State checks out storm damage to coast

ANCHORAGE - Officials with the state Division of Emergency Services have traveled to Northwest Alaska to inspect damage from a fierce storm that ate away the shoreline of coastal communities last week.

• Photos

Officials in Shishmaref and Kotzebue have asked Gov. Tony Knowles to declare a disaster, a move that could free state funding to rebuild erosion barriers, armor banks or take other temporary protective measures. Officials in Barrow are gathering details about storm damage.

"They're going to bring us all of the findings, and we'll put together a fact sheet," said division spokeswoman Kerre Fischer. A decision won't be made before next week.

Erosion caused by fall storms has become an annual nightmare for coastal villages from Point Barrow to the Bering Strait, where wind-driven surf has been dissolving permafrost, destabilizing houses and destroying shoreline roads.

When the Oct. 8 storm roared in from the Chukchi Sea, 45 mph winds drove 14-foot seas into the beach at Shishmaref. The storm threatened to undercut the ground beneath a dozen homes, several warehouses, two stores and utility poles, said Tony Weyiouanna, the village transportation planner.

"Every storm is scary, but this was probably one of the scariest," Weyiouanna said. "Waves were breaking right over the shoreline, and spray was coming over, and houses were in danger of falling over. ... Every few minutes we'd see part of the (road) falling down into the sea."

Another casualty was the gabion sea wall built with $110,000 of state disaster funding provided after a storm struck almost exactly one year ago. Gabions are cages filled with rocks.

"You can't see the gabions anymore," Weyiouanna said. "Most have sunk into the sand."

Weyiouanna and leaders from other villages have been struggling to find more permanent solutions. Federal studies are looking at moving Kivalina and other villages, while Shishmaref residents voted overwhelmingly in July to find another site and begin planning.

But one study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that it could cost more than $100 million to move a single village. Government officials say they don't know a source for such funding.

"We empathize with (Shishmaref's) position," said Bob Stewart, a manager with the emergency services division. "But we just can't find enough state dollars to do the things out there that need to be done. We're going to try to help them out and see if we can come up with something that meets their needs."