Three Haines residents flew to the small Iñupiaq community of Golovin to muck out homes and assist with recovery from the high winds, rain and storm surge of Typhoon Merbok, which slammed into the western coast of Alaska last month.

“We were able to assist 12% of the community with muck-out needs. Homes floated sometimes 200 feet off their foundations. In one of the houses, the water line was about five feet high,” said Sylvia Heinz, who returned from Golovin last week after two trips there.

During her first trip, which lasted two weeks, Heinz was accompanied by Larysa Murray and Brian Rougeux. All three are volunteers with Team Rubicon, a national disaster aid organization that sent “greyshirts,” as the group’s members are called, to aid Haines after the December 2020 storm and later opened a local chapter here.

Merbok caused extensive flooding along 1,000 miles of western Alaskan coastline in mid-September. Golovin, which is about 70 miles from Nome and has a population of about 180, was one of the communities hardest hit by the storm. Sea levels rose there to 10 feet above normal, according to an Alaska Public Media report.

“My parki that my aana made. Things that were passed down. Our appliances. Everything has to go. Our washer, dryer, refrigerator, our bedding, our cabinets, our couches. Everything has to go because it smells like sewer in the house,” Golovin resident Celeste Menadelook told the ADN last month.

About 70% of homes experienced severe damage, and 25% of residents were displaced, Heinz said. There was a rush to repair structures and find stable housing before freezing set in.

“It was a desperate situation because it’s going to be negative 40 degrees right around the corner. It was eight degrees there today,” Heinz said last week. “There are no hotels… People were staying in their offices with babies and families, or staying at the school or with friends or relatives. That’s not adequate for winter.”

Heinz said the volunteers drained 100 gallons of water from 150 square feet of insulation, a job that needed to be done before the storm-soaked insulation froze.

Organizations including the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska sent food and bottled water to residents, many of whom lost freezers full of subsistence foods due to a power outage and flooding during the storm. Heinz said 500 pounds of water was shipped to Golovin on the plane she arrived on.

Heinz made a second trip to Golovin two weeks ago for eight days. “We picked up the homes that had floated away and put them back on their foundations,” Heinz said.

She described a grim scene. “When these homes floated they disconnected from sewer and heating oil. As they floated away, they spewed sewer and heating oil. That gets deposited in the townsite, all over the playground.”

Volunteers were served beluga, bearded seal, walrus and moose.

“(The recovery effort) was so impressive,” Heinz said. “I’m very honored to have been a part of it.”