This story was originally published by Capital B, a nonprofit newsroom that centers Black voices. To read more of Adam Mahoney’s work on climate change, visit Capital B.
As Los Angeles battled its largest wildfires in history, parts of the southern U.S. faced a very different kind of disaster — record-breaking snowstorms not seen in over 125 years.
In LA, the Benn family didn’t lose their home to the flames, but they did lose access to their livelihood. Their screen-printing business, which they’ve run in Altadena since 2007, is now in limbo. Before the fires, their community boasted the second-highest concentration of Black-owned businesses in LA County. Now, with no clear timeline for reopening the area, the Benns are struggling to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, Quelly, a hairstylist and mother of young children, lost three days of income when the snowstorm shut down her city for half a week. For someone self-employed, it’s a blow that’s hard to afford.
Since January 2024, extreme weather events have hit harder and cost more than ever before. Disasters like these are piling up at an unprecedented rate. A new analysis puts the damage and economic losses at $799 billion — around 3% of the U.S. economy — thanks to wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, and winter storms. And while these crises affect everyone, Black Americans are feeling the impact the most. Underfunded communities are struggling to recover, jobs are disappearing, and insurance premiums are skyrocketing as the risk of displacement grows.
These extreme weather events are disrupting industries you wouldn’t normally associate with disasters, making it harder for Black families to access basic necessities like food and water. A recent report warns that without swift action to limit the impact of severe weather, it will cost children born in 2024 at least $500,000 up to $1 million over their lifetime. That’s from higher living costs — like soaring housing costs and strained food supplies — and lower earnings from missed work.
“Quite clearly, if you’re awake, everybody should understand, we’re living in very dangerous times, and Black folks and people who are economically vulnerable, they’re already facing heightened exposures to these events,” explained Lemir Teron, an associate professor in Howard University’s Department of Earth, Environment, and Equity. “Our resilience gets curtailed when we don’t have the policies or the money to better protect ourselves.”
In Florida, this month, Black farmers are grappling with the aftermath of an unprecedented winter storm that dumped record snow, sleet, and freezing rain across the region. Farmers say they’ve never faced such devastation — not even from Category 5 Hurricane Michael in 2018 — as 10 inches of snow leveled greenhouses and shattered irrigation systems. The fallout will be felt nationwide when the fruits and vegetables we depend on don’t make it out of the Sunshine State.
“The cold snap and the snow showed us we have to be ready, and I don’t think our states — the Southern states — are ready,” said Trenise Bryant, who is a food-service manager for Florida elementary-age children and a housing advocate across the state. “I don’t know if our infrastructure and ecosystems can withstand what’s to come.”
She said last year’s hurricanes and this record storm showed the importance of government and community groups working together because “if we can’t get that funding for people that don’t have access, people that are living on the street, that means no access to housing, food, and water for them.”
Trump’s attempt to revamp disaster recovery
“It’s the worst series of disasters since the Dust Bowl,” said Joel Myers, the founder of AccuWeather, the group that conducted the $799 billion damage and economic loss analysis. The fallout, he said, could drive a new wave of migration. For Black communities already facing systemic barriers, the road to recovery is anything but even, and as we’ve reported, migration doesn’t always guarantee protection from these climate threats.
In Detroit, Sandra Turner-Handy has had to clean out bacteria-filled floodwaters from her home twice in recent years. Flooding has become more common in recent years due to much greater rainfalls than normal, leaving many residents dealing with the financial burdens of home improvements, loss of work, and mold-induced illnesses.
“We have experienced so much in the last year with the extreme heat, the cold, and the flooding,” Turner-Handy said. “We can’t escape it.”
The Trump administration is taking aim at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is largely responsible for how America responds to weather events. During his first week back in office, he signed an executive order calling for a sweeping review of the agency and floating the idea of shutting it down altogether.
In the executive order, Trump accused FEMA of political bias and mishandling disaster aid, claiming it’s leaving Americans vulnerable. Last year, when Hurricane Helene dismantled the Southeast, Trump spread rumors that the agency was deliberately not giving aid to white conservatives. In reality, studies show that Black neighborhoods receive an estimated 10% less recovery aid than white ones. The aid discrepancy has substantially contributed to the racial wealth gap in the South.
The Trump administration is also pushing to shift more disaster response costs to states, a move that critics warn could leave under-resourced communities, particularly Black and low-income areas, even more exposed to climate disasters.
Trump has also paused spending benefitting Black and “disadvantaged” communities from the Biden administration’s two key spending pots: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. These funds had been used to do things like replace lead pipes, improve access to electricity in Black rural communities, and fortify buildings and roads against flooding across the South. Analyses have shown that Trump-stronghold states like Georgia and the Carolinas benefited the most from this spending.
“We had started to understand that climate change has an impact [on] our city and that these issues relate not just to the heat and the cold, but can bring more illnesses and affect the amount of money in our pockets,” said Turner-Handy, who was awarded a grant through the IRA last fall, but was told last week that she will not be receiving the money under the Trump administration. The funding was meant to be used to install air quality monitors in her community.
“We’re left ripe for more harm,” she said.
With a leadership shake-up and the potential for states to shoulder a bigger burden, the debate over FEMA’s future and climate spending comes as the country faces increasingly devastating hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. With more weather events on the horizon, Black Americans and other marginalized groups are still struggling to bounce back from previous disasters.
“Eventually, climate denialism is going to harm us all in the same way. Folks who have means will be exposed to things that they don’t presently deal with,” said Teron, the professor who also pointed out how America’s inability to address climate change will result in global issues like sea level rise in West Africa.
“These rollbacks on the federal level, the severity of extreme weather, it’s going to harm us all,” he said.
