ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Over the last month College Gate Elementary School has welcomed about 80 students from Western Alaska who went through the trauma of Typhoon Halong. Darrell Berntsen, the school’s principal, said there have been challenges with families moving to Anchorage, but most students are settling in after leaving their flooded villages behind.
“A lot of the parents had some issues with sending their kids to school because they had just gone through a traumatic event,” Berntsen explained. “I see these kids every day, they’re happy, they’re excited, they’re thankful for being at school because it takes away from some of that time where they think about what happened to them and what traumatized them over that life changing event.”
School Nurse, Tracy Frost, agrees that most of the students seem quite resilient. Still, she said, a month in, they are starting to miss home…