The remnant storms of Typhoon Halong tore into western Alaska with such ferocity that they pulled Steven Anaver’s home from its foundation and buoyed it across choppy water — with him inside.
“I was inches away from death,” he wrote on Facebook.
The storms’ blistering winds and record-high water levels laid waste to several small communities on Oct. 12, displacing more than 2,000 people and requiring one of the most significant airlift operations in Alaska history. At least one person died, and two others are missing.
The water started rising quickly the night of Saturday, Oct. 11, in Anaver’s village of Kwigillingok, where Alaska State Troopers said at least 18 people were rescued. Videos he shared Monday with The Associated Press conveyed the desperate scene as the waters rose inside his home and the flooding raged outside.
At around 3 a.m. on Sunday, the water level rose to Anaver’s knees in about 10 minutes. Shortly after, his home teetered, tilted and started floating.
Plastic bags, boxes of blankets, a leather boot and furniture cushions floated in videos Anaver took from inside. The walls swayed like a ship’s. Outside, the power had long since been out. Dark waters lapped the house just a few feet from the window as the home drifted away. Anaver heard loud booms, and frigid wind rushed through a hole that opened in one wall.
“This was a big challenge for my anxiety,” he said. “I kept calling my family.”
More booms shook the home as waves crashed it into other structures.
“Oh God,” he wrote in a Facebook post around 5:30 a.m.
Anaver tried to take pictures to orient where he was — the camera could see better than his eyes in the darkness — but it was futile until the moon came out later that morning. He could eventually see a house he recognized. He had floated for roughly a mile.
A small hill with a board sticking out of it had stopped Anaver’s home just feet from the river, which had dragged other houses much farther away.
After 7 a.m., when the water had receded enough, two neighbors in waders came over and helped him out.
Anaver’s community was one of two Yup’ik communities that were hit hardest. In the other, Kipnuk, troopers said they rescued at least another 16 people from the catastrophic floods.
Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News via AP
State troopers estimated that at least eight homes in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok were pushed from their foundations as the villages were struck by “strong winds and heavy flooding, which caused significant damage” in both areas.
