Hurricane Milton was a test

In the overnight hours after Hurricane Milton hit Siesta Key, a barrier island near Sarasota, Florida, the state's coastal metropolises were hit by fierce winds and a deluge of water. In St. Petersburg, a construction crane fell from its position on a luxury high-rise that would soon be the tallest building on the flood-prone peninsula. The crane crashed into the building across the street that houses the newspaper's newspaper offices Tampa Bay Times. Strong winds ripped the roof off a stadium in Tampa that was meant to house emergency responders. Three million households and businesses are currently without power.

As this morning dawned, Hurricane Milton was leaving Florida on the East Coast and was still blowing at hurricane force. The storm came unnervingly close to what experts feared would be the worst-case scenario, moving into the state. The storm struck about 60 miles south of Tampa, striking a densely populated area but narrowly avoiding the precarious geography of the shallow Tampa Bay. Still, the destruction, once counted, is likely to be great. Flash floods inundated cities and left people trapped under debris and cars in the hurricane's path. Several people died yesterday in a retirement community in Fort Pierce on Florida's Atlantic coast when one of the many tornadoes triggered by Milton touched down there.

If the barrier islands did their job, they may have protected Sarasota from the worst of the storm surge, but small civilizations of their own were also built on these vulnerable stretches of sand. This stretch of Southwest Florida happens to be one of the fastest-growing parts of the state, where people are flocking to new developments, many of them right on the water. Milton is the third hurricane to make landfall in Florida this year, in an area that barely had time to assess the damage from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago. Because the storm passed right by Tampa Bay, it could soon be viewed as a near miss, which research shows may increase risky decision-making in the future. But this morning it's a chilling reminder of the increasing dangers of living in hurricane-prone places, as climate change makes the fiercest storms even more intense.

The threat of catastrophic flooding has loomed over this particular group of cities — Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater — for years, and on some level everyone knew it. About a decade ago, Karen Clark & ​​Company, a Boston-based firm that provides analysis for the insurance industry, calculated that Tampa-St. Petersburg was the U.S. metropolitan area most affected by flood damage from a storm surge. Even Miami, despite talk of its impending climate-related demise, is in a better situation than Tampa, where the sea is relatively shallow and the bay “can act almost like a funnel,” leading to higher peak storm surges, says Daniel Ward, an atmospheric scientist and senior Director of Model Development at Karen Clark. The Regional Planning Council has simulated the impacts of a Category 5 storm, including fake weather reports that sound eerily similar to Milton's; It is estimated that if a storm were to hit directly enough, losses would be around $300 billion.

The region's construction boom has heightened the stakes and increased the number of potential losses. Siesta Key, the barrier island that Milton first encountered, has been embroiled in a battle for years over proposed high-density hotel projects; Sarasota is experiencing one of the fastest growth rates in the entire county. Farther south, Fort Myers is expanding even faster (and has been hit by storms in recent years, including this one). Tampa in particular was a darling of Florida development. Billions of dollars in investment redeveloped the waterfront neighborhoods with glass condo towers, and the traditional retirement town was reborn as a beacon for young people. The population of the Tampa metropolitan area, which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater, grew to more than 3.2 million; According to data cited by Redfin, average home values ​​nearly doubled from 2018 through June of this year The Wall Street Journal.

Like everyone in Florida, people who live on the southwest coast know that hurricanes are a threat that climate change may exacerbate. (More than the average American, Floridians believe climate change is happening.) But “every coastal region has a mythology about how to escape climate change,” said Edward Richards, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University Mich. School of Law . “We have a culture that downplays risk.” The last time Tampa Bay was directly affected by a major hurricane was in 1921, when a Category 3 storm hit the metropolitan area, which was then home to about 120,000 people . It unleashed an 11-foot storm surge that smashed into homes, wiped out citrus fields and killed eight people. The possibility of another hit was always a real danger, even before the effects of global warming began. “Climate change is absolutely making storms worse,” Richards said. “But we're so focused on how they're going to get worse, we haven't paid attention to how bad they already were.”

Most days, Tampa has plenty to offer, and a century-old storm probably isn't on your mind. “The benefits of jobs and economic opportunities and, quite frankly, just the convenience of being near the beach often outweigh the inconveniences of climate exposure,” Jeremy Porter, head of climate impact research at the nonprofit analytics organization First, told me Street. Getting a mortgage in a FEMA-designated flood zone requires flood insurance, most of which is provided by the National Flood Insurance Program. However, many people give up on them after a year or two, either because they feel like they don't need them or because they don't “I can't pay the bill,” Porter said. If your home is paid off, there is no obligation to purchase flood insurance. Developers pass on future risk to the people who buy their condos. City managers generally welcome developments that are good for the local economy while they last. If they are destroyed, the federal government will help rebuild them. “Any time you separate reward from risk, catastrophic problems arise,” Richards said. Attempts to undo all this – by confronting people with the real risk of where they live – can also be a trap: Raise flood insurance premiums to market rates, and suddenly many people can no longer afford it. If you continue to subsidize insurance, people will stay in dangerous places.

But even before Milton's blow, the region's great real estate boom was stalling. Homeowners in the flood zone saw their insurance prices rise dramatically after FEMA implemented new adjustments to better align premiums for the highly subsidized National Flood Insurance Program with the true cost of risk. Due to rising insurance costs and repeated flooding in recent years, more homeowners are now thinking about selling. But they're having a hard time: The supply of homes in Tampa is rising but demand is falling, and about half of the homes for sale — the third-highest share of any major U.S. metro area — have had their asking price reduced Sept. 9, according to The Wall Street Journal. That was before Hurricane Helene sent a six-foot storm surge across the city and ripped through Milton, damaging property and likely ruining any chances of a good sale. Additionally, Florida passed a flood disclosure law this year that went into effect on October 1st. This means homeowners trying to sell their home after this storm must inform potential buyers of any insurance claims or FEMA assistance they received for flood damage. no matter when they sell.

In the short term, both Richards and Porter expect people will simply rebuild in the same place. There are currently no levers to promote a different outcome, Richards said. FEMA has a home buyout program in commonly damaged areas, but the process takes years. In the meantime, homeowners have little choice But to rebuild. And even knowing about the risk of flooding may not stop people from coming back or moving in. A report on New Orleans, for example, found that nearly half of home buyers surveyed did not read the risk disclosure statements required after Hurricane Katrina: If people can afford to live only in a flood-prone part of a city, they know that the risk does not change their options.

Longer term, “from a geological perspective, we know what’s going to happen,” Richards told me. Over the next century, parts of Florida's coast will suffer from regular flooding, if not be permanently underwater. Hurricane flooding will extend further inland. Living in certain places will simply no longer be possible. “At some point we will reach a tipping point where people will start avoiding the area,” Porter said. But he doesn't think it will be Milton.