Julia Stone is one of about 320 evacuees from Western Alaska staying, indefinitely, at a mass shelter in Anchorage. Most of the time, she said, she’s just thankful she and her loved ones are safe. But at night, lying on her cot, it’s different.
“I think about home,” said the 54-year-old. “I think about people struggling and people having trauma and nightmares, what they went through, and what we went through. It was chaos.”
She evacuated Kipnuk with her two sons and three grandchildren four days after Typhoon Halong flooded her village, floating some houses off their foundations, snapping utility poles and toppling fuel tanks. Now, she’s staying at the Alaska Airlines Center in Midtown Anchorage. She’s one of many all sleeping together on cots. But over and over she said — she can’t complain…