National

As Hurricane Ian hammers southwest Florida, Tampa's lower-income households lack the funds to stock up on hurricane supplies — and rising prices add to that pressure.  

The big picture: Millions of Floridians spent the past few days evacuating or gearing up for the storm. But preparation ahead of a hurricane is an added stressor for the 42% of Hillsborough County’s population — and the 46% of neighboring Pinellas County — that can’t afford the basic cost of living.

Inflation has driven up the average price of groceries. Food costs have increased 11.4% over the last year — the largest annual spike since 1979 — according to a recently-published report by the USDA Economic Research Service. 

Thomas Mantz, CEO of the nonprofit Feeding Tampa Bay, says this is compounding with the impacts of COVID-19 on food insecurity in the Florida region, adding pressure to the nonprofit's bulk purchasing and disproportionately impacting communities of color in the area.  

Black, Latino and Indigenous people in the U.S. are at least twice to three times more likely to live in food insecure households than white people. "There are far more people who are economically unstable than we've seen in many, many years," Mantz told Axios. 

"Families don't have the resources to put food in their own pantries, keep things stocked up, because it's just too expensive."   

Hurricane preparation calls for added investment. The Tampa Bay Times reports that Florida officials advise stocking up one week’s worth of nonperishable food and water per person, as well as pets.

What they’re saying: “It's going to be a challenge for folks if they don't have that capacity to be able to, or have places to store that type of food, [or] purchase that amount of food in that time. Especially now, in an emergency, trying to find enough food,” Elisa DeGregorio, who works for Pinellas County, told Axios. 

DeGregorio is a shelter manager at Clearwater's McMullen-Booth Elementary School, which is serving as an emergency general shelter during Ian.

The shelter is providing three free meals per person per day, although DeGregorio hopes that demand doesn’t outweigh supply — a concern echoed across the region as businesses brace for supply chain issues after Ian. 

Having enough food and water is only one piece of the preparedness picture. Hurricane kits also commonly include wood to board up homes, generators, sandbags, first aid kits, medications, flashlights and batteries, among other items. 

Simply preparing for a major storm can cost thousands of dollars. Evacuations are even more costly. 

"If you're someone who is in an evacuation zone and you have five kids and you're having to go drive two cars across the state, stay in a hotel for a week, that's when those expenses really start to add up really quickly," said Samantha Montano, an emergency management researcher.

"And that's before you even start talking about if your home is impacted, and then you have recovery costs on top of that." 

Between the lines: Being without the right supplies or resources during a disaster event can have dire consequences — and those that do face these difficulties are typically severely cost-burdened. 

A 2021 Our World In Data report found that the world has seen a “significant reduction” in the number of lives lost connected to disaster events partly due to emergency preparedness.  

And a 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that among U.S. residents over 50, lower-income respondents had significantly lower rates of disaster preparedness. 

What we're watching: Feeding Tampa Bay serves 10 counties in the region and roughly 1.5 million meals every week, a number Mantz says they expect to see climb in Ian's aftermath. They've already started extra distributions in preparation for the storm's lasting blow.  

"We've been on calls all morning," Mantz told Axios. "All of us are waiting for post-storm, at which point we'll jump in and start moving food into the most impacted areas." 

Hurricane prep: Can’t afford to, can’t afford not to

Inflation is making hurricane preparedness more difficult for Florida's cost-burdened households.

Illustration of a hundred dollar bill in the shape of a loaf of bread

hurricanes

Energy & Environment

For dozens of tribal communities in western Alaska, damage from Typhoon Merbok — fueled by climate change — deepens food insecurity. 

The big picture: Alaska’s winter is just weeks away, and disaster recovery typically takes years.

Last weekend, the remnants of Merbok lashed 1,300 miles along the western coast of Alaska with the strongest September storm ever recorded in the Bering Sea. 

Floods from the storm caused power outages, which wiped out subsistence stores, while damaging water and sewage systems, homes and roads — affecting sources of food and livelihood.

Multiple power outages that have been reported across the affected communities have resulted in the spoilage of the subsistence food gathered throughout the year to last through winter. 

Without these stores to rely on, food insecurity becomes a looming concern for many in western Alaska's remote towns and villages.

Driving the news: In Iñupiat communities like Shaktoolik, the storm destroyed the town’s protective berm, built to keep the rising seas out. That left the roughly 324 residents, 98% of whom are Alaska Native, vulnerable to floods to come.  

Unalakleet, which had a population of 768 as of the last census and is 58% Alaska Native, was among one of several villages that suffered damaged water supply systems, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Nome, a town of nearly 4,000 residents, 57% of whom are Alaska Native, was hit by severe flooding, erosion and power outages. 

Among the hardest hit with power outages and flooding was Golovin, a village of roughly 142 people, 92% of whom are Alaska Native. 

The backstory: Food insecurity was a problem in Alaska’s rural communities even before the storm. 

Roughly one in nine Alaskans are food insecure, and the more rural areas have the highest rates of insecurity, according to the nonprofit Feeding America. 

A 2022 study published in the journal Advances of Nutrition found that 45.7% of Native Americans and Alaska Natives — an estimated 3.1 million people — are thought to be food insecure. 

And climate change is contributing to the loss of traditional food sources for Indigenous communities.

Rapidly warming temperatures are driving declines in salmon populations, shrinking seal-hunting seasons and causing harmful algal blooms — all of which is linked to rising food insecurity in the region, Rick Thoman, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, told Axios.

How it works: Rebuilding after a storm disrupts traditional food harvesting that is central to subsistence economy.

Take hunting, which is key to a subsistence lifestyle, or living off the land — both culturally significant to Alaska’s Indigenous nations and central to their sovereignty.

At this time of year especially, hunting is important to rural communities that are stocking up food for the winter. But with flooded streets, damaged buildings and homes, and power outages, people aren't going to be hunting — they're going to be focused on disaster recovery.

“Hunting in the Lower 48 is a recreational activity. In western Alaska, it's how you feed your family,” Thoman said. 

The latest: Jeremy Zidek, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, told Axios that around 50 communities were affected, although the full extent of the damage is still unknown. 

Zidek confirmed that the state has reports of damage to community and individual food stores from the storm. Relief teams are visiting the most hard-hit areas and “assessing food and other needs.” 

Nome Eskimo Community tribal member Darlene Trigg lost her subsistence cabin, which was built by her family, in the storm. “It was the primary place that my family was able to subsist from,” Trigg told Axios in a written statement. 

“My dad and mom made sure we all had subsistence foods and it all happened in that building. It's a part of the foundation of who I am. It's built into my identity." 

Alaskan tribal communities confront food insecurity after storm

The damage from ex-Typhoon Merbok — fueled by climate change — deepens food insecurity.

Photo illustration of coastal Alaska Native fishermen and caribou hunters. 

Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photos: Andrew Burton, Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Climate change

For dozens of tribal communities in western Alaska, damage from Typhoon Merbok — <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="fueled by climate change" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/09/19/massive-storms-puerto-japan-alaska-climate-change" data-vars-content-id="35e21869-60c5-41f2-a893-43fae49823ab" data-vars-headline="Alaskan tribal communities confront food insecurity after storm" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/09/19/massive-storms-puerto-japan-alaska-climate-change" target="_self">fueled by climate change</a> — deepens food insecurity. The big picture: Alaska’s winter is just weeks away, and disaster recovery typically takes <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="years" data-vars-click-url="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/HousingRecovery_CDBG-DR.pdf" data-vars-content-id="35e21869-60c5-41f2-a893-43fae49823ab" data-vars-headline="Alaskan tribal communities confront food insecurity after storm" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/HousingRecovery_CDBG-DR.pdf" target="_blank">years</a>.

Five years after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is reeling from Hurricane Fiona, which unleashed heavy rains, winds and mudslides on the island and left most households without electricity or access to running water.

The big picture: Black and Latino communities in the U.S. have long been burdened by the disproportionate impacts of climate change. Fiona is no exception.

Driving the news: Puerto Rico still hasn’t fully recovered from 2017's Hurricane Maria, which resulted in thousands of deaths and the longest power outage in U.S. history, an Associated Press investigation found.

Now, the island is grappling with what Gov. Pedro Pierluisi calls Fiona’s "catastrophic" damage to its vulnerable infrastructure. Depending on the federal response, the next steps could mitigate existing racial and socioeconomic disparities — or exacerbate them. 

The backstory: Federal disaster relief has long fallen short in measures of equity. Research demonstrates that unequal recovery efforts following extreme disaster events have contributed to lasting racial and social divides.

For starters, communities of color are less likely to receive disaster relief aid, especially when compared to white, affluent households, and the communities they live in, according to FEMA's 2020 National Advisory Council report. 

And a 2018 study published in a journal for the American Sociological Association found that race-based wealth inequality increases with the cost of damages from natural hazards.

The study found that the way FEMA funding was being administered to counties experiencing hazards led to white residents increasing wealth, while Black, Latino and Asian populations lost it. 

Plus, it's most likely to be wealthy white residents — not residents of color — who relocate to less hazard-prone areas after a hurricane, according to a 2016 study examining the impacts of hurricanes on population change in the Gulf Coast between 1970 and 2005.

Hurricanes leave lasting scars by disrupting public health and health care delivery, according to Carlos Rodríguez-Díaz, a public health scientist and associate professor at George Washington University. 

Hospitals shut down, and patients’ care is halted by power outages — a key issue in Puerto Rico following Maria.

There are also dire shortages of medical supplies like saline solution, as well as damage to infrastructure like water and sewage systems — all of which deepens pre-existing health care inequities.

These compound with existing threats, like air pollution, which communities of color are most exposed to due to historic discriminatory practices like redlining and exclusionary housing policies.

Between the lines: Having led on-the-ground research on the aftermath of Maria and its predecessor Irma, and being Puerto Rican himself, Rodríguez-Díaz sees the heavily criticized Trump administration’s response — and the ensuing health care crisis — as a product of systemic racism and the island’s colonization. 

He compares Maria with a nearly simultaneous disaster response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas, which a Politico investigation revealed led to a "faster, and initially, greater" response effort, despite the significantly larger demand and scale of damage in Puerto Rico. 

“How are we going to... [provide] the resources to communities that are living in disaster-prone areas to have options, to live elsewhere without displacement?” Rodríguez-Díaz asked in an interview with Axios. 

Flashback: In 2015, 10 years after Hurricane Katrina, 90% of New Orleans residents had returned — but only 37% of residents from the Lower 9th Ward, a predominantly Black neighborhood, had come back, the liberal Center for American Progress noted in a report. 

Following the storm, Black survivors of Katrina more frequently reported problems with finances, physical and mental health than white survivors, according to the Journal of Black Studies.   

What they’re saying: “People of color and people from low-wealth households don't get the ability to recover, especially if they're in spaces that are constantly faced with disasters,” Cassandra Davis of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tells Axios.

Davis is currently working with FEMA — through funding from the Department of Homeland Security — on a project examining inequitable distribution of disaster aid. “As we think about recovery, short and long term, they're more likely to be left behind.” 

What we’re watching: By continuing to acknowledge social injustice and focusing on who is being left out of relief — which FEMA addressed in a report earlier this year — pressing gaps in disaster recovery can be filled, according to Davis.

As a first step, Davis hopes that begins with the U.S. emergency response to Fiona. 

The unequal toll of climate disasters

Hurricane Fiona is a reminder that unequal recovery efforts contribute to lasting racial and social divides.

Photo illustration of various people, abstract shapes, plywood texture, and torn paper that resembles a wave.

Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photos: Hector Retamal/AFP, Lionel Chamoiseau/AFP via Getty Images

Five years after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is reeling from Hurricane Fiona, which unleashed heavy rains, winds and mudslides on the island and left <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="most" data-vars-click-url="https://abcnews.go.com/US/tropical-storm-fiona-leaves-dead-heads-puerto-rico/story?id=90056374" data-vars-content-id="4f7bf202-a5fa-4084-b615-3c6da04148a5" data-vars-headline="The unequal toll of climate disasters" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/tropical-storm-fiona-leaves-dead-heads-puerto-rico/story?id=90056374" target="_blank">most</a> households without electricity or access to running water.The big picture: Black and Latino communities in the U.S. have long been burdened by the <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="disproportionate" data-vars-click-url="https://www.epa.gov/cira/social-vulnerability-report" data-vars-content-id="4f7bf202-a5fa-4084-b615-3c6da04148a5" data-vars-headline="The unequal toll of climate disasters" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.epa.gov/cira/social-vulnerability-report" target="_blank">disproportionate</a> impacts of climate change. Fiona is no exception.

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Ayurella Horn-Muller

Stories

Hurricane prep: Can’t afford to, can’t afford not to

Alaskan tribal communities confront food insecurity after storm

The unequal toll of climate disasters