‘Climate Havens’ Not Safe From Hurricane Helene’s Destruction

Even so-called “climate havens’ like Asheville, North Carolina are feeling the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene, indicating that no region is safe from increasingly dangerous hurricanes and other climate-fueled disasters, write Chelsea Harvey and Thomas Frank in Scientific American.

Communities across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and surrounding states were inundated by catastrophic floods. Millions of people lost power. And property damages are expected to amount to tens of billions of dollars.

Helene could, at the end of the day, be one of the most expensive weather disasters in U.S. history, with damages projected to be as much as $110 billion and over 60 deaths reported so far. Towns in the western part of the state previously considered isolated from hurricane damage received over 10 inches of rain, with some areas receiving as much as 30 inches.

Meanwhile, many of the homeowners in the region don’t have flood insurance, which is sold separately and often comes at a high cost. “Just 0.8 percent of the nearly 700,000 households in heavily flooded North Carolina counties have flood insurance through FEMA, agency records show.” Even in Florida, just 25 percent of households in flood risk areas have a policy.