Florida sits in the eye of the hurricane, but don’t tell that to DeSantis

Two sisters watch flooded Whiteoak Bayou waters flow next to downtown Houston on July 8, 2024. Houston residents began a familiar clean up process after the storm ravaged the Gulf Coast city. (Photo by Annie Mulligan/The Texas Tribune

At the beginning of every hurricane season, people who live in the path of these killer storms have to brace themselves for the relentless rain, fierce winds, and often-resulting devastation.

In Florida, however, homeowners are being buffeted by an insurance crisis. As hurricanes, the resultant flooding and other natural disasters have clobbered Florida, affordable housing insurance has become a thing of the past.

According to a Guardian story , seven insurance companies left Florida in 2022 and 2023 because of the risks presented by trying to insure homeowners in a state that lies in the path of hurricanes powered by a burgeoning climate crisis. ( The state reported in May that the situation may be stabilizing, with 10 insurers seeking no premium increases and eight proposing lower rates.)

Hurricane Beryl — which grew into a Category 5 storm with 165-mile-per-hour winds — gashed islands in the Caribbean in June, flattening homes and businesses, tearing out trees by their roots, and leaving seven people dead in Grenada and St. Vincent.

Luckily for Florida, Beryl next took aim at Houston. A report by the Perryman Group , including a review of more than 500 industries, indicates that then-Category 1 storm with 80 mile-per-hour winds dropped eight inches of rainfall across Houston and its environs, causing “significant damage, including flooding, downed trees, power outages, downed traffic lights and signs, and extensive structural damage.”

Fortunately, there were no fatalities in Texas, but the wreckage to Houston’s electric grid left millions of people in the dark. The economic damage could run to as much as $4.6 billion , including wreckage to Houston’s electrical grid and extended blackouts.

Supercharging evaporation

Climate scientists and other experts warn that hurricanes as powerful or more so than Beryl will to be more frequent because of greenhouse gas emissions heating up “the atmosphere and ocean, supercharging evaporation and heat transfer in a warmer atmosphere that already holds more moisture,” as the Arizona Daily Sun reports.

Consequently, the number of Category 3 and 4 hurricanes will increase.

Add to this reality the fact that Florida “is uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise, with some 1,350 miles of coastlines, flat topography, and porous geology,” and that “the state’s 35 coastal counties are home to some 76% of the population,” Inside Climate News reports.

That same publication reports on one study finding that Florida’s sea level rise accelerated from a rate of 3.1 millimeters a year since the mid-20th Century to 5.9 millimeters a year since 1993 and 8.2 millimeters a year since 2003. In other words, the sea’s rise is four or five times faster than it was over the last several thousand years, one expert said.

So, what does the head brainiac, Gov. Ron DeSantis, do? He follows the lead of his fellow nitwits on the extremist wing of what’s left of the Republican Party and buries his head in the sand. If we just pretend climate change doesn’t exist, it will just go away, right?

Phoenix environmental columnist Craig Pittman reasons that while DeSantis dithers, Florida burns from heatwaves and wildfires or is overwhelmed by killer hurricanes. When he signed the bill that deletes most of the mentions of climate change from state law, DeSantis boasted in a post on X , “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”

Fossil fuel lobby

Instead of being curators and caretakers of the environment, DeSantis and his greedy, reckless companions are doing the bidding of the fossil fuel lobby. And the Floridians whose interests the governor is supposed to serve are left to deal with staggeringly high insurance rates, searing heat, rising seas, and storms.

As Bradley Marshall of Earthjustice, the nonprofit environmental law firm, told the Phoenix in May: “Out in the real world, citizens are dealing with devastating impacts as our climate heats up and gets more volatile. Heat is killing our reefs, our creatures, and even our citizens. State leaders should be doing all they can to protect and prepare us.”

DeSantis also signed into law a pernicious bill that prohibits local governments from leaning on businesses to protect outdoor workers from extreme heat. He has rejected millions of dollars in federal funds that would help the state devise a climate action plan.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that by 2045, about $26 billion in residential real estate will face chronic flooding, particularly in Miami, the Florida Keys, and the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.

DeSantis and state officials have made some craven, less-than-honest moves pretending to counter the climate crisis and in so doing have abrogated their responsibility to the people of Florida.

Floridians are paying the price.

Stalemate

According to the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp., at the end of 2022 average annual property insurance premiums had spiraled to more than $4,200 in Florida — three times the national average. The agency was set up in 2002 as an insurer of last resort for those who couldn’t find coverage in the private market.

Prospective clients qualify for insurance from Citizens if the lowest quote they get from a private insurer is more than 20% greater than the Citizens’ quote. Its average policy is far below the private market — about $3,700, the statewide average.

In June, Citizens proposed rate increases of an average of 13.5% for homeowners and 14.2% for condo owners.

Climate experts acknowledge that Florida dodged a bullet when Hurricane Bertha slammed Houston, but it is clear it’s only a matter of time before the state is again in the bullseye.

Even now, a system in the western Atlantic is forecast to threaten Florida, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Once Floridians can’t beg, borrow, or snatch mortgages and insurance for their water-logged homes, the Keys and other parts of South Florida will no longer be livable because they will be covered with water.

We see that Republicans aren’t interested in working on solutions, Democrats are too weak and disorganized, and the public is constrained by a political apparatus that frustrates them from forcing needed changes.

Meanwhile, any number of powerful, deadly hurricanes are on the horizon and the waters will continue to rise.

As we go into the meat of the hurricane season, Floridians will have little real protection. Those in need of affordable insurance have to push, pressure, and prod DeSantis and the Legislature to properly handle this crisis.

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.