More than 200 evacuees returning to Arctic village after storm

By: JEANNETTE J. LEE - Associated Press | Friday, September 14, 2007 7:24 PM PDT ∞

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Flood evacuees from the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kivalina, on Alaska's storm-besieged western coast, began returning on Friday and were relieved to find their property undamaged, officials said.

A storm surge and pounding waves on Thursday sheared off large segments of Kivalina's multi-million dollar sea wall, but did not reach the weathered homes and other buildings on the slender strip of fine sand, where decades of coastal erosion have brought the sea to some people's doorsteps.

"I was worried because two of my sons stayed to work on the sea wall and a couple of my daughters were working in the city office," said Joe Swan, a 72-year-old elder and hunter. "But we're here, we're home -- back to a normal life again."

A flood warning by the National Weather Service had prompted a mass nighttime exodus on Wednesday that left the tiny Arctic community of more than 300 people nearly deserted for the first time since it was settled a century ago.

About 100 residents, mostly elders and children, left on small planes for the regional hub city of Kotzebue, 80 miles to the south. Another 130 made a grueling 70-mile journey by boat, all-terrain vehicle and bus to the mountain headquarters of the Red Dog zinc mine. Eighteen others maneuvered their boats up the nearby river to take refuge at hunting and fishing camps.

"We're making arrangements to have them come back," said Janet Mitchell, city administrator. "The danger is over, that's what we're hoping."

Kivalina was virtually the only inhabited area under the flood warning along a 100-mile stretch of Chukchi Sea coast, but is one of three villages in western Alaska that will likely be forced to relocate within the next 10 to 15 years because of erosion, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The corps said in a report last year that it would cost up to $355 million to move Kivalina, Newtok and Shishmaref.

"I've lived here all my life and we've never evacuated before," Swan said. "There was always a warning, but they'd always cancel."

The community sits on a 600 foot-wide sand reef, 625 miles northwest of Anchorage and 90 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It has lost about 100 feet of coastline in the past three years to waves and storm surges, said tribal administrator Colleen Swan, one of Joe Swan's eight daughters.

Vice Mayor Enoch Adams said the community is disappointed in the wall's performance and plans to request more state and federal money to build a new one.

The $3 million wall, completed last year, is made of cubes of chicken wire filled with sand enclosed in plastic and fabric, Adams said. It was designed by NANA Pacific, a construction and engineering subsidiary of the NANA Regional Corporation, one of 13 Alaska Native corporations established by Congress in 1971 under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

"The sea wall got a huge pounding," Enoch said. "That structure needs to be removed and replaced."

Swan said he was relieved that his freezer full of salmon, bowhead and beluga whale, caribou, walrus and other wild meats hadn't been turned off during the evacuation.

"I'm a subsistence hunter and we live on wild animals," Swan said. "There's just one little store here and that's it. If we don't hunt for these animals, we won't have anything to eat."

He planned to relax and watch TV on Friday before heading outside to check on his snowmobile and an outboard motor.

On the Net:

Village of Kivalina: http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CF--BLOCK.cfm