One Sunday morning last month, James Takuaku Amik was huddled with his girlfriend on a small bridge. At 4 a.m., they scrambled into an 18-foot aluminum motorboat to escape the massive storm surge that had inundated Kipnuk, a village of 700 people in the heart of western Alaska’s vast Kuskokwim River delta.
“We couldn’t get it back. We tried, but it was too windy to go by boat. So we ended up staying on the bridge for five hours,” Amik said. The situation only became more dramatic. “Around 5:30 a.m., houses started to be washed away,” Amik said. “There were still lights and people inside.”
When they left, the couple was heading to Kipnuk Public School, the largest building in the Alaska Native village of Yup’ik. At least that building was safe, they hoped at the time.
The storm that hit Alaska’s west coast in mid-October was the remnants of Typhoon Halong, which gained strength in the warmer-than-normal Pacific Ocean. After the wind stopped and the floodwaters receded, the village was left in ruins. But while the school still stood relatively intact on steel pilings more than six feet above dirt and debris, there was another problem inside. District officials were working on a much-needed upgrade to the main generator. At that time, the school’s backup generator exploded. All local residents, including Amik and his girlfriend, stayed for two days until local leaders decided the damage from the storm was too great and organized a mass evacuation.
James Takuaku Amik, his girlfriend, and his daughter took shelter at a school in Kipnuku, then two days later to a hotel in Anchorage, more than 780 miles away. Gaby Hiestand Salgado/KYUK
In the hundreds of Native American-majority villages scattered across Alaska’s vast landmass, public school buildings are essential safe havens in the event of a disaster. In many remote communities, schools are some of the only buildings with flush toilets and private generators. Schools are often the only buildings on pilings, critical in the face of rising climate change, and they are also the only buildings large enough to house dozens, if not hundreds, of people for days at a time.
“It’s no secret that if you have to evacuate, you evacuate to elementary schools,” said Alaska Sen. Loki Tobin, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Education Committee. He grew up in Nome and is currently an Anchorage legislator.
“It’s a lifeboat,” said Brian Fisher, Alaska’s emergency management director. “This is our last refuge.”
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican and former educator, has declared more than a dozen disasters since August 2024, in at least half of which public schools were used as emergency shelters. The state reported damage in 52 communities in October, forcing hundreds of residents to sleep on the floors of gymnasiums and classrooms at local public schools. Since 1998, Alaska has experienced more than 140 state-declared disasters, dozens of which required schools to serve as evacuation centers.
But rural Alaska schools have been neglected for decades. Earlier this year, ProPublica, KYUK Public Media, and NPR documented health and safety crises inside many rural school buildings in Alaska. In some cases, buildings that function as evacuation centers during emergencies can themselves become emergency situations.
Because rural school districts serve unincorporated communities that lack tax revenue to fund education, the state is required by law to fund their construction and maintenance projects. Over the past 28 years, rural Alaska school districts have requested nearly 1,800 requests from the state for funding to maintain and repair aging schools, but only 14% of those requests have been approved. And national budgets are shrinking as the backlog of major maintenance projects continues to grow.
“The deficiencies lie in the maintenance that goes on every day to keep the buildings going,” Alaska State Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said. For years, the department has struggled to meet increasing funding needs to maintain school facilities, including more than 60 state-owned school facilities. “The crux of the situation is that we’re in an emergency because we didn’t act,” she said in an interview in Juneau last year.
The main generator powering Kipunuku’s school was not functioning until hundreds of residents were evacuated during Typhoon Ha Long. Lower Kuskokwim School District Superintendent Hannibal Anderson said the generators were “working well enough to provide the school with what it needs.” However, as the school became Kipnuku’s primary emergency shelter, it was quickly overwhelmed by the sudden increase in demand for electricity. Additionally, small backup generators could not meet the demands of charging cell phones and keeping buildings heated after community members gathered.
The lobby of Chief Paul Memorial School in Kipnuk, Alaska, is filled with emergency supplies. Nearly 700 people evacuated there for two days after damage caused by Typhoon Halong. Eric Stone/Alaska Public Media Storm surge from the remnants of Typhoon Halong has lifted homes off their foundations and scattered them across villages. The impact forced the entire community to take shelter in a local public school. Eric Stone/Alaska Public Media
The district waited 14 years for the state to approve funding for major renovations in 2015, but has not sought funding since then. Each year, applications submitted by school districts for construction and maintenance funding are ranked. Data analysis and interviews with superintendents across the state found that submitting applications that rank high enough to win funding is cumbersome and they feel pressured to include specialized tests and surveys that can be costly. Anderson explained that while the generator needs maintenance, he doesn’t think Kipnuku’s needs are urgent enough to receive funding. “Kipnuku is a relatively new school,” he said.
In Kotorik, a village of just over 650 people nearly 350 miles north of Kipnuk, 70 students spent two nights at the school. “We have church and community buildings, but they are rarely used for evacuation,” Principal Cassius Brown explained. “That’s because the school is on high ground and not very close to the river.”
Since 2018, the Lower Yukon School District has asked the province’s Department of Education for between $2 million and more than $5 million annually for major repairs to schools in Kotlik and nearby villages. That work remains unfunded.
At Chevak, where about 950 Alaska Native Cuik people live within a dozen miles of the Bering Sea coast, 65 people spent several nights on the gymnasium floor, said Lillian Olson, the school’s principal. “Our community kind of relies on schools for shelter,” Olson said. “Once, two years ago, there was a power outage in parts of town that lasted about a week. At that time, there was no electricity or heat in the homes, so we housed them.”
Olson said the building’s fire sprinklers failed a test in September. In a phone call last spring, Kashnamiut School District Superintendent Jeanne Campbell described a number of issues related to Chevak School’s boiler and a water main break that affected the fire sprinkler system. “It’s right inside the building,” Campbell said.
Last year, the district requested $32 million from the state Education Department for the first time since 2001 to update and renovate its schools. This proposal is one of 114 proposals for fiscal year 2025, of which the state allocated sufficient funding for only 17 projects. Work at the Chevak school was not included in this.
Dozens of miles to the west, Mayor Charlene Nuksuk of Hooper Bay said 50 to 60 people were evacuated at a public school in the area for two nights. This village is very vulnerable due to its location. Over the past few decades, autumn coastal storms have engulfed several rows of dunes that once sheltered a community of 1,375 people. Now, the black, frigid Bering Sea circles the beach just a few hundred feet from the far corner of the local airport’s runway. Nukusuk said the school is one of the safest buildings.
The Hooper Bay school was rebuilt after it was destroyed by fire in 2006. Since then, the district has filed 29 requests totaling more than $8.4 million from the state for needed repairs to various projects at the school, including roofs, emergency lighting and exterior walls. Last year, the district received just under $2.3 million in “exterior repairs” funding for one of those projects, according to state data. The superintendent did not respond to questions about Hooper Bay’s specific needs.
The Alaska Department of Emergency Management does not have a formal agreement with the state Department of Education to designate schools as emergency shelters, and neither agency has funding specifically to maintain schools as emergency shelters. However, a department spokesperson said there are several state grants available to schools to help them prepare for emergencies.
Residents of Kipunuku’s neighborhood evacuate to the school’s main atrium.
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“Schools are constructed for educational purposes. Other uses are incidental or secondary to the design,” Department of Education spokesman Brian Zadaris wrote in an email. He said Department of Education officials would not visit schools “to confirm whether the facilities are in condition to function as emergency shelters.”
“I don’t know if people necessarily connect with the idea that if you use a school as a multi-purpose facility, you have to maintain it for that purpose as well,” said state Sen. Tobin. “They are not just institutions of learning; they are also institutions of after-school activities, community gatherings, evacuation facilities and disaster response support infrastructure,” she said. In February 2024, Mr. Tobin, who is also a member of the State Senate Military and Veterans Affairs Finance Subcommittee, raised the issue of funding for emergency schools with Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Craig Christenson during the Budget Committee.
Alaska’s Division of Emergency Management falls under the jurisdiction of the Christenson Division. “My understanding is that if schools were not available in some of these very small rural and remote areas, we would be paying to evacuate people rather than using assets that we have already put resources into but are no longer able to maintain. Is that accurate?” Tobin told him.
“I can’t comment on our failure to maintain them,” Christenson responded. “Our faculty does not maintain the school.” (The deputy director declined further comment on last year’s meeting.)
“But are you taking advantage of them?” Tobin asked.
“I do,” Christenson said.
