Abstract
Extant research has established that increasing global temperatures, sea level rise, and an increase in the severity and intensity of extreme weather events have significant implications for vulnerable communities, especially in coastal regions. We add to this body of literature by drawing on the cases of two recent Florida hurricanes to investigate how coastal communities were impacted by these events. In 2022, Hurricane Ian devastated southwest Florida, and less than a year later, Hurricane Idalia ravaged small islands and coastal communities along Florida’s Big Bend. We analyzed a variety of data sources including media coverage following each of the hurricanes, press releases, government reports, and other relevant materials to examine the impacts and recovery efforts in vulnerable communities along the coast in both cases, utilizing a climate justice framework. Results revealed that, in both cases, disparities on Florida’s west coast were not fully met by inequitable aid. Our analysis revealed themes of climate injustices in vulnerable communities, inadequate infrastructure in the face of climate change, as well as significant issues related to flooding and water contamination. We conclude our article by highlighting the need for improved infrastructure and policy to help communities recuperate following inevitable future climate events, as well as by making specific recommendations and suggestions regarding improved disaster preparation and recovery measures.
INTRODUCTION
On September 28, 2022, Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwestern Florida as a Category 4 hurricane. Ian was responsible for over 160 direct and indirect deaths, with an estimated $112 billion in damage in the United States, making it one of the costliest storms in U.S. history. 1 Torrential rains and high storm surges caused unprecedented flooding, overwhelming the capacity of wastewater systems. Power outages crippled the systems and backup generators failed. Numerous reports of failures from Manatee, Hillsborough, Lee, Sarasota, and Polk Counties indicate that millions of gallons of untreated water were spilled into coastal waterways. On August 20, 2023, less than a year after Ian, Hurricane Idalia hit Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 3 hurricane. Idalia was responsible for 12 fatalities and an estimated $3.6 billion in the United States. 2 Compared with Ian, Idalia was not as deadly or as costly; however, it was the third strongest hurricane to hit the Big Bend region. Over a year later, many small coastal towns such as Cedar Key were still recovering and rebuilding.
It is predicted that rising sea surface temperatures due to climate change will cause hurricanes to intensify into severe, high-category storms faster than ever.3,4 Evidence has shown that climate disasters such as hurricanes have an inequitable impact across communities, leading to the need for climate justice. In response, scholars have argued for the importance of environmental inequity analyses in the contexts of hurricane aftermath.5,6 Our research aims to uncover how underserved and climate justice communities along Florida’s west coast were impacted by Ian and Idalia. We draw on these cases to investigate how coastal communities were impacted by these events. We conclude our article by highlighting the need for improved infrastructure and policy and by making specific recommendations and suggestions regarding improved disaster preparation and recovery measures.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, CLIMATE JUSTICE, AND FRONTLINE COMMUNITIES
The concept of climate justice stems from decades of work regarding environmental justice, and many themes overlap between these frameworks. 7 Extant research has established that increasing global temperatures, sea level rise, and an increase in the severity and intensity of extreme weather events have significant implications for vulnerable communities, especially in coastal regions. 8 For areas hit by severe climate disasters, disadvantaged communities experience compounding injustices and are left especially vulnerable to future climate disasters. These vulnerable communities are sometimes referred to as frontline communities. 9 Climate justice literature often refers to frontline communities existing in less-developed countries, where resilient infrastructure is not feasible due to cost. 10 However, even in highly developed countries, some communities face inequitable disadvantages that prevent them from finding solace in the face of climate disasters. 11
In the context of environmental and climate justice in the United States, research has focused on the effects of hurricanes in coastal and waterfront communities in a variety of settings. Important scholarship has highlighted how extreme weather events tend to exacerbate existing inequalities both socially and structurally in several ways. For example, in preparation for hurricanes, officials advise households at risk to stock up on supplies, secure their homes with safeguards, or evacuate from the area. Yet, low-income, resource-poor, or otherwise vulnerable communities may face significant barriers to following these directives. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, researchers found that issues such as lack of access to transportation, information about directives, and social networks explained late or no evacuation. 12 In addition, hurricane victims were disproportionately African American residents and many of them were older than 65. African American residents were more likely to experience housing loss, making it impossible to return to their communities. 13 The notion of uneven loss describes the disparities in ability to survive and recover from these types of extreme weather events.
In response to inequities associated with extreme weather events, policy recommendations have ranged from sweeping criticisms of institutional structures and political economy14,15 to specific agenda recommendations. For example, following Yeampierre and Klein’s 2017 call for a justice-based recovery for Puerto Rico, Brown et al. 16 developed what they called a “visionary rebuilding” framework for recovery in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. This call included specific recommendations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to better respond to extreme weather events in Puerto Rico and help communities recover faster, better, and in a more justice-focused way.17,18,19 For example, they recommended that FEMA “provide training for Puerto Rican agencies and organizations to take many more preventive measures, rather than just dealing with disasters after the fact.” 20
Our research builds upon this literature by investigating the environmental and climate justice impacts in Florida coastal communities following Hurricanes Ian and Idalia in 2022 and 2023. We know that the State of Florida in general is already bearing the brunt of climate change-related impacts in the United States. Indeed, Southeastern Florida is designated as “‘ground zero’ for climate impacts in the continental United States, experiencing the first and worst impacts of climate change so far.” 21 In addition, the hurricane season for 2024 was predicted to be one of the most intense on record, both in terms of the frequency and severity of storms. 22 In light of these trends, additional research is needed to investigate how vulnerable coastal communities in Florida are impacted by extreme weather events. We draw on the case of two recent hurricanes to investigate how coastal communities were impacted by these events, and in doing so, we highlight the need for improved infrastructure and policy to help build more resilient communities in the face of inevitable future climate events.
DATA AND METHODS
The data for this research were collected between 2022 and 2024 and included media coverage, press releases, government reports, and other relevant materials. News articles were collected at the time of each of the hurricanes and in the months following these events. Media coverage of the hurricanes was particularly useful in answering our research questions because the articles provided information about on-the-ground issues that occurred during and after the hurricanes. In addition, the coverage provided residents, officials, and experts a platform to voice concerns and describe actions being taken (or not taken) regarding response to hurricane-related issues.
Google and ProQuest were used to source magazine, newspaper, blog, and other internet-based media coverage of the hurricanes. To ensure that the media coverage was relevant and accurate to after-storm impacts rather than predictions, searches for each hurricane were constrained to dates after landfall in Florida. Boolean string searches were used to gather media from Google and ProQuest. For instance, a Boolean search used for media related to Hurricane Ian was “(Hurricane Ian) AND (“water contamination” OR “wastewater” OR “waste water” OR runoff OR pollut* OR sewage).”
A qualitative line-by-line approach to analysis was used to examine the newspaper coverage of the hurricanes. The coding process began with predetermined themes derived from literatures regarding climate and environmental justice and environmental inequities. Themes included issues associated with social inequality and community vulnerability, disparate, access to aid and resources, wastewater and runoff, and infrastructure and regulation. However, we remained open to unanticipated themes that emerged from the data. This coding process took an iterative approach as new themes were identified and existing ones were narrowed into more specific and descriptive categories. These themes included environmental inequalities, infrastructural failures, water contamination, flooding, wastewater, runoff, vulnerable communities, and recovery efforts.
We also collected and examined reports, press releases, and other official documents to provide additional analysis and description of environmental threats associated with each of the hurricanes. These documents were sourced from agencies such as the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and nonprofit community response and environmental groups.
ANALYSIS
While the storms were different in intensity and geographic location, our results revealed that the overarching themes found in the data were surprisingly similar. Several important themes emerged in the context of environmental inequalities and justice issues. Our analysis underscored issues associated with inadequate infrastructure in the face of climate change; both wastewater systems and building codes proved to be deficient and outdated. The data frequently reflected how residents and environmentalists were dissatisfied with city responses to unsafe waters, which filled homes, flooded streets, and endangered ecosystems. Our findings underscore the need for improved infrastructure to withstand increasingly intense weather events, as well as policy and practice to protect frontline communities most vulnerable to climate change.
Disparities in frontline communities
Extant research has shown that vast disparities in income and power exist on the frontlines of climate change. 23 Although Florida is known for the mansions and vacation homes that fill expensive coastal properties, more vulnerable frontline communities often struggle to recover following extreme weather events. Our analysis revealed the impacts of Hurricanes Ian and Idalia laid bare the disparities in communities’ ability to recover from these types of extreme weather events. Specifically, we found evidence supporting previous research that uncovered the ways in which hurricanes can exacerbate inequality in coastal regions, including geographic vulnerabilities, financial ability to afford resources and insurance, and access to aid. In the context of geographic vulnerabilities, wealthy residents cluster in areas that are less prone to wind damage and storm surge, while poorer communities tend to reside in or move to higher risk areas. 24 In addition, people with more financial resources are able to rebuild or buy properties from people who cannot afford to repair their homes, leading to gentrification of coastal neighborhoods. An interview with geologist Robert Young highlighted this pattern:
Florida’s stark inequality also dictates how people are responding in the aftermath of Ian. “If you’re rich, you don’t care about flood insurance. The most those policies cover is $250,000, which for a homeowner on Sanibel is what they paid for the car parked in the driveway. People who can’t afford to repair their homes will move out, and others with more money will take their places,” said Young, alluding to the hurricane’s unexpected aftereffect of gentrification. (cited in EL PAÍS English, October 18, 2022)
In addition, many Floridians are unable to pay for rising insurance rates. Aid often does not account for these inequities, especially as many insurance companies leave Florida or refuse to cover certain damages 25 (FOX 13 News, September 28, 2023).
Our findings also underscored disparities in access to aid among coastal residents in Florida. Nonprofit organizations and state and federal agencies have noted that communities with lower socioeconomic status are less likely to be able to access aid and resources following severe weather events. One nonprofit organization describes the disparities in hurricane recovery following Hurricane Ian this way:
People with lower socioeconomic statuses are statistically less able to access mitigation measures prior to a natural disaster due to insufficient education surrounding types of disaster aid, limited ability to get to and from disaster assistance centers, and the fact that low-income individuals are more likely to live in homes that are vulnerable to disasters. (Seaside Sustainability ND)
Residents living paycheck-to-paycheck had trouble stocking up on hurricane supplies and struggled to feed themselves in the aftermath of Ian. A journalist’s interview with a resident highlighted how families can be devastated by a lack of access to resources in the wake of severe weather events:
Victoria Kent, 28, who pulled up with her 8-year-old daughter in the back seat, had subsisted on juice boxes over the last two days. She wouldn’t be paid until the end of the month and didn’t have the money to buy last-minute storm supplies, including extra water. And anyway, she said, she had to keep working—selling insurance over the phone from her house—until the power had cut off. They were almost out of food and had run out of water completely. “We’ve just been driving around to see who can help us,” she said. “And I’m down below half a tank.” (The New York Times, October 1, 2022)
In response to these issues, many advocates and researchers have documented the need for “hyperlocal” emergency planning and response in the context of vulnerable populations, as they often are located in smaller geographic pockets within larger areas such as census tracts. In the case of migrant farmworkers recovery after Idalia, for example, a researcher notes in an interview how communities such as these can be overlooked: “Martin, who noted that the vast range of social vulnerability indicators they identified for the farmworker population in one swath of Florida underscores how important census-tract level data is. ‘Where do we site specific services? Where do we put shelters? Where do we provide additional support?’” (cited in Grist, July 30, 2024)
Inadequate infrastructure for climate resilience
Our results revealed that the increase in extreme weather events in Florida has underscored the need for improved infrastructure to help communities survive and recover from storms. This is especially the case in the context of wastewater system infrastructure and residential infrastructure. Following Hurricane Ian, many residents expected the wastewater systems to be more resilient through the storm yet were caught off guard by the extensive failures in water infrastructure. There were differing opinions about the feasibility of improving water systems to withstand such intense storms. For example, in an interview, an environmentalist claimed that some water quality issues following Ian could have been “preventable” if there were stronger regulations for wastewater systems which properly anticipated large amounts of rainfall and better enforcement of such regulations. Yet, in another interview, a wastewater consultant called the hurricane, “an inundation event you really can’t design for” and an “act of God that exceeds the capacity of the [pumping] station” (The Washington Post, November 2, 2022).
Debates such as these highlight the need for improved infrastructural capacity, as we know that these events will inevitably increase in intensity and severity. While it is true that Hurricane Ian caused unforeseeable damage, many residents believed more could have been done to prevent widespread failures. Federal incident reports filed after Ian showed that although many wastewater pumping stations have backup generators, they were not always reliable:
An auxiliary pump in North Fort Myers ran out of fuel, which took time to replenish due to debris from Ian. A backup generator in Tampa Bay shut off unexpectedly after running for several hours. Another near Orlando turned off just two weeks after annual preventive maintenance. (The Washington Post, November 2, 2022)
Furthermore, some regions were having wastewater regulation issues since before Ian hit. Just a few months prior, environmental organizations had settled a lawsuit with the city of Bradenton for repeated sewage spills in Manatee River. Following the settlement, the city committed to “upgrade the aging infrastructure, perhaps to bigger pumps, over the next three years using federal grant money” (The Washington Post, November 2, 2022). Thus, water infrastructure that was experiencing everyday failures had no chance of withstanding weather events with the intensity of Ian or stronger.
Following Hurricane Idalia, wastewater infrastructure was not the worst problem in Florida’s Big Bend region; instead, it was the businesses, residences, and roads. For some remote areas of the northern west coast, the destruction of roads and bridges were especially hazardous, leaving affected communities inaccessible. In the wake of the storm, a Pasco County administrator explained that between 4000 and 6000 homes were damaged and property losses were estimated to total over nine billion dollars. He went on to explain:
Several roads and bridges into affected communities are still not accessible, as emergency crews clear debris and downed trees from roadways. As authorities continue to assess damages in the Big Bend region, residents who have lost their homes are in limbo, awaiting relief and assistance to begin to retrieve what they can from their homes. (The Guardian, August 31, 2023)
In opinion pieces and commentaries, residents connected the damage following Hurricanes Ian and Idalia to historical patterns of infrastructural failures during Florida hurricanes. For example, Hurricane Andrew in 1992 exposed significant inadequacies in housing codes in terms of building materials and roof construction, leading to extreme devastation during the storm. One commentary post following Hurricane Ian highlighted how these types of weather events consistently exposed failures in the system:
Back in the 1980s and early ’90s, South Florida real estate sales folk told buyers, “These houses are solid!” and “Our building code is as tough as they come!” and “Our builders never cut corners!” Then, in 1992, Hurricane Andrew roared through South Florida and destroyed the façade. Andrew showed that South Florida homes were not built well, because of a weak building code and unethical builders. This is what hurricanes do: Tear away the curtain and show you what’s been going on behind the scenes. (Florida Phoenix, October 20, 2022)
Importantly, some wealthier communities in Florida have been designed to withstand severe weather events. For example, Babcock Ranch, a master-planned neighborhood located between Charlotte and Lee Counties, weathered Hurricane Ian with “negligible impact,” despite being in the storm’s direct path (Next City, December 13, 2023). The homes in this community are all built to Florida Green Building standards, which are mindful of sustainability and resilience in the face of extreme weather events. Specifically, the homes and infrastructure throughout this community are designed with disaster mitigation in mind. Yet, the cost of living in more resilient neighborhoods like these is often “out of reach for most low-income families” (TIME, October 28, 2022). As such, infrastructural inequities can also exacerbate climate injustices for low-income communities.
Water contamination
Our findings revealed that water contamination was a significant issue for communities following both storms. Following Hurricane Ian’s landfall, extensive spills of sewage and polluted floodwater poured into rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. Many residents felt unsafe as polluted water that “looks like root beer, smells like dead fish rolled into compost,” seeped into their homes (CBS News, October 14, 2022). Pesticides and herbicides washed into waterways, trucks and cars leaked battery acid and gasoline, and waste from animals, both dead and alive, filled the streets. Some residents reported experiencing sludgy, noxious-smelling flooding up to their second floors. The scale of the damage made cleanup a slow process.
Nearly a month after Ian’s landfall, a team of environmental partners “found numerous places where the water was six to 10 times the state’s safety threshold for the types of bacteria found in feces such as E. coli and enterococci,” bacteria that can cause life-threatening heart inflammation and other serious infections (The Washington Post, November 2, 2022). By November 1, 2022, concentrations of Karenia brevis (commonly known as red tide) were still high enough to cause respiratory issues for people in Charlotte, Lee, and Sarasota Counties. Even as floodwaters were slowly cleaned up, contaminants in the water continued to pose long-term risks, as noted in this article:
Although several wastewater treatment sites in Florida had reported discharging waste, it could be days, weeks, or even years before there’s a complete assessment of the harm, said Erik Olson, senior director for health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Until people pull soil samples, you don’t know what the damage might be,” he said. (The New York Times, September 29, 2022)
Hurricane victims argued that city and agency responses to the contamination were insufficient in speed and urgency, further endangering the health of community members. Days after Hurricane Ian in Winter Park, Orlando, odorous sewer water was “gushing out of a manhole cover and from pipes used for cleaning the sewer lines of individual homes” and settled in backyards as a “black slime layered with wisps of white film” (Orlando Sentinel, October 2, 2022). The severity of the situation was described this way:
Residents have pleaded for relief from the city. “They just keep telling us it will be off when it is off,” said Debbie Pappas, whose backyard and children’s play set have been flooded with the runoff. Another resident, Greg Bartel, has had both his front and back yards swamped. “I’m thinking that we need to file a lawsuit,” Bartel said. “This is more than a little bit ridiculous.” (Orlando Sentinel, October 2, 2022)
In the case of Hurricane Idalia, our analysis revealed that locals found unsafe waters to be especially threatening to the local economy. The small island town of Cedar Key “produces an estimated 90% of the state’s clams, harvesting about 90 million clams annually and generating $35 million in revenue” (The Christian Science Monitor, September 1, 2023). Some found the storm’s damage to be especially unfortunate for their business. For example, a Cedar Key clam farmer stated:
“When Hurricane Idalia barreled through our town, it changed our lives forever,”… He said the storm destroyed crab traps, docks, trees and other building materials, and clam bags were torn up and swept out to sea. “These losses and the timing of the storm are particularly devasting [sic] to us because December and November are the biggest months in the industry with the holidays,” [the farmer] said. “And with the debt that we have, a lot of us are not going to be able to do our holiday orders.” (Florida Phoenix, November 7, 2023)
The undeveloped coastlines along Florida’s Big Bend meant that runoff and pollution following Hurricane Idalia was not as severe as Hurricane Ian. Yet, there were still significant concerns about the damage to waterways from Hurricane Idalia in the form of debris or lost aquaculture equipment.
DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Building on previous work regarding climate justice 26 and environmental justice in communities hit by hurricanes, 27 we argue that our findings regarding the cases of Ian and Idalia point to the need for significant infrastructure and policy change for vulnerable coastal communities. Using a climate justice framework, we argue that a transformative approach is needed to challenge current systems and demand equitable resilience. When climate disasters destroy infrastructure, the just response is not to build back the same inequitable systems. Klinsky and Mavrogianni 28 assert that the long timeframes associated with built infrastructure mean that decisions made when rebuilding can shape decisions for decades and that “[t]aking a climate justice approach to questions about the built environment can inform efforts to avoid maladaptive responses to climate change and lock-in measures that will play out for a longer period of time.” Rebuilding to “bounce back” to an inequitable system is not enough; justice involves “bouncing forward” toward equitable climate resilience. 29 In the case of Florida’s climate justice communities, failures of infrastructure—before, during, and after the storms—point to a need for improvement in resilience and technology.
Recommendations
Our research points to numerous ways in which local, state, and federal governments as well as local organizations can work to proactively prepare for the impacts of severe climate events such as hurricanes. Agencies and organizations can take more preventative and customized measures to help communities to prepare for and recover from disasters. For example, scholars have documented the importance of hyperlocal emergency planning to ensure vulnerable and “hard to reach” communities are accounted for in disaster preparation. Harris et al. 30 developed the HyLo approach, a community-driven method for climate adaptation. In their comparison of two South Florida communities, they found that risk perceptions and needs in the context of disaster preparation and recovery were significantly different. As such, they also developed an Integrated Climate Risk Assessment tool to guide people through thinking about risks associated with climate change. We argue that these tailored approaches to disaster preparation and planning are essential for Florida coastal communities in this context.
As mentioned above, poorer communities tend to cluster in higher risk areas, whereas wealthier communities are often situated in areas that are more resilient to severe weather events. 31 One way to mitigate this issue is for local and state governments to provide subsidies for lower-income neighborhoods to retrofit buildings and structures to be more resilient to extreme weather and the effects of climate change. Examples could include installing shatter-proof windows, elevating structures, and improving and strengthening roofs.
While many outreach and resource-supply efforts currently exist in Florida coastal communities, our analysis points to the need for intensifying efforts both for local and state governments and nonprofit organizations. Disaster education programs should be made more widely available so residents are aware how to prepare for severe weather events, and additional resources should be made available to community members in need. Our results also show additional community need in terms of resources following hurricanes and transportation to and from disaster assistance centers.
Our research also highlights the issues currently facing many Florida residents in the context of rising insurance rates and the drain of insurance companies from the state. 32 While this is an extremely complex issue to solve, some measures to mitigate impacts on residents could include creating governmental policies to control or cap insurance policy costs and providing incentives for insurance companies to stay in the state.
The concept of “equitable resilience” touches on numerous issues that emerged from our analysis. For example, our results point to the need for additional scrutiny of current building codes and improvement such as building materials and roof construction with preparation for increasingly severe weather events in mind. While the devastation that came with Hurricane Andrew in 1992 led to revisions in building codes in Florida, our results highlight that there is more to be done. In addition, government entities must funnel additional funds toward local improvements in water infrastructure including waste water management, as well as stricter regulations of water systems. For example, our results showed that waste water pumping stations did not have reliable backup generators, indicating the need for additional inspection, repair, and replacement of these types of crucial equipment. These types of improvements can also limit water contamination events in the wake of large-scale rain events such as hurricanes.
Finally, it is imperative that the transformative approach avoids exacerbating existing injustices. Scholars warn transitioning to more sustainable infrastructure, or “green infrastructure,” can gentrify vulnerable communities. In this case, the improved infrastructure ends up benefitting an entirely different community than the one it was built for as the vulnerable population is displaced by higher-income residents.33,34 Our findings provide evidence that hurricanes such as Ian and Idalia disparately affect coastal residents, to where many low-income residents are unable to rebuild their homes and are forced to sell property to wealthier property buyers. In this way, without using proper care with transformative methods, hurricanes can become the catalyst for an inequitable displacement of climate justice populations. In the example referenced above, communities such as Babcock Ranch are mindfully designed with sustainability and localized climate issues in mind. Policies should allow for subsidized living in communities such as these, which would expand availability and access to residence in safer more resilient communities. In addition, incentives could be offered to developers to increase the number of communities along coastlines that are mindfully designed to withstand extreme weather events.
We argue that this research lays the groundwork for future research regarding community resilience and environmental justice in vulnerable coastal communities. While we recognize that our data set is limited to media coverage and government reports, we believe future research should include fieldwork and additional data collection in order to include all voices, particularly of the disempowered, and broaden our understanding of community members’ lived experiences in this context.
Footnotes
AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS
I.Y. contributed to this research and this article in the following ways: conceptualization of the project and article, formal analysis, methodology, investigation, writing of the original draft and review and editing. A.E.A. contributed to the conceptualization of this project and article, formal analysis, methodology, supervision, visualization, and the writing, review, and editing. T.E.S. contributed to these efforts through conceptualization, formal analysis, visualization, writing, review, and editing.
AUTHOR DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
FUNDING INFORMATION
No funding was received for this article.