Tuk mayor says coastal armouring saved hamlet during 2025 storm surge

Tuk mayor says coastal armouring saved hamlet during 2025 storm surge Alice Twa Thursday September 24, 2026 at 5:51am MT Flooding in Tuktoyaktuk in August 2025. Photo: Submitted Share Advertisement. Last summer, Tuktoyaktuk installed a new shore defence that immediately faced a historic storm surge event. The hamlet’s mayor credits the defence, known as a revetment, with saving the community. Revetments are a form of armour that can help to protect against erosion, which is an increasing threat to Tuktoyaktuk, an Arctic coastal community of 1,000 people. If the revetment had not been there, “my assumption is we would have lost a lot of the community,” said Mayor Vince Teddy, “and probably would have [had] an emergency situation.” Teddy says the hamlet had been working on erosion mitigation since the 1990s – “without any engineering or research or science, or any input” – because something needed to be done to protect its shoreline. Advertisement. Advertisement. The island sheltering Tuk’s harbour is eroding two metres every year, and researchers have said it could be breached in 20 to 25 years. A Sentinel-2 satellite image from July 2022 shows the island, top centre, that protects Tuktoyaktuk’s harbour from the worst effects of storm surge. Work on the latest efforts to slow erosion – quarried armoured stone revetments placed along Tuk’s harbour and the island – began formally in 2018 with a partnership between the hamlet, GNWT, federal government and Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. Options considered included nature-based solutions, a concrete slab revetment similar to something the community was already using, and a concrete block mattress. The quarried armoured stone revetment was chosen because of its flexibility to adapt to land slumps from permafrost thaw and its ability to withstand force from waves. The revetment stacks large stones – a metre in diameter or bigger – on top of smaller stones to absorb the impact from waves and ice. Before installing the revetments in Tuk, the design was tested at National Research Council facilities in conditions simulating the Beaufort Sea, which helped refine the design and save money, according to a recent GNWT webinar on the project. Advertisement. Advertisement. Teddy said the revetment, which was constructed in the winters to limit the impacts on permafrost and took two years to complete, was nearly done when a storm surge in August 2025 flooded the community, damaging buildings and…