How the government is failing Americans uprooted by natural disaster
LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana — Two summers ago, Hurricane Laura destroyed Betty Swope's modest bungalow on Lake Charles, a town surrounded by oil refineries in the South -western Louisiana. The Federal Emergency Management Agency helped first, paying for Ms. Swope and her son Adrian to stay in hotels, then setting up a trailer in their yard and providing about $7,000 to repair their home.
But it covered a fraction of what repairs would cost Ms Swope, who is 74 and, like many storm survivors, had no insurance. And although Congress has approved additional funding for Hurricane Laura victims, that money has yet to reach Louisiana nearly two years after the disaster.
In November, 15 months after Hurricane Laura pushed him out of his home, Adrian is dead. He was 47 years old. The coroner's report cited complications from the paraplegia, but Ms Swope blamed her isolated life in the trailer. "If we could have had a room in the house fixed," she said, "it would still be here today."
While the states As the United States struggles to protect its citizens from the worsening effects of climate change, the return of survivors to their homes after hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters has emerged as a particular failure. Money, it turns out, isn't the issue. Instead, agencies are crippled by rules that often make little sense, even to officials in charge.
The result is a growing class of Americans displaced, a version of the inner climate refugees, scattered in motel rooms and trailers, an expanding archipelago of losses.
LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana — Two summers ago, Hurricane Laura destroyed Betty Swope's modest bungalow on Lake Charles, a town surrounded by oil refineries in the South -western Louisiana. The Federal Emergency Management Agency helped first, paying for Ms. Swope and her son Adrian to stay in hotels, then setting up a trailer in their yard and providing about $7,000 to repair their home.
But it covered a fraction of what repairs would cost Ms Swope, who is 74 and, like many storm survivors, had no insurance. And although Congress has approved additional funding for Hurricane Laura victims, that money has yet to reach Louisiana nearly two years after the disaster.
In November, 15 months after Hurricane Laura pushed him out of his home, Adrian is dead. He was 47 years old. The coroner's report cited complications from the paraplegia, but Ms Swope blamed her isolated life in the trailer. "If we could have had a room in the house fixed," she said, "it would still be here today."
While the states As the United States struggles to protect its citizens from the worsening effects of climate change, the return of survivors to their homes after hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters has emerged as a particular failure. Money, it turns out, isn't the issue. Instead, agencies are crippled by rules that often make little sense, even to officials in charge.
The result is a growing class of Americans displaced, a version of the inner climate refugees, scattered in motel rooms and trailers, an expanding archipelago of losses.
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