The Haines Long Term Recovery Group has assisted 131 households affected by the December 2020 storms, roughly 18% of all the households in Haines—7% have unmet needs.

Many of the remaining 50 households with unmet needs, including home rehabilitation and foundation, driveway and drainage repairs, will receive attention in the coming months. Some homes have continued to be damaged since 2020 due to initial damage caused by the storms.

“Three homes that flooded this winter were due to damage from the storm. Either they didn’t know about it. One person didn’t realize they had a silted up French drain,” said HLTRG coordinator Sylvia Heinz. “I think in the next quarter we’ll be able to get this number way down. We’ve had all winter to plan and prepare.”

So far, more than $1.4 million has been distributed to those affected by the damage.

Heinz said she’s working on an estimate of how much money is needed to fully fund disaster response.

“There’s no community that has enough money to handle it. Haines has additional challenges to access funding,” Heinz said. “We don’t have a staff of emergency managers waiting and we don’t have the money, but compared to a lot of places in the country, we’ve been able to go from that chaos to an organized systematic approach to addressing all these unmet needs. There’s still a lot of need and we need a lot of money for sure.”

The State of Alaska Individual Assistance Program has funded $474,000, Chilkoot Indian Association (CIA) has funded $388,000, The Salvation Army has funded $276,000, the Chilkat Valley Community Foundation Emergency response fund has funded $110,000, Tlingit Haida Central Council has funded $93,000, Ministerial Affiliates has funded $29,000, Haines Chamber of Commerce has funded $18,000, Team Rubicon has funded $17,000, Sealaska Heritage has funded $15,0000,and United Methodist Committee on Relief has funded $10,000.

CIA has been an vital organization in funding recovery needs, Heinz said. They received a $900,000 grant last year which has helped to fund four carpenters and two support staff members to assist residents.

“We’re going to try to finish that grant by the end of the year,” Heinz said.

Ten families or individuals have left Haines because of disaster-affected damage.