The remnant storms of Typhoon “Halong” tore into western Alaska with such ferocity that they pulled Steven Anaver’s home from its foundation and swept it away with him inside. Videos he shared on Monday convey the desperate scene as the waters rose inside his home and flooding raged outside. The storms’ blistering winds and record-high water levels laid waste to several small communities on Oct. 12, displacing more than 2,000 people. At least one person is dead. Two others are missing.
The water started rising quickly at 3 a.m. on Saturday in Anaver’s village of Kwigillingok. Water was up to his knees in about 10 minutes. Shortly after, the home teetered, tilted and started floating. Plastic bags, boxes of blankets, a leather boot and furniture floated in videos Anaver took. The walls swayed like a ship’s.
“Oh God,” he wrote on Facebook around 5:30 a.m. A small hill stopped Anaver’s home just feet from the river. Anaver posted a video of the hours drifting in his own home. “I was inches away from death,” he wrote. “I escaped.”
