Arctic

Vast Arctic region spans icy tundras and fragile glaciers around Alaska, where melting ice dams like Battletree Lake's unleash 300-foot walls of water, ice, and rock, flooding villages such as Kachadee. Urgent USGS and Coast Guard briefings highlight the area's isolation, forcing reliance on international mutual-assistance agreements for airborne rescues with Canada and Russia. Staff confront the raw peril of sudden floods amid political fallout, shifting focus from policy to crisis response.