According to a report by Rebuild by Design, 90% of counties in the United States experienced a weather disaster between 2011 and 2021.
During those 11 years, some people were subjected to as many as 12 federally declared disasters. These counties are home to over 300 million people, or 93% of the country’s population.
Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit that studies ways to prepare for and adapt to climate change, was established by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a devastating storm that struck the eastern United States just over ten years ago, causing $62.5 billion in damage.
Researchers were able to analyze disasters and payouts down to the county level thanks to data obtained from contractors who work closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There are approximately 250 maps in the report. They also looked at who is most vulnerable and how long people in different areas are without power after severe weather.
California, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Tennessee had at least 20 disasters each, including severe storms, wildfires, flooding, and landslides. Over the 11-year period, however, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, North Dakota, and Vermont received the most disaster funding per person.
Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild by Design and report co-author, expressed surprise that some states are receiving more money to rebuild than others. Part of the reason is that the cost of living varies by state. The monetary value of what is damaged or destroyed also decreases.
“Disaster funding is frequently skewed toward more affluent and resource-rich communities,” said Robert Bullard, an environmental and climate justice professor at Texas Southern University who was not part of the report’s writing team. In 2012, Bullard co-authored “The Wrong Complexion for Protection” with another environmental and climate justice expert, Beverly Wright, about how federal disaster responses frequently exclude black communities.
The new report appears to back this up. According to the report, the people who are most vulnerable to the effects of these extreme weather events are not receiving a large portion of the money. Those areas of the country also have the longest periods of power outage.
“When disasters strike, funding does not get to the places where it is most needed,” Bullard explained.
Another reason for the disparity in funding could be that heat waves are exempt from federal disaster law and do not trigger government assistance. If they did, states in the southwest, such as Arizona and Nevada, may rank higher in terms of spending per person.
REPORT OVERSTEPS
The report was written by policymakers, not scientists, and it goes too far in attributing every weather disaster to climate change. That is incorrect. Climate change has accelerated climate change, making some hurricanes stronger and disasters more common, according to Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to call every disaster we’ve had in the last 40 years a climate disaster,” he says.
Even if all of the weather disasters compiled aren’t caused by climate change, Jackson believes the collection has value.
“I believe there is a service in emphasizing that weather disasters now affect virtually all Americans, regardless of where we live.”
He claims that the annual costs of disasters will exceed $100 billion by 2020. The National Centers for Environmental Information estimated a total cost of more than $150 billion for 2021.
CHANGE IN POLICY
Over the course of 11 years, the federal government gave counties a total of $91 billion to help them recover from extreme events, according to the researchers. This only includes spending from two FEMA and HUD programs, not individual assistance or insurance payouts. It also excludes assistance from other government agencies such as the Small Business Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Chester claims that if all of the federal disaster relief programs were added together, the total would be much higher. Between 2011 and 2021, the National Centers for Environmental Information estimates that over $1 trillion was spent on weather and climate events.
The report suggests that the federal government shift its focus from disaster response to disaster prevention rather than disaster recovery. According to the National Institute of Building Sciences, every dollar spent on natural disaster mitigation, such as building levees or conducting prescribed burns, saves the country $6.
“The key takeaway for us is that our government continues to invest in places that have already suffered rather than in areas with the greatest social and physical vulnerability,” Chester explained.