GEOFF BENNETT: Rescue crews are air lifting hundreds of evacuees in rural Alaska after the remnants of a typhoon brought hurricane-force winds and record-breaking storm surge to the state's remote western coast over the weekend.

The floodwaters swept homes out to sea and submerged some coastal villages.

At least one person is dead and two remain missing.

More than 1,000 people have been displaced as winter rapidly approaches and authorities scramble to assess the damage.

For more, we're joined now by Sage Smiley.

She's the news director of KYUK in Bethel, Alaska, a town that has become a hub for the recovery effort in recent days.

Sage, thanks for being with us.

And we reached you at home there in Bethel, which, as we said, is the central aid hub.

What's the situation there?

And how is the recovery effort progressing?

SAGE SMILEY, News Director, KYUK Public Media: Yes, so it's been really dynamic.

As the state officials say, things are really changing by the minute, but there have been helicopters in and out, C class military planes in and out, bringing people and supplies between here in Bethel and the coast and between Bethel and Anchorage.

And so there's a lot of activity.

I think everyone's just working really hard to try and make sure that people are safe in their housing, because that's not the case in the villages that have been most affected by this typhoon.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, how widespread is the damage?

And did residents there expect it to be this devastating?

SAGE SMILEY: So I think that that's part of the issue.

The storm track of this typhoon remnant, the ex-Typhoon Halong, was very sharp.

It turned very quickly.

And I think that didn't give a lot of time for people to prepare, but instead of hitting north of here, the Norton Sound area, it hit right in the Kuskokwim Delta.

And you can really see in the communities that have been most impacted the track of those winds.

So the Kuskokwim Delta coast is about 60, 70 miles away from here, and the communities that were most impacted saw hurricane-force winds of over 100 miles an hour, houses literally flipped over, flooding that broke records, and it was just really, really devastating, including upriver.

Community 60 miles upriver have had devastating flooding and they have had a quarter of their houses floated off their foundations.

GEOFF BENNETT: And two of the-hardest hit towns are Native American communities along the Bering Sea.

What have you heard from people who evacuated those areas?

SAGE SMILEY: Yes.

Yes, Kipnuk and Kwigillingok are Alaska Native communities right there on the coast.

And people are stunned.

I mean, they have never seen a storm like this.

Our reporters are hearing accounts of people who have spent the night on a boardwalk because they left their house, which was floating, tried to go to a family member's house, which had disappeared and had nowhere else to go, people who really didn't know whether they were going to make it through the night and then spent days sheltering in schools with supplies that were dwindling, fuel oil that was dwindling.

It's been a really, really tough situation for the people who are coming out of those hardest-hit villages.

GEOFF BENNETT: Some 1,500 people, as we said, have been displaced.

What are the obstacles when it comes to rebuilding?

SAGE SMILEY: I mean, this region is off the U.S.

road system.

You could not get here by road if you wanted to.

And it makes rescue efforts really challenging.

We have talked to Coast Guard rescue personnel who flew in helicopters, taking people out of these villages six at a time, when there are hundreds of -- and hundreds of people who need to be evacuated because runways were damaged and they couldn't land fixed-wing aircraft.

And so I think that the remoteness of this region really complicates the rescue efforts.

And also Bethel itself is the hub for Western and Northern Alaska, but it is not a big community.

We're about 6,500, based on the last census.

And that means that, with an influx of hundreds of people, our shelter is already struggling.

It's reached capacity.

There's word that it will be shut down in the coming days.

And a lot of people are needing to be moved hundreds of miles away from here to Anchorage, because the resources are just really strained as is.

GEOFF BENNETT: Back in May, the Trump administration, as you well know, it canceled a $20 million EPA grant meant to help Kipnuk, one of the communities we mentioned, to help that community adapt to flooding, which is a major issue, given the fact that the permafrost is thawing and that the storms are getting worse.

How is that community now going to adapt?

And how are they going to cope with the loss of federal climate funding?

SAGE SMILEY: I think that's a really big and a really important question, not only for Kipnuk and their specific grant that they lost, but for communities throughout this region.

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium has put out a report saying that almost 150 communities in Alaska, many of which are in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, are at really imminent need of either partial or full relocation or at the very least major projects to try and shore up against a changing climate, whether that's riverine erosion or permafrost degradation or land subsidence or some combination thereof.

And so thinking about the devastating impact of this typhoon, this only highlights the broader need of this entire region for climate-related funding to be able to shore up river walls or to be able to raise houses above what floodwaters may be reaching.

There are many, many kinds of projects that the small Alaska Native communities in this region desperately need.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Sage, we should say your station, KYUK, the smallest public TV station in the country, has also been affected by the federal cuts to public media funding.

How are you going about covering this disaster while also dealing with this major budget shortfall?

SAGE SMILEY: Yes, I mean, we're doing what we do every day.

But it has been a really poignant moment.

KYUK, because we were a dual licensee -- we are dual licensee.

We are a public TV and radio station, is losing $1.2 million.

And that's a huge budget gap to fill when we live in, by Western economic standards, one of the poorest regions in the United States.

We just don't have the donor base to be able to make up that funding.

And so it's been a really mixed bag of emotions to be doing important work and trying to get the vital information that people need about disaster relief and about what's happening right now on the ground here in this region, knowing that KYUK, like many other public media stations in the country, is going to be definitely impacted by the rescission of public media funds.

My position itself will be going to five hours a week in the beginning of the year.

GEOFF BENNETT: Sage Smiley, news director of KYUK in Bethel, Alaska, my best to you, your colleagues, and everybody affected by these floods.

SAGE SMILEY: (SPEAKING IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGE) Thank you very much.