JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) Authorities in Alaska scrambled on Tuesday to evacuate and secure housing for residents of small coastal villages ravaged by the remnants of Typhoon Halong. These efforts are hampered by the villages’ remote locations and extensive damage, compounded by the looming threat of more storms and the fast-approaching winter.

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska, sitting almost 500 miles (800 km) from Anchorage, faced the brunt of high winds and rising waters. This onslaught affected isolated Alaska Native communities, leading the Coast Guard to rescue 24 individuals after their homes were swept away by flooding. Tragically, three individuals are reported missing or dead, and hundreds have taken refuge in school shelters, one of which is struggling with non-functional toilets, officials reported.

This storm system followed closely on the heels of another that had impacted parts of western Alaska just days before.

Over 1,500 people across the region have been displaced. Many have been airlifted to a temporary shelter established at the National Guard armory in Bethel, the regional hub with a population of about 6,000. As space becomes limited, officials are contemplating relocating evacuees to more permanent shelters or emergency housing options in Fairbanks and Anchorage.

Damage to fuel storage depots in the area poses a pollution risk that could endanger the fish and wildlife upon which Alaska Native residents depend for sustenance. Additionally, some residents may have lost freezers stocked with essential winter provisions, including salmon and moose.

The hardest-hit communities included Kipnuk, population 715, and Kwigillingok, population 380. They are off the state’s main road system and reachable this time of year only by water or by air.

“It’s catastrophic in Kipnuk. Let’s not paint any other picture,” Mark Roberts, incident commander with the state emergency management division, told a news conference Tuesday. “We are doing everything we can to continue to support that community, but it is as bad as you can think.”

Heartbreaking moment

Among those awaiting evacuation to Bethel on Tuesday was Brea Paul, of Kipnuk, who said in a text message that she had seen about 20 homes floating away through the moonlight on Saturday night.

“Some houses would blink their phone lights at us like they were asking for help but we couldn’t even do anything,” she wrote.

The following morning, she recorded video of a house submerged nearly to its roofline as it floated past her home.

Paul and her neighbors had a long meeting in the local schoolhouse gym on Monday night, singing songs of praises as they tried to figure out what to do next, she said. Neither she nor most everyone else knows where they will end up.

“It’s so heartbreaking saying goodbye to our community members not knowing when we’d get to see each other,” she said.

One woman was found dead in Kwigillingok, and authorities on Monday night called off the search for two men after their home floated away.

In Kwigillingok, the school was the only facility with full power, but it had no working toilet, and 400 people stayed there Monday night. Workers were trying to fix the bathrooms; a situation report from the state emergency operations center on Tuesday noted that “honey buckets are being used.”

A preliminary assessment showed every home in the village was damaged by the storm, with about three dozen having drifted from their foundations, the emergency management office said.

Power systems flooded in Napakiak, and severe erosion was reported in Toksook Bay. In Nightmute, officials said, fuel drums were reported floating in the community, and there was a scent of fuel in the air and a sheen on the water.

Officials activated members of the National Guard to help with the emergency response, and crews were trying to take advantage of any breaks in the weather to fly in food, water, generators and communication equipment.

Long road to recovery ahead, officials say

Officials warned of a long road to recovery and a need for continued support for the hardest-hit communities. Most rebuilding supplies would have to be transported in, and there is little time left with winter just around the corner.

“Indigenous communities in Alaska are resilient,” said Rick Thoman, an Alaska climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “But, you know, when you have an entire community where effectively every house is damaged and many of them will be uninhabitable with winter knocking at the door now, there’s only there’s only so much that any individual or any small community can do.”

Thoman said the storm was likely fueled by the warm surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, which has been heating up because of human-caused climate change and making storms more intense.

The remnants of another storm, Typhoon Merbok, caused damage across a massive swath of western Alaska three years ago.

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Johnson and Attanasio reported from Seattle.