Hurricane Ida Has Spoken: Listen to Her Carefully!
It can no longer be business-as-usual. The earth is fighting back, and we need to mitigate and adapt to it.
In August 2021, I wrote a piece about climate change and the role professional associations can play in progressing climate action. Little did I know that a few weeks later, I would be writing from personal experience about Hurricane Ida.
I live on the East Coast with my family, so we got firsthand experience in New Jersey when Hurricane Ida visited the tri-state area.
It is easy to become complacent when things don’t usually affect you and I think to some extent that was what happened in this case. I have lived at my apartment complex on and off since 2015, and we would always receive warnings about potential flooding from hurricanes. We are usually not affected even though we live close to the Raritan River along Route 18.
New Jersey is rarely directly hit by hurricanes though a few have made their presence known in the past[i]. In 2015, Hurricane Patricia visited with heavy rain and winds that felled trees and caused power outages and flooding across the state. Between 2016 and 2019, the remnants of various hurricanes caused similar minor damages in the State. In 2020, however, four deaths were recorded as a result of Hurricane Fay. This year, however, the number of recorded deaths in New Jersey alone is twenty-seven, with some still missing.
However, as I highlighted in my article referenced above, climate-related weather events are on the rise. Hotter and drier conditions are drying out ecosystems and increasing the risk of wildfires[ii]. Anticyclone Lucifer recently swept across Europe bringing hot, dry weather to the continent[iii].
The IPCC report states in uncategorical terms that emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from human activities directly affect more than 70% of the global, ice-free land surface[iv].
On the morning of September 4, 2021, I was up early getting my son ready for his first day of in-person classes at kindergarten. The night before I had seen the usual warnings about associated rain and winds from Hurricane Ida but felt it would be the same as previous years. Boy, was I wrong!
Throughout the night, I’d heard sounds from the emergency services vehicles but that was not too unusual. My son had just finished breakfast when we lost power. I looked out the window of our fourth-floor apartment and noticed the police had blocked off one end of the street. The other end of the street was partly flooded, and I would come to learn later that the underground garage of our building was submerged under 5 feet of water.
I quickly messaged my son’s school to say he would not be showing up and was told the school was closed due to inclement weather. Shortly after, I received an email to evacuate the building immediately. There was no time to pack anything so we just grabbed a few items, got the kids ready, and left the building. We were then told we would have to go to a nearby shelter; a school gym had been converted to an emergency shelter for displaced people in the area.
After an hour, our building managers informed us the Raritan River was still rising so the power, elevator, and fire alarm systems located in the garage had been turned off because they were all underwater. This meant we couldn’t return to the building until the flood receded, and we were told to stay in nearby hotels and would be reimbursed for our stay or given renters credit if the insurance provider didn’t reimburse our claim.
Our building managers did a fantastic job keeping us updated on progress and also provided a list of hotels. However, because our general renter’s insurance does not cover flood and the building management retroactively changed their minds about reimbursement or renter’s credit, we had to pay over a thousand dollars to cover our hotel stay.
We are back home now and have settled back into our daily routine.
I will say I’ve learned a few things from this experience.
In all things, give thanks! Our situation could have been worse than it was. We are still alive and healthy. We are back at home and will ultimately chuck this up as one of those experiences. Some are not as fortunate; 27 people lost their lives during the floods, and some are still missing. For others, the shelters are their homes.
Hurricane Ida has passed her message along. Did we hear her clearly? Things are going to continue to get worse if urgent action is not taken. We need to take climate change seriously and work together to adapt and mitigate its effects.
Have a grab-and-go bag ready to go: Make sure to have a change of clothes and toiletries packed up and ready. This was the first time we had to be evacuated so we didn’t know what to expect. We only grabbed our backpack with some food for the kids, thinking we would be back in a few hours. The fire service only allowed residents back into the building for a few hours two days later to grab some items. My partner was able to grab clothes and move things around in the freezer to make space for some stuff from the fridge but there was not enough time to pack everything especially as we are on the top floor so there was a limit to how much he could lug downstairs.
Make sure your renter’s insurance actually does what it is supposed to. Renters insurance is a policy meant to cover personal liability, among other things depending on the policy type. We have used the same policy for years with no issues until this happened. We found out the hard way that flood and other events were not covered, which meant our hotel stay and all the groceries and foodstuff in the fridge we lost would not be reimbursed.
Don’t always believe what your building management says in the first instance. Have them put it in writing first, if possible. We were informed the building management would reimburse or provide rent credits to residents. A few days later after we returned home, we got an email informing us there would be no reimbursement or rent credit at this time.
I’d love to hear what other tips you have adopted to be ready for situations such as these in the future.
[i] I’m focusing on the period I’ve been in the state, which is from 2015 to date
[ii] Wildfires and volcanic activities affected 6.2 million people between 1998–2017 with 2400 attributable deaths worldwide from suffocation, injuries, and burns, but the size and frequency of wildfires are growing due to climate change
[iii] https://news.sky.com/story/anticyclone-lucifer-and-heat-domes-why-is-the-world-battling-extreme-weather-12379366
[iv]A.1; Human use, at varying intensities, affects about 60–85% of forests and 70–90% of other natural ecosystems (e.g., savannahs, natural grasslands) (high confidence)
