Hurricane Florence underscores how our current system of rebuilding after storms can?t afford a future of more frequent and powerful weather. A flood of biblical proportions, the second 1,000-year rain event in as many years, a storm dumping 18 trillion gallons of rain that caused 16 major rivers to flood.
While the extent of Hurricane Florence?s damage to the Carolinas and Eastern Seaboard won?t be fully understood for months, preliminary estimates suggest that it will be staggering. CoStar estimated $33.5 billion in commercial real estate would be threatened. Moody?s prediction earlier this week that the total damage could range from $17 to $22 billion was immediately deemed too conservative in the wake of a storm that already dumped 36 inches of rain on parts of North Carolina in a single 24-hour period. But more important and tragic is the human toll, both in lives lost and homes damaged or swept away. As of the afternoon of September 20, 41 people are reported dead, many whom were fleeing the rising waters on increasingly inundated and overwhelmed roadways. On-the-ground reporting also illustrated that the brunt of the housing damage will impact lower-income residents. According to a pre-storm analysis from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, nearly 280,000 very low-income renter households reside in counties where hurricane, storm surge, or tropical storm alerts have been issued due to Florence. Roughly half of those households lack a car for evacuation...