As weather disasters intensify, state and local governments are footing more of the recovery bill

Hurricane Milton is barreling towards Florida’s Gulf Coast, where it’s expected to make landfall tomorrow night. Meanwhile, folks across the southeast are still assessing the damages caused by Hurricane Helene. The tab is expected to run to more than $100 billion. 

Climate change is making big storms more frequent and more intense. Recovery is getting more expensive, too.

Disaster recovery takes a lot longer than the public might think, said Andrew Rumbach. He’s a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

“Once the event has gone by and the news coverage has stopped,” he said, “recovery goes on for years or even decades.”

There are backlogs for building permits and red tape that delays the arrival of federal funding. But his big complaint? That’s mostly reactive.

“We still spend the vast majority of money on disasters after they occur, on response and recovery, rather than investing more heavily before disasters to try to mitigate their impacts,” Rumbach said.

Of course, investment requires money up front. So the problems get exacerbated in communities that have less money.

“They might be economically disadvantaged, where these disasters can just instigate downward spirals,” said Kristin Smith, a researcher and policy analyst at Headwaters Economics.

She said climate change is also causing more smaller disasters that aren’t large enough to warrant federal funding. 

“Most people assume FEMA is coming in and paying for all of it, but study after study shows that actually is the local governments that spend a good chunk of the money on it,” Smith said.

Then there’s resistance to recovering with climate change in mind.

“We help people rebuild houses. We don’t revise building codes … we don’t take the time to say, ‘Hey, listen, this area is now no longer really habitable,'” said Gabriel Filippeli, the director of the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University. 

“And not doing it is like an ostrich with your head in the sand, right? It’s going to happen again. It’s just a matter of when,” he added.

Filippelli said recovering with resilience saves lives, and has positive mental and physical health impacts that don’t even show up in financial calculations.