NEWS

Fighting the rising tide

NH guardsmen help build new home for indigenous Yup’ik in Alaska being displaced by sea level rise

Deborah McDermott
dmcdermott@seacoastonline.com
Tech. Sgt Michael Manzer, assigned to the 157th Fire Department, N.H. Air National Guard, cuts floor boards for new home construction, July 27, 2019. The air guardsmen are serving alongside reserve U.S. Marine Corps Forces at Mertarvik, Alaska, which is relocating about 400 Yupik people to Mertarvik because their tribal village in Newtok is eroding away. [U.S. Air National Guard photo by Airman First Class Igor Lucas Machado Nunes]

Some 33 airmen from the New Hampshire Air National Guard spent more than three grueling weeks last summer on a remote Alaskan island, working 12 hour days, seven days a week in rain and howling winds – and it was without doubt an experience of a lifetime.

The members of the 157th Civil Engineers Squadron, based at Pease Air National Guard Base, were deployed to Nelson Island in a remote region of western Alaska near the Bearing Sea. They were among a rotating group of guardsmen and military servicemembers there to help build a new home for a group of indigenous Yup’ik people being displaced from their nearby home village due to rising seas.

It was a challenging place, more than 100 miles from the nearest commercial airport in Bethel and 500 miles west of Anchorage. Flying from Bethel in bush planes, the New Hampshire guardsmen came in two groups, with the second group delayed three days due to the weather. “There’s no runway, no runway lights. You’re just landing on a road. And in that rain and fog, they just couldn’t land,” said Chief Master Sgt. Todd Buttrick of Fremont.

And once they arrived, they had to make do with what they brought with them and with limited onsite supplies, he said. “You didn’t have any of the luxuries of modern life. You couldn’t run to the store to buy snacks or to the hardware store to buy material.

“If you broke a tool, it could take weeks for a replacement. So you’d have to make do and go back to the primitive way. If you broke a nail gun, you had to use hammer and nails. But there were always things to do. So you’d stop that task and move on to another.”

The airmen volunteered to deploy to Alaska as part of the Department of Defense Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) program, which allows guardsmen the opportunity to increase deployment readiness and at the same time provides key services to a region of the U.S.

For a decade, the IRT has been working with the Yup’ik peoples of Newtok, Alaska, just inland from the Bearing Sea on the Ningliq River, to move their village nine miles away to Mertarvik on Nelson Island – a new community located on high ground. As a result of high sea levels and erosion due to climate change, Newtok (population 350) is washing away. And as the permafrost that lies below the surface melts, it has also created an unstable boggy terrain that can cause people and buildings alike to sink into the muck.

In past years, military servicemembers and guardsmen have worked to build the infrastructure of Mertarvik – a gravel air strip, access to a rock quarry, and roads using Dura-Base mats to allow for the heavy equipment needed to build the village. This past summer, contingents from across the U.S. volunteered to participate in a concerted building effort coordinated by the IRT so that the first of the Newtok residents could relocate.

According to the Newtok Planning Group of the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, new infrastructure includes homes, a water and sewer system, a water treatment plant, a power plant, a landfill, roads, a school, a health clinic and bulk fuel facility. By the end of this month, about one-third of Newtok’s population will move to the Mertarvik. The remainder will come as time and federal and state money allows: the total cost to build the village is expected to be in the vicinity of $130 million.

Senior Master Sgt. Chris Lemay of Goffstown went to Newtok a year ago, in preparation for the work to be done this past summer.

“The conditions are terrible there. It feels like third world country for sure. You can see houses starting to fall off into the water where the land used to be,” he said. “The village is built on a bend in the river, and it’s constantly going to be eroded.”

The work on Mertarvik was critical to the future of the Newtok villagers, he said. “In order for them to get more federal funding, they have to have people and students living there. The school was critical,” he said. “If they don’t move in, the funding dies. It was very important to get done what we got done.”

He met a woman in Mertarvik this was summer “who was going to be one of the first people to move in. She was very emotional about it. You could see the excitement in her eyes.”

The New Hampshire contingent was split into a group that constructed homes and a group that constructed roads and culverts – and both exceeded their expected output. They were expected to build four homes, and built 13 – the total number that was expected to be built the entire summer. The road crew was to install culverts under established roads and complete five aggregate driveways. They completed that work and were then able to reclaim the gravel from two decommissioned roads as well as complete a road into a cell of the landfill.

“The duration staff could not speak highly enough about how our rotation had a great attitude, and commended our motivation and willingness to do whatever needed to be done,” said Technical Sgt. Alan Bauman, a structural craftsman from Danvers, Massachusetts.

This work was done under difficult conditions, said Lemay. “It was sunny the first day. We saw two sunsets and two sunrises and that was it. It was raining or going to rain the rest of the time,” he said. “There were 15- to 20-mile-an-hour sustained winds, with gusts one time up to 45 miles an hour. The week before, it was 95 degrees. That changed drastically the day we arrived.”

Those weather conditions coupled with the remoteness were seen as a plus to Technical Sgt. Elizabeth Trinidad of Rhode Island. Guardsmen typically hone their readiness skills through weekend drills at Pease, and don’t often have the chance to be in a place “mimicking a real deployment situation.” She said the conditions she experienced at Mertarkvik would be helpful in case her unit were to be deployed to remote locations anywhere in the world.

“It’s an island very, very few human beings have ever seen. It was untouched,” said Buttrick.

While they did not interact a great deal with the Yup’ik, a “native village day” was set aside so that the guardsmen could learn more about the culture. A number of villagers came from Newtok, and Technical Sgt. Thomas Demers of Lisbon said he tried to take advantage of that time to get to know people a little better.

“What struck me was that they know the resources they have and they utilize them. Berry picking is very important to them, and they shared Eskimo ice cream with us, made of salmonberries, blueberries and whipped cream. It was very delicious,” he said.

They also invited everyone to join them in a dance, and Demers asked what it meant. “They said it was about hunting, gathering, providing for family,” he said. “Part of the movement is looking toward the sky, part of it was about hunting and berry picking. Understanding their culture was very helpful.”

Looking back on it now, they all said despite the long days, the lousy weather and the difficult living conditions, they do not regret a moment that they spent in Alaska.

“It felt good when project was done,” said Senior airman Dylan Flint of Concord, part of the road crew. “You built the road, and you knew that someone was going to be using that road. These people needed it and we could provide it for them.”

“It definitely felt like meaningful project,” said Trinidad, part of the construction crew. “This is their lives, these are their homes we were building."

“It was for a good cause,” said Bauman. “We were happy at the end.”