Denali Commission meets to reassess disaster threats across rural Alaska

By Aaron Thomas

The Denali Commission met this Thursday to gather community input to factor into their risk profiles for climate-accelerated natural disaster threats in rural Alaskan communities as part of a periodic 5 year threat analysis. The commission hosted an open forum in Zach’s Restaurant at the Sophie Station Motel to gain community feedback and incorporate more datasets into their risk assessment. 

A variety of organizations attended the event, such as John Oswald and Associates (JOA), the Alaska Fire Science Consortium, and the Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC). JOA is a group that monitors climate related factors such as sea level rise, providing valuable input to coastal flooding risk. The Alaska Fire Science Consortium and Tanana Chiefs Conference both provided input on risks that the interior communities are currently facing. 

The Denali Commission is currently updating their 2019 risk assessment document, which analyzes 190 rural Alaskan villages scoring them from zero to three on threats such as thermofrost, erosion, and flooding. The new assessment will incorporate five new risk profiles for tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, volcano eruptions, and wildfires.

The commission was founded in 1998 as part of an omnibus appropriations bill passed by the United States Congress. Since 2015, the commission has focused their efforts on assessing threats accelerated by climate change such as sea level rise and coastal erosion. 

The new risk assessment incorporates information from community hazard mitigation plans, Geographic Information System, or GIS, data and statewide data sets, and community survey data. 

The Denali Commission sent a questionnaire to local governments in rural towns and villages across the state to ask what threats communities are particularly concerned about. The questionnaire assesses risks from earthquake, erosion, floods, landslides, permafrost degradation, tsunamis, volcano eruptions, and wildfires.

Jessica Evans of the Denali Commission said that questionnaire responses are “invaluable” for “data poor communities,” places that only have statewide GIS data instead of more in-depth analysis. 

Bob Sattler, a representative from the Tanana Chiefs Conference, wanted to better assess flooding risk for ice jams in Interior communities. Sattler said that the “initial report was largely focused or biased toward the coastal communities.” He said that Fort Yukon, Galena, and Eagle have all been severely affected by ice jam flooding in recent years. 

The 2019 assessment excluded certain risk profiles such as drought, wildfire, and avalanche. Sattler was particularly concerned about wildfire risk to interior communities that the TCC serves. “We've seen so many more larger fires, more intensively burning fires,” said Sattler.

The Denali Commission will incorporate data and community emergency mitigation plans from the Tanana Chiefs Conference in their new report. 

Though the commission is currently updating their risk assessment about every five years, they eventually hope to transition to a model that incorporates live datasets. Live datasets currently exist for specific risks such as the Alaska Statewide Wildland Fire Exposure Map, but they are limited in scope compared to a multi-threat analysis. 

The Denali Commission hopes to eventually incorporate live datasets into a broader database, but currently is focusing on period risk assessments.

“We're not developing so much a data product as we are incorporating data products to apply to a scoring methodology,” said Evans