A year after Typhoon Halong shoved the sea into villages across Western Alaska, hundreds of people are still displaced from their homes — and the money that rebuilt their lives came from private citizens, not the federal government.

The Anchorage Daily News reported this week that in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, floodwaters lifted homes off their foundations and drove more than a thousand people from the only communities many had ever known. Children who grew up together now attend different schools in different towns. A year later, they still haven't gone home.

The storm hit at the end of harvest season. Families had spent months fishing, hunting, and gathering berries for winter. The water took it all — a year of labor and the primary way these communities feed themselves. These villages were already carrying high fuel and grocery costs, declining salmon runs, and an exodus of young people seeking work. Halong landed on top of all of it.

So who stepped up? Not Washington. The Western Alaska Disaster Relief Fund opened the day the storm hit, organized by the Maniilaq Association, the Healthy Alaska Natives Foundation, the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and six other partners. More than 21,000 donors from 150 Alaska communities, every state in the nation, and 37 countries chipped in. A kindergarten class sent cards. Seventeen bands played a benefit. According to Alaska Community Foundation president Alex McKay, $7.4 million has been awarded to tribes, cities, and nonprofits — guided by five advisers with deep roots in the region who listened to tribal councils about what was actually needed.

That's $7.4 million from private charity for a disaster that displaced over a thousand Americans from their homes. Meanwhile, this country sends billions overseas in foreign aid and funnels billions more into green energy mandates and climate pet projects. The federal government can find money for everything except the Americans who actually need it.

The pattern holds elsewhere. When Hurricane Isaias tore through Crestview, Florida, Ashley Weeks and her family watched a tree from their backyard split their roof open and dump stormwater into their home. WEAR-TV reported that Weeks, her partner Brian Johnson, their daughter, four dogs, and a reptile all survived — but the house where her daughter kept a necklace with her late father's ashes was gutted. Weeks' family spent the night at her father's house and was left to figure out next steps on her own. No federal rescue. No coordinated relief. Just an American family staring at wet debris where their ceiling used to be.

In Alaska, neighbors shared fish, seal, moose, and berries from their own harvests with families they'd never met. Residents still displaced themselves went back to repair homes so others could return. That's the connective tissue the ADN piece celebrates — and it's real. But it also raises the question nobody in Washington wants to answer: why are American citizens in the frontier and on the Gulf Coast left to rebuild on private charity while the federal spigot flows freely for everything else?

The Western Alaska Disaster Relief Fund remains open. Recovery will take years. The storm did not end when the weather cleared. The only question is whether anyone with power to send real resources ever noticed.