One Year After Typhoon Halong, Kipnuk Faces Recovery — and a Hard Choice on Relocation

One year after the remnants of Typhoon Halong tore through Kipnuk, the Alaska Native village is still in a partial recovery. Water, sewer and electricity are working again, but many residents remain displaced, much of the community is still damaged, and village leaders are weighing an immediate push to rebuild against a longer-term plan to move to safer ground.

The storm that hit western Alaska on Oct. 11-12, 2025, was among the region’s worst in years, and Kipnuk, a Yup’ik village of more than 700 people on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, was one of the hardest-hit places. A state geologic assessment later classified it as a major flood, estimating water levels about 6 feet above mean higher high water in parts of the region. Reporting also documented hurricane-force winds, with one location on Nelson Island recording gusts of about 100 mph. In Kipnuk, regional reporting and tribal statements said about 90% of buildings were damaged or destroyed, and nearly all residents evacuated. The Alaska State Emergency Operations Center said search-and-rescue crews “rescued a total of 51 people from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok” on Oct. 12, 2025.

Since then, some of the most basic systems have come back online. By October 2026, Kipnuk Tribal President Daniel Paul said water, sewer and electrical service were functioning again in the village. Reporting also said the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities projected repairs on up to about 150 homes by Thanksgiving 2026, allowing more residents to return.

But a functioning utility system does not mean a full recovery. One-year follow-up reporting found many households were still living away from Kipnuk, including in hub communities such as Bethel and Anchorage, where longer-term housing shortages have complicated recovery. The scale of the damage helps explain why. By mid-November 2025, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management had surveyed nearly 3,500 homes across the disaster zone and found 208 destroyed and 471 with major damage, according to state situation updates summarized by KYUK. Kipnuk accounted for a heavy share of that devastation.

Losses in the village extended beyond homes and roads. Reporting said the storm damaged winter fuel and food caches and disturbed cemetery sites in Kipnuk and nearby villages, deepening the disruption for families already forced from their homes.

Federal disaster aid has arrived, but the longer-term path is still unsettled. President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for the storm and flooding on Oct. 22, 2025. Then, on June 6, 2026, FEMA approved a separate tribal disaster declaration for the Native Village of Kipnuk, creating another route for public-assistance funding for tribal public works. Regional reporting in October 2026 said FEMA had paid out more than $100 million to people affected by the storm across western Alaska. Earlier in the response, White House budget official Eric Ueland described an initial $25 million federal commitment as a “down payment” toward recovery.

Even with that assistance, Kipnuk’s central question remains unresolved: how much of the village should be rebuilt in place, and how much effort should go toward eventual relocation. In 2026, community leaders and residents discussed moving and reportedly voted to pursue it. But relocation in rural Alaska is expensive, slow and politically difficult. Newtok’s move to Mertarvik, one of the state’s most prominent relocation efforts, has shown how many years of planning and funding such a transition can require.

That leaves Kipnuk in a position familiar to many low-lying western Alaska communities: exposed to storm surge, erosion and the effects of thawing permafrost, yet without an easy place or process to move. Villages built on flat, eroding ground with little high ground nearby face rising risks even when a disaster declaration unlocks emergency aid.

For Kipnuk, that means recovery is unfolding on two tracks at once. There is the practical work of making homes livable and getting people back. And there is the broader recognition that rebuilding in the same place may not be the final answer.

Paul, the tribal president, summed up that tension in a phrase that has come to define the village’s current reality: “Rebuild first and then relocate later. Money talks and money walks.”