BETHEL -- The village of Hooper Bay is grieving after the suicides of three young people in less than two weeks, the most recent one on Sunday night. Counselors flew to the village this week to help and more are coming. They expect to stay as long as the community wants them to.
First was Noel Tall, 26, who loved to hunt and fish and tease his young relatives, said Police Chief Nathan Joseph, who is Tall's first cousin and was one of the first to arrive at the home. Tall, who had recently returned to the village, killed himself Sept. 24, according to Alaska State Troopers.
The next suicide happened Friday. Eric Jordan Tomaganuk, 24, was upset about the death of Tall, his close friend, troopers said. He was found in his home and health aides tried to revive him but it was too late, according to troopers. The third to die was Tomaganuk's girlfriend, Miranda R. Seton, 20. She was distraught over his death when she killed herself on Sunday evening, according to troopers.
Joseph, the police chief, said he was close to his cousin but didn't really know the other two. They all lived traditional subsistence lives built around the sea and the land.
He last saw Tall about a week before he died and he seemed happy, as usual. Tall was a skilled mechanic who most recently had been working for Ravn Air in Bethel, Joseph said. He had been drinking before his death, but alcohol wasn't a factor in the other suicides, the police chief said.
The rash of deaths has hit the Yup'ik village of about 1,200 hard, said tribal administrator Fred Joseph. The traditional council will meet Friday to discuss what to do, he said.
"People are pretty depressed," Fred Joseph said. "They are saddened by it."
The community had been working to prevent suicide, including with a group called Native Survivors that uses dance and traditional crafts to help young people find peace. It formed after a cluster of suicides in 2010.
After the second suicide, the village reached out to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., the regional Native health care provider, which began preparing over the weekend to send crisis counselors, said Chris Byrnes, YKHC director of emergency services.
"We were aware and already in motion to have a team out there Monday," Byrnes said. Then the third suicide happened, knocking everyone hard, he said.
Just after midnight Sunday, word began to spread across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. People sent prayers on Facebook.
YKHC so far has sent four behavioral health aides and a clinician from its critical incident response teams. The crisis workers start by talking with those directly involved.
"It's looking at what actually happened as a way of bringing order to chaos," Byrnes said. "Identifying the facts and then processing the emotions."
Alaska Native teenage boys and young men face particular risk. In a state with the second-highest rate of suicide, the rate for young Native men is seven times greater than for Alaska as a whole.
YKHC plans to send more staff members. Other organizations, including the Southcentral Foundation and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Anchorage and the Association of Village Council Presidents in Bethel, have offered to send relief teams, Byrnes said.
"The show of concern throughout the state is extraordinary," he said. "We're going to try and maintain a steady presence there for as long as they need us."
The post-suicide intervention "leads to prevention, which is building up the community," Byrnes said.
The help makes a difference, say those in Hooper Bay.
Everyone deals with the trauma in their own way, said Joseph, the police chief who responded to each of the suicides along with another officer. His officers are holding up well, partly by talking to each other.
"Mine is being around my kids, playing games with them," he said. "When the weather is good, I go out hunting."
The investigations are over, but the emotions are raw and painful. One funeral service already has happened. Another is set for Friday. Joseph has been on the police force for 18 years and has served as chief for the last three. But he said he's never seen such a concentration of suicides.
"The whole community is still in shock," Joseph said. "Everyone is sad and mad. You rarely see anybody that is smiling."
Still, slowly, people are picking back up, he said.
On Wednesday, he slept all night. It was the first time he was able to do that since his cousin's death.