Inside a large warehouse past the concessions counter at Bethel’s movie theater, social workers with the Lower Kuskokwim School District (LKSD) tape closed boxes of relief supplies.
"Kasigluk, Kong[iganak], Napaskiak, Tunt[tutuliak], Chefornak, Newtok, Tununak, Toksook [Bay]," said Meghan Crow, the district's lead social worker, listing off communities where the boxes were headed.
Most of the communities suffered serious damage from the remnants of Typhoon Halong. All have been housing families that were evacuated.
"In the big boxes, we've got child sandals, woolen blankets, two boxes each of adult winter coats going out to each site, snack boxes like chips and granola bars and beef jerky, diapers, wipes, formula, bottles," Crow said.
Crow said even before the storm, one of her key roles for the district was ensuring equal access to educational opportunities for students who have lost housing. With Halong, that number has shot up. More than 130 students have re-enrolled in schools in Bethel and across LKSD.
The dozens of pallets that Crow’s group has broken down for distribution came from thousands of miles away through a Louisiana-based nonprofit, the United Cajun Navy. The district is using federal funds for items it still needs to get students through the winter. Crow says that not only means outdoor gear, but some precious indoor gear as well.
"The next round is basketball shoes everyone's asking for," Crow said.
With supplies mostly checked off, Crow said her department’s priority is helping students adjust to their changed reality. Many affected families across the region still need essentials for daily living.
Getting relief to the right place
Standing in a city-owned garage in Bethel, Maggie Coit said there is plenty to go around.
"We have sleeping bags, pads, and for a while we had mattresses, but I believe those all went out yesterday," Coit said. "That looks like masks, like surgical masks, Clorox wipes here, paper towels, toilet paper, and then what we like to call the leaning tower of diapers."
Coit is with the veteran-led nonprofit Team Rubicon. She said the garage has filled up and emptied of goods multiple times during the relief effort.
Coit said Team Rubicon has been working closely with the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) to more precisely meet the needs of communities.
"We work with the requests directly from the villages so that we are not sending goods that are not helpful or extraneous. We really are working to make sure things don't simply become trash later on," Coit said.
Robert Rey had also been busy coordinating with an alphabet soup of organizations in Bethel to get relief supplies to the right place.
"Probably left with another what's out here, plus on the floor, probably another 16,000 pounds of clothes, food, and gear," Rey said, standing in the center of an airplane hangar owned by a local charter service.
The hangar is being used to store goods that Rey’s employer, Yute Commuter Service, has paid to have freighted into Bethel, so far on its own dime, and distributed to villages. In the hangar, Rey and other volunteers have set up a one-stop shop for anyone in need – among the stockpile, new socks and underwear, piles of sweaters and blankets, canned goods, and bags of pet food.
"It's not just people that have been affected by the typhoon. It's also Bethel residents that are hard on their luck. You know, SNAP didn't get re put up. Some folks are out of jobs. It's getting cold. They're freezing out there," Rey said.
The rebuild effort
The cold weather is an immediate concern for villages hit hardest by the storm. In Bethel, literal tons of building supplies are being sent out as quickly as they arrive.
Alaska Army National Guard Sgt. Matthew Karols has been overseeing logistics at a giant warehouse on the Bethel riverfront. It was long ago a fish processing plant full of Kuskokwim River salmon. Now, it’s filled with the things that it takes to rebuild a village.
"I know we've sent out last week, I think it was 560 bundles of insulation. A rough count is about 800 sheets of plywood, and that was just from the one order we had for Napakiak," Karols said.
Karols makes sure supply orders get where they need to go – first to the Bethel Readiness Center, and then on the flight line at the National Guard Armory to be loaded into Chinook helicopters. Senior Airman Scott Nord has been overseeing that part of the process.
"This is definitely, I don't know if it's the appropriate term, but the bottleneck, because everything has to go here before it gets out," Nord said, standing outside the Guard hangar among giant bundles of plywood known as bunks.
"They can take three bunks in one flight and still have payload to spare. That's with the crew, and then they'll throw insulation on top as space permits," Nord said.
Nord said three to four loads of supplies have been leaving Bethel daily via helicopter. The aim is to have Guard personnel on the ground in four communities at a time assisting with immediate infrastructure needs. He said the level of support, especially from organizations based in Bethel, has stuck with him.
"There's been a huge turnout from locals that have come to offer time, equipment, and materials of their own to push out to the villages and help where they can," Nord said. "They've shown up out of nowhere and offered their help for exactly what we needed."
Across the region, homes are being dried out and repositioned, boardwalks pieced back together, and critical infrastructure needed for the winter is being prioritized for repairs. Alongside the Guard, a slew of agencies and vendors have been contracted for the rebuild effort.
A full picture of the amount of state and federal disaster assistance is still unavailable. The state says the effort to calculate the costs of rebuilding and begin processing reimbursements has only begun. From the ground in Bethel one thing is clear: the recovery effort is enormous.
