As the water recedes on the Yukon River, leaving some villages soaked and muddy and others in pieces, state and federal officials are hopping from town to town along the river trying to answer a crucial question:

How much is this spring's disastrous breakup flooding going to cost?

A rough estimate that Gov. Sarah Palin included in a recent letter to President Barack Obama says the bill could be in the tens of millions. Just rebuilding and replacing public facilities in Eagle and Eagle Village -- where 24 homes have been destroyed -- could cost $5 million.

That according to the joint state and Federal Emergency Management Agency teams that are flying along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers this week, tallying the damage.

"There are a lot of places we can't see anything. It's all under ice, like Eagle Village," said FEMA spokeswoman Diana Seifert.

Eagle Village and nearby Eagle, just west of the Canadian border, were the first and hardest hit by historic flooding in early May. The old Eagle Village was largely demolished, while massive ice chunks slammed into river-side buildings and sent families to sleep in the school in Eagle about three miles away.

In the days that followed, the breakup continued downstream with villages hit one-by-one by high water -- some with heavy damage and evacuations, others with relatively minor flooding.

Water spilled over the banks of the Kuskokwim, too. By the time the National Weather Service called off its flood warning for Emmonak and other Lower Yukon River villages Tuesday, breakup flooding had soaked a total of roughly 40 communities along more than 3,000 miles of rivers, according to the state.

Gov. Sarah Palin sent a letter to President Obama Monday asking the him to declare a "major disaster" in Alaska -- a move that could send cash to local governments and households.

Palin's letter included a rough estimate saying it could cost as much as $35 million to pay for temporary housing, repairs and other needs for families hit by the floods. Towns, villages and the Department of Transportation could need another $8 million or more to remove debris, fix roads and bridges and repair utilities, according to the state estimates.

Those guesses don't include the cost of helping Lower Yukon villages that flooded over the weekend.

"As it was going down, the state went out and captured some numbers. Now we're going back and doing a more thorough ... look at the damages," said Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

One damage assessment team is flying the Yukon River, another is going down the Kuskokwim. They were in Tanana and Tuluksak Tuesday, and are expected to finish their first round of visits by the end of the week, Seifert said.

"What we want to do is get enough information to back up the governor's request for a declaration."

TWO TYPES OF AID

The federal government can declare two different types of disasters in a region, Seifert said.

One allows local governments to get money to fix up roads, buildings, bridges and other public facilities. The other provides aid to individual families, and can cover legal services, unemployment assistance, temporary housing and rebuilding costs.

You often see both declared because the flood that wipes out a bridge usually wipes out homes too, she said.

The federal government has sent more than $17 million to help people and communities in Washington state after a series of floods there in January, Seifert said.

There is no limit to how much federal money Alaska can get in disaster funding, she said. But there is a cap on how much a single family can receive: $30,300.

It's rare for families to get the maximum amount allowed, although disaster declarations can allow households to apply for special low-interest loans to rebuild their homes.

In Alaska, the state has also authorized spending up to $2.5 million of its own money on the emergency response to the floods. That could cover things like delivering food, testing water and travel, Zidek said.

Palin's 15-page disaster request estimates the state could spend up to another $4 million in aid to local governments and households. The true cost of the flood damage won't be known until all the repairs and rebuilding is finished, Zidek said.

In Emmonak, where the state has denied the requests to declare an economic disaster because of dwindling salmon runs, the work is just beginning.

There, Nicholas Tucker said he was able to drive his boat to the school to pick up his kids. He'd never done that before, he said. Emmonak is close to the river and spring floods aren't unusual. But this year houses that never get wet are soaked. People lost their snowmachines, residents reported.

Many households have lost sewer service and nobody knows if the road to the airport is still there because it's covered with water, said Jack Schultheis, general manager for Kwik'pak Fisheries.

"I've been coming out here since 1975, OK. This is the worst I've ever seen it out here," he said.

Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.

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