep the shelters open as long as they’re needed, though. There is no time limit, Sausen said.
But there is a time limit for Kimberly Kiunya.
Kiunya said she's not used to being around so many people. Yeah, a lot of folks at the Alaska Airlines Center are from Kipnuk, just like she is. It feels like half her village is here, she said. But she likes calm. It is not calm in the shelter.
“I feel like I'm always grumpy,” she said. “But morning — it's peaceful, happier. I'm happier in the morning. Nighttime I can never sleep.”
She’s hoping she and her mom and dad, her sister and her sister’s seven kids can all move into housing like some other evacuees have.
Officials are working to transition evacuees out of the two mass shelters into more private housing, like hotel rooms, AirBnBs and other spaces.
Kiunya wants that for her family.
“Some people got hotels. Some people got their first homes,” she said. “And we're wondering, ‘When are we gonna get ours?’ Because we have a big family.”
The shelter is better than being outside, she said. Still.
“Some people already want to go back home,” she said.
She does too.
“I'm not used to it here,” she said. “I miss home. I really do miss home.”
Lewis Amik misses home too. Standing outside the shelter, smoking a cigarette, he looked up at the Chugach Mountains east of the city, pink with morning light.
“Beautiful,” he said.
But it’s not Kipnuk, out on the edge of the Bering Sea.
“Back home, you could see, as far as the eye can see,” he said. “There's no trees, and you could just see the horizon. That's one of the things I miss, you know, seeing the sunset and the sunrise.”
After everything everyone went through, the most important thing is that they’re safe, he said. They have a place to stay. But, it’s hard not to think about what they left behind.
“Our home. Our home that provides us with food,” he said. “We go out there, go hunting, go do this and that — it’s all taken away from us. It's scary.”
Now he spends his days trying to replace his ID and other documents he lost in the storm. He’s getting help with that, like he did with the food stamps that just came through. He said he’s really looking forward to shopping for groceries at prices that are much lower than he’s used to in the villages. But he can’t buy the food he misses most.
“I haven't seen any dry fish lately,” he said. “I really miss that. I missed the agudak we used to eat. It's dessert. Yeah, all the Native food we used to eat. I really miss that.”
He doesn’t know what comes next. He wants to go back, but he’s not sure where “back” is. He’s been talking with others from Kipnuk about the future. Should they rebuild, or relocate? No one has answers yet.
For the time being, he’ll stay here. He doesn’t mind being around so many people. Sometimes they bring him joy.
“When I hear the little babies, and the little children laughing and playing, running around happy, that's the most beautiful sound you could ever hear,” he said.
The other thing that brings him joy, he said, is just knowing that the elders are safe.
