In the remote Alaskan village of Newtok, the ground beneath people's homes is literally disappearing. The permafrost that the entire village sits on is thawing, and the land is eroding into the river at a rate of 70 feet per year.
Imagine waking up one day to find your yard 70 feet shorter than it was last year. Homes that once sat safely away from the water are now teetering on crumbling cliffs. The riverbank that used to be over a mile away is now just steps from front doors.
Permafrost is ground that stays frozen year-round, and for thousands of years it provided a stable foundation for Arctic communities. But climate change is warming the Arctic faster than anywhere else on Earth, and that frozen ground is turning into unstable, swampy quicksand.
When permafrost thaws, it doesn't just make the ground soft - it causes everything built on it to sink, tilt, and collapse. Houses develop cracks, foundations crumble, and entire buildings can tip over. In Newtok, families have watched their homes literally sink into the tundra while the river edges closer every year.
The village knew it needed to relocate. In 2006, local, state, and federal officials formed the Newtok Planning Group to coordinate moving the entire community to a new site called Mertarvik, about 9 miles away. They estimated it would cost $80-130 million - roughly $2 million per household.
Here's where it gets frustrating: It took 13 years for the first families to move. Thirteen years of living in sinking homes, without running water, amid flood-damaged infrastructure, while bureaucrats argued about funding and jurisdiction. As of 2024, more than half the residents have relocated, but over 100 people still remain in the deteriorating original village.
And Newtok isn't alone. A 2020 government report identified 144 Alaska Native villages facing the same threats from flooding, erosion, and thawing permafrost. The cost to protect or relocate all of them? Over $4 billion in the next 50 years.
The federal government doesn't have a framework for climate-driven relocation. At least 15 different federal agencies are involved in the process, with no single authority in charge. Villages apply for grants in a piecemeal fashion, cobbling together funding from multiple sources with no guarantee of success.
Meanwhile, residents face an impossible choice: stay in homes that are literally sinking and collapsing, or move to distant cities and lose their connection to their land, language, and traditional way of life. For Alaska's Yup'ik people, hunting and fishing on ancestral lands isn't just about food - it's central to their culture and identity.
Recent storms have made the situation even more urgent. In October 2024, the remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated the villages of Kwigillingok and Kipnuk, damaging nearly every house and displacing 67f8 people. Residents have been asking to relocate for years, but state and federal officials keep focusing on rebuilding in place rather than moving communities to safety.
The longer evacuated residents stay in larger cities, the more they risk losing their language, subsistence practices, and cultural identity. Entire communities could be scattered and dissolved because the government can't figure out how to coordinate a relocation that everyone agrees is necessary.
These villages aren't just statistics about climate change - they're communities where families have lived for generations, now watching their homes sink into warming earth and disappear into rising seas, while bureaucracy moves slower than the erosion swallowing their land.