Gale force winds and driving rain thrashed Shishmaref for more than 12 hours, tearing away at the thin barrier island in the Chukchi Sea and forcing at least one family from their home. Three other homes on the island of 562 residents were threatened, as well as the village dump, a warehouse filled with dry goods and several utility poles, Mayor Daniel Iyatunguk said Oct. 8. The barrier island 125 miles north of Nome has been eroding for decades. It has relied on gabions, a system of sand bags and baskets to protect the bluff. Iyatunguk said the village was in the process of requesting emergency money. The Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study to find suitable sites to which the village can be relocated. The study could take years. Residents rejected being relocated to Nome or Kotzebue, in part because those cities allow alcohol and the village is dry. ‘We are sometimes the forgotten people,” Iyatunguk said. ‘We would like to survive. We are living out here on little sand beaches and being threatened by storms … If the wind and wave get bad enough, that’s where we’ll be, in the water in our boats.”
