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Our Living Lands is a collaboration of the Mountain West News Bureau, Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and Native Public Media.

Finding home after the Kipnuk flood

An aerial picture taken from a helicopter shows widespread flooding and devastation of a town along the western Alaska coast. Homes and other structures are destroyed and floodwaters surround others.
Courtesy of Alaska National Guard
In October 2025, Typhoon Halong hit western Alaska, causing widespread flooding and devastation.

Lacey and Darrell John are among the hundreds of people from the Western Alaska coast forced to move to Anchorage after a storm spawned by Typhoon Halong, which all but erased their village. A year later, they still don’t know if they’ll ever be able to live in Kipnuk again. KNBA’s Rhonda McBride met the John family last year, as they struggled to adjust to city life.

“There's a saying that our children are watching us, and they're learning from us,” Lacey John said. “And seeing her take care of her doll shows us that we're taking good care of each other.”

Rhonda McBride has a long history of working in both television and radio in Alaska, going back to 1988, when she was news director at KYUK, the public radio and TV stations in Bethel, which broadcast in both the English and Yup’ik languages.

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