“This is really bad.” My friend Danni was watching the water cross the highway towards the hotel where she was staying with her dog. Her home, not too far away and at a lower elevation, was in at least 1.2 metres of water.
Photo: George Desipris
“Is there a higher floor you can get to?” I ask.She goes and finds one. The next video she sends me has a lot of water, sirens… is that a building on fire in the background? It’s so windy. After she stopped recording there were explosions.
The devastating effects of Hurricane Helene will be felt for a long time. Thankfully, Danni is alive and physically unharmed. She is also utterly exhausted. Piles of belongings, the insides of homes, grow alongside her street. Now just heartbreaking water-damaged trash that needs to be dealt with.
Janine Krippner
What you can’t see in the photos and video is the oppressive mugginess in the heat, the downright stagnant air of the water-damaged house, now deemed unliveable.
The impacts of a hurricane are so, so much more than the death toll.
Danni lives in Tampa, Florida, within an area that was under an evacuation order. The official advice to those who couldn’t evacuate was to write their name and birthday in permanent marker on their body for identification. Over 1,000 km away my friends there are impacted too. That’s well over the length of the South Island. This was a massive storm.
People are quick to scoff at those ignoring evacuation orders, but the reality is that there are many factors that result in people staying. Having pets made it too difficult for Danni to leave with her available resources. She is not alone. When storms are barrelling towards hundreds of thousands of people or more there is so much human complexity to take into account.
In 2017 I watched from states away as many places in Florida ran out of petrol during the mass evacuation. I had friends who could not leave ahead of that storm too. Sometimes the failure to evacuate is from a lack of understanding of what is coming, but other times it is a logistical nightmare than simply cannot be overcome.
If you survive the storm, you then face the absolutely overwhelming clean up. “It feels like it will never end honestly” she says, I can feel the total exhaustion through her words and my heart aches for her.
Conversations over the years with people who have lived through eruptions, earthquakes, and hurricanes has made these hazards and disasters feel less of a distant event, and seem more like colourful, complex, and very dangerous possibilities. They will keep happening around the world. People will keep dying. Lessons that have been learned will continue to be ignored by governments (it costs money) and not passed on to communities.
Through this mess my friend has expressed gratitude for support, love, kindness, and generosity. It is yet another reminder that in our toughest times our neighbours are who show up for us. If we make our communities stronger and better connected now, it can pay off if we happen to face our own disaster down the road. We are not powerless.
Photo: Johannes Plenio
