The 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season – the most active ever recorded – ended on November 30. The season saw a record number of 30 total storms, with 13 hurricanes including 6 classified as major hurricanes (category 3 and above). More than 400 individuals died in the storms across North and Central America, with over $41.3 billion in damage recorded.
Major hurricanes of the season included Hurricane Laura – which decimated a large area of Southwest Louisiana, an area with large numbers of low-income households and nearly 103,000 manufactured homes, which can be more vulnerable to storm damage. Hurricane Sally then rapidly intensified before striking Alabama and the Florida Panhandle as a Category 2 storm in early September, an area struck by Hurricane Michael in 2018. In October, Hurricane Delta struck Southwest Louisiana and disrupting efforts to recover from Hurricane Laura. Later that month, Hurricane Zeta struck the southeast region of the state as the record-breaking tenth storm to strike the U.S. this year.
The Gulf Coast sustained the brunt of the impact this season, with some regions like Southwest Louisiana dealing with multiple named storms within weeks of one another. The exceptionally active season complicated efforts to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic across the United States, forcing all levels of government to deal with mass evacuations and sheltering, while simultaneously maintaining physical distancing and stay-at-home orders. The storms also strained local and state government finances – already rocked by the economic impacts of the pandemic. Many areas responded to the twin dangers of a pandemic and a hurricane by replacing typical mass shelters with non-congregate sheltering in hotels, dorms, and RVs, creating mobile and virtual disaster recovery centers, and finding additional ways to assist survivors while limiting the danger of COVID-19. While the quick improvisation showed by emergency management officials and policy makers is commendable, the underlying cost of these solutions mean that quickly and permanently rehousing these disaster survivors is even more important. As recovery efforts continue the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season’s impact will have long-term effects for the Gulf Coast region and for disaster recovery efforts in the future.
The NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC), a group of over 850 state, local, and national organizations focused on disaster recovery, continues to advocate for a reformed disaster recovery system that ensures all survivors receive the assistance they need to fully recover from these and future disasters. This push includes continued advocacy around the “Housing Survivors of Major Disasters Act,” sponsored by Representative Adriano Espaillat (D-NJ) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), which would increase access to FEMA disaster recovery resources, the “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act,” sponsored by Representative Anne Wagner (R-MO) and Al Green (D-TX) which would make it easier to deploy important long term federal recovery funding, as well as a whole host of reforms to FEMA’s Individual Assistance program.
Read DHRC’s “Reforming America’s Disaster Recovery System” report at: https://bit.ly/36GNcrM
Register for DHRC’s weekly working groups at: https://bit.ly/2JOQtMZ
Register for DHRC’s biweekly news updates at: https://bit.ly/37DCXnl