Officials in Alaska rushed Tuesday to evacuate and find housing for people from tiny coastal villages devastated by the remnants of Typhoon Halong.

Among those awaiting evacuation to Bethel on Tuesday was Brea Paul, of Kipnuk, who said in a text message that she had seen about 20 homes floating away through the moonlight on Saturday night.

"Some houses would blink their phone lights at us like they were asking for help but we couldn’t even do anything,” she wrote.

The following morning, she recorded video of a house submerged nearly to its roofline as it floated past her home.

High winds and storm surge battered low-lying, isolated Alaska Native communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska, nearly 500 miles (800 km) from Anchorage, over the weekend.

The Coast Guard plucked two dozen people from their homes after the structures floated out to sea in high water, three people were missing or dead, and hundreds of people were staying in school shelters — including one with no working toilets, officials said.

The system followed a storm that struck parts of western Alaska days earlier.

Across the region, more than 1,300 people were displaced. Dozens had been flown to a shelter set up in the National Guard armory in the regional hub city of Bethel, a community of 6,000 people, and officials are considering flying evacuees to longer-term shelter or emergency housing in Fairbanks and Anchorage as they run out of room there.

The hardest-hit communities included Kipnuk, population 715, and Kwigillingok, population 380. They are off the state's main road system and reachable this time of year only by water or by air.

Officials warned of a long road to recovery and a need for continued support for the hardest-hit communities with winter just around the corner.