Flood assessment goes on; damage still difficult to total

The state of Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Management, in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, initially responded to the flood that first wreaked havoc in Eagle, located on the upper stretches of the Yukon River near the Canada border, where bulldozer-size river ice shoved houses and public buildings off their foundations and eventually demolished the town. They have continued to follow the aftermath of flooding statewide, but especially along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers where the greatest damage has been realized.

"There was a lot of damage to infrastructures that should cost in the millions," Diana Seifert of FEMA said.

Teams of assessors from both federal and state offices have been compiling preliminary data that will be used to make a final determination about the total cost of damages to airports, public utilities, historic buildings, schools, and homes.

With thick river ice still hampering the progress of damage assessment teams, Seifert said it was still too early to make any predictions about the total cost of the disaster. Jeremy Zidek of the state Divison of Homeland Security and Management, who works with Seifert agrees and said that "the numbers are still incomplete and it will take some time" to determine the final valuation of the flooding.

"We still have the joint preliminary damage assessment teams in the villages," Zidek said, explaining the daunting task that lies before his team of specialists who are traveling along 3,000 miles of river in order to reach the communities that exist along the length of both major rivers.

"Major flooding is what we prepare for, but the scope of this flooding took such a wide area it was so striking," Zidek said.

The hardest-hit villages included Eagle, Stevens Village, Russian Mission and Emmonak on the Yukon River, and Kwethluk, Akiak, and Akiachak on the Kuskokwim, Zidek said. There are two assessment teams going from village to village. One team started in Eagle and has worked its way to Circle and Fort Yukon, while another team has been on the Kuskokwim concentrating on assessing the destruction in Kwethluk and Akiak and will eventually hop across to the Yukon Delta to work in Russian Mission and Emmonak, Zidek said.

Patti Bagongon, who has lived in Emmonak for the past 30 years, looked out from the city office building where she works and gazed at muddy roads that were covered with flood waters in the last week of May.

Near the height of the flooding, she found herself praying with her children in her house as she watched the river's current take away the steps of her porch. When the water's edge finally reached the porch, she knew it was time to go and climbed on a boat with her children to be evacuated.

"It reached our porch for the first time ever, and it was the highest I've ever seen," she said.

"I knew it was going to be bad this year because we had lots of snow this past winter," she said. "I even saw a dead moose that drowned when I was in the boat. I've never seen a moose in town before."

But now that the waters have receded back to normal, Bagongon wonders about what the aftermath will bring this winter, especially since many have lost their homes.

"Right now we have lack of housing, and there are people who have to live with their extended families," Bagongon said.

She is especially concerned that many of the village's elders cannot afford to fix up their ruined homes.

Although people along the Yukon and Kuskokwim will mark this spring flooding as one of historic proportions, spring breakup is nevertheless always a predictable event. It comes and goes with each spring, and even though the eventual costs are stunning, Bangongon points out the resiliency, optimism and generosity of her neighbors in overcoming the adversities of their rural way of life.

"It's hard living here," she said. "The cost of stove oil is high and everything is so expensive. We had a tough time (with the flood), but we always help each other.

"It's the way it's always been."