Climate disasters worldwide displaced 7 million people in the first six months of this year, nearly twice as many as conflict. Cyclone Fani forced over 3.4 million people out of their homes in India and Bangladesh. The remaining 3.6 million also were from non-western nations, bolstering our perception that we in the western world are protected and unthreatened. Yet, two climate crisis related disasters cost my former northern California home county (Butte) $17.6 billion dollars in the last 2 years: Camp Fire ($16.5 billion — most costly 2018 disaster worldwide) and the Oroville Spillway ($1.1 billion dollars).
No one is immune to climate chaos consequences.
The Institute for Economics and Peace, an Australian think tank, recently estimated that in 2017 alone, 18 million people — 61.5 percent of global displacements — were forced to move due to natural disasters. (Those natural disasters are not universally caused by climate change, but global warming is predicted to cause more frequent and intense disasters.) And while projections vary, sources agree that those numbers are going to get a whole lot higher. That same report noted that nearly 1 billion people currently live in areas of “very high” or “high” climate exposure, which could result in millions of people displaced by climate change in the future. A 2018 World Bank report estimated that by 2050, there would be 143 million climate change-driven migrants from the regions of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and southeast Asia alone.
However, some of us are more vulnerable to disasters and to weather-related changes like heat.
Climate change disproportionately threatens the health of vulnerable groups. According to the 2016 Climate and Health Assessment, vulnerable groups include: “those with low income, some communities of color, immigrant groups (including those with limited English proficiency), Indigenous peoples, children and pregnant women, older adults, vulnerable occupational groups, persons with disabilities, and persons with preexisting or chronic medical conditions.”
Climate chaos and natural disasters destabilize the natural and human-built environments. Many elders and disabled folks lives balance on a narrow set of criteria. It doesn’t take the world’s most expensive disaster to overturn our security and block us from re-establishing what was lost. Just as society is designed for non-disabled people and accessibility features are an afterthought (often inadequate), official planning and responses for climate change crises center on non-disabled people.
To carve this huge topic down to a manageable size, I’m focusing on the disaster I know best, the one I survived — the Camp Fire. I am among the 35,000 people permanently displaced by an event that was unheard of, until it happened. We weren’t ready for a fire of this speed and ferocity. We weren’t ready to help people needing assistance for any disaster type although the county had plans.
Part of the disaster planning for elders and disabled people in Butte County included an Extra Help Needed sign to place in the window and announcements to call the police if you needed assistance evacuating. But when disaster struck in November 2018, the help previously promised wasn’t coming even if we could wait for it. Nor had nursing homes, hospitals, and other facilities planned properly for disasters.
I was still within two miles of my home, driving away from the fire when I learned of the first evacuation obstacle. My phone’s messaging app dinged with offers of housing as I drove past fire-engulfed roadside trees and I felt comforted to know friends were safe in Chico, ready to help. Then, desperate messages came through for anyone able to reach a retirement group home in Paradise. The three story building’s elevator wasn’t working because the electricity was off and the home either had no backup generator or the person who could switch to backup wasn’t available. People in wheelchairs were stuck in their upper floor rooms, unable to evacuate. Days later, I learned that friends had reached this building in time to carry the trapped residents down the stairs and drive them to safety. Their wheelchairs, however, didn’t survive because the vehicles weren’t large enough for both evacuees and their chairs.
Stories of other last minute rescues filled the news. One 90 year old woman was picked up by a man who drove a garbage truck because he knew where she lived and that she couldn’t engineer her own escape. He chose to go to her before evacuating himself. People in wheelchairs rolled along the roads hoping to reach help. Many people couldn’t leave without help. Of the 85 recorded deaths due immediately to the fire, 62 people were over 65 years old. I personally know others who died within weeks after the fire from health troubles exacerbated by their evacuation and the smoke. Locals know the death toll exceeded the official total of 85 because some people were hermits or otherwise had insular lives. Many of these people were elders or disabled.
Paradise (and to some extent Concow, Yankee Hill and Magalia, the other foothill communities burned in this fire) were in the state’s top quartile for number of disabled and elder people. Subsequently, other areas with similar fire risk and resident demographics were identified. Of the 125 such areas in California, many have an even greater wildfire risk and over 100 of these have a larger percentage of disabled residents.
In Hurricane Katrina, although 15 percent of the city's population was 60 or older, they accounted for 70 percent of the deaths. Death rates in Puerto Rico escalated greatly among disabled and elders after Hurricane Maria. Loss of power alone is responsible for the deaths of people who depend on electricity for resources such as supplemental oxygen, ventilators, and dialysis.
An investigative article by Arizona Republic and USA Today, Where will the West's next deadly wildfire strike? The risks are everywhere, reported that among small communities with fewer than 15,000 households in the western USA, 526 face a wildfire potential greater than in Paradise. Whether fire, flood, wind, temperature extremes, earthquakes or other harsh conditions, disabled people and elders are more vulnerable, more at risk, and less likely to restore stable independent lives.
Worldwide, we need better pre-disaster planning to address real needs and the ability to connect with post-disaster help. Two organizations working to address the intersection of disability and disaster are the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies and the World Institute on Disability (WID).
[The] Partnership represents disability organizations in every congressional district in the country, and our member organizations and their affiliates operate in virtually every US community.
We know that community resilience is only possible when planning, response and recovery is accessible to all and includes people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs as key members of community preparedness and resilience initiatives, before, during and after disasters.
WID has a broader mission and “works to fully integrate people with disabilities into the communities around them via research, policy, and consulting efforts.” Their initiative New Earth Disability “aims to understand the connections between climate change and disability and address them head-on.”
But until planning for disaster and climate chaos-related events includes the real needs of elders and people with disabilities, we must help each other, and make plans for ourselves. The messaging app used by my friends to offer and seek help during the Camp Fire evacuation wasn’t set up for that purpose but we were lucky to have it at hand. I survived because my daughter telephoned me and woke me up. My immediate housing and supplies came from my local women’s reproductive rights activist group. The Daily Kos community supported a fundraiser for me and people I met here (and didn’t know in person) offered me a longterm temporary home in Seattle. I was offered the new permanent rental home in Humboldt County CA that I found on Craigslist because the home owner knew and trusted another DK friend of mine. I spent seven months wondering how I could find a new home from a distance then move in without any household furnishings, and never imagined the serendipitous connections that created this new life.
Almost everyone I know who survived the fire escaped because someone else saw the actual fire or heard about it on tv/radio and spread a warning. They found temporary homes with friends and family. I heard stories of people sleeping in their cars being adopted by people they didn’t know who saw their situation and knocked on the car’s window to offer help.
In the months following the Camp Fire, those with connections to people outside the disaster have had more options. I’ve been through a major wildfire before in 2008 with a more restricted scope of action. The same people affected in the 2008 fire also were burned out in 2018, but the difference in 2018 is that a much larger area and more people were displaced (50,000 people immediately, 35,000 people permanently). For many, their community of friends were all in the same situation — homeless and possessionless. And everyone evacuated was funneled into the same safe zone outside the fire. Certainly those living on the fire’s perimeter opened their hearts and homes to help survivors, but now, 10 months after the fire, people still live in tents, cars, and RVs ill-suited to handle the climate. How much worse it is for people affected by hurricanes (Maria and Dorian) who live on islands!
A sociologist I spoke with said that in a large-scale disaster, people who thrive afterwards generally are those with both bridging and bonding relationships. Bridging relationships are with people you don’t see daily, perhaps people you met online or knew previously and remain connected with although geographically distant. Bonding relationships are with family and close friends, often people who live nearby — and thus also affected in a disaster. For many people, bridging relationships came through their church. For me, Daily Kos connected me to bridging relationships.
Thus, when I ponder the advice I have for surviving climate chaos disaster, I don’t think about what to pack in your go-bag (except do grab life-essential medicine and equipment). Survivalist prep like outfitting a bunker in your basement or developing food independence can get you through a short spell such as a hurricane. However, the reality with climate change is we don’t know what will happen — this is uncharted territory and why I label it “chaos.” Will the water delivery system survive to keep your food garden alive? Or the opposite, what if your garden floods? How do we plan for an undefined set of circumstances?
My advice is to nurture your connections and communication. Offer support when you aren’t directly affected and learn how to take help when needed. Accepting help can be more difficult than being helpful, but both roles are important to embrace. Coping with climate chaos weather and disaster events requires that we all work together.
In other words, we belong to each other.
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