Hundreds airlifted from storm-battered Western Alaska villages in historic evacuation

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Hundreds of people were evacuated from the Western Alaska village of Kipnuk on Wednesday after residents were told to pack a single bag and leave the community, one of the hardest hit by a catastrophic storm that deluged swaths of the Yukon-Kuskokwim region over the weekend.

A similar mass evacuation in Kwigillingok, a Yup’ik village of about 400 residents, was confirmed Wednesday night in a statement by officials with the state’s Emergency Operations Center.

In what officials called “one of the most significant airlift efforts in recent Alaska disaster response history,” the Alaska National Guard and other agencies used helicopters and even a huge C-17 Globemaster III military transport plane to move more than 300 people from their villages to shelters in Bethel and in Anchorage, hundreds of miles away, where a majority of the evacuees will be sent.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/alaska-airlifting-hundreds-from-storm-devastated-coastal-villages/?cid=sm%3Atrueanthem%3A%7B%7Bcampaignname%7D%7D%3Atwitterpost%E2%80%8B&taid=68f0d29422d6e100017109d5