Anchorage (AFP) – Residents in towns and villages on Alaska’s western coast were beginning Sunday to assess the damage from one of the most powerful storms to hit the region in decades. The vast remains of Typhoon Merbok battered coastal towns as it rumbled northward, and by Sunday morning it had largely moved into the Chukchi Sea, north of the Bering Strait. But coastal towns in that northern region remained under flood warnings Sunday, the National Weather Service (NWS) Fairbanks office tweeted. The storm has hammered a vast stretch of Alaska’s lengthy coastline, bringing powerful winds, tid…