Preparing for Hurricane Ida
Living with climate change in real time
Tropical Storm Ida formed in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday, and is predicted to make landfall as a category 4 hurricane tomorrow morning. Time to finish preparations.
We’ve done this many times over the years, since moving to New Orleans in 2009. That was well after Hurricane Katrina, but its disastrous traces were still everywhere. We evacuated before Isaac and were displaced for a week, living in limbo while waiting for a whole city to get its basic infrastructure back online. We returned home to a hole in our roof, the ceiling over our kitchen bulging with tepid rainwater. We hunkered down as the eerily still eye of Zeta went directly over our home, last year. And so many others that I’ve lost track of over the years, storms that we’ve frantically prepared for — and sometimes fled. Now we brace for the latest hurricane to arrive. They’re already calling this one “catastrophic,” even as it departs Cuba and heads north over the Gulf of Mexico, still 24 hours away from us.
For many, climate change is a remote reality, or something of a long game; and for those who don’t believe in climate change it’s even a non-game, an unreality. But for those of us who live on the Gulf Coast (and in other coastal regions and threatened environments), climate change is all too real, its effects increasingly encroaching. There is no denying the rising temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico that foment more frequent and stronger storms with each passing year. It’s not a game at all.
What’s hard to explain is how contorted and stuttered the actual process of preparation can be, as well as the decisions and stressors that pop up along the way.
Yet it’s also mundane. At the first hints of a tropical storm that might form into a hurricane, locals start watching the “cone of uncertainty” take shape. Will it hit us? Veer one way or another? Stall out over the gulf? Even if there’s a chance of impact, the stockpiling and preparations begin.
Yesterday morning the line at the gas station was several dozen cars deep, by the time I arrived at a sensible 8:10, after dropping my kids off at school. I gambled and decided to go back later. (Not a great decision, in hindsight.)
Then I went on to the grocery store to get gallon jugs of water (almost cleared out, already), and charcoal and food for grilling in case we lose power. And plenty of sundries that require no heating up at all. A single can of Amy’s low-sodium refried beans lay on its side on the shelf—you always find out which consumer items are the least popular, before a hurricane. I figured I might as well get batteries for flashlights, even though last year’s are somewhere in the house already, badgered away for that hurricane, or more likely redeployed into various children’s toys, half spent.
There is no special support fund for these last-minute expenses, by the way. You either put them on your credit card or plunder your savings, to get ready for a storm. That might sound obvious, but when hurricane prep must be done multiple times in one season, the financial burden can add up quickly.
Evacuation is always a possibility, too — but the calculus around evacuating is nebulous and shifty. If and when to go are matters that are guided as much by personal necessity and caution as they are dictated by central mandates and weather reports. And then, there are really only a few routes out of New Orleans (this city is technically an island). It’s hard to describe the strange suspense and uncertainty that builds in the mind as you anxiously watch a hurricane’s development on websites and weather tracking apps, and plot a possible escape. When is it too late? What’s the cutoff time? Which way to go? Often, the minutes and hours of indecision take place through the night, wrecking sleep on top of everything else. Of course, many people don’t have any choice but to “shelter in place,” as the saying goes.
For those whose houses or businesses are at ground level, sandbags become necessary. Yes: Many people have to resort to literal, hand-filled bags of sand to keep floodwater from inundating homes or shops. Also, we tie down everything that could get turned into a projectile by gale force winds: outside chairs, tables, the grill, kids’ playthings…it all has to get strapped down or secured to something (a porch, a fence), or put away in a closet or shed.
These are some of the low-tech tactical realities of hurricane preparation. For every dramatic flight of a Hurricane Hunter or abstract digital rendering of the storm’s path, there are also countless quotidian acts on the ground of ordinary humans getting ready, once again, to be pummeled by very real effects of climate change. It’s a cycle, but one that is getting exacerbated each year. And while we may be the victims, we’re also thoroughly implicated.
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Christopher Schaberg is Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans and author six books, including Searching for the Anthropocene: A Journey into the Environmental Humanities (Bloomsbury, 2019).
