Historic Black communities often overlooked before and after disaster strikes

Weather watchers everywhere were astounded to see Hurricane Beryl ramp up in just two days from tropical storm strength to a Category 5 behemoth packing wind speeds of 165 mph.

Its July 1 emergence as a Category 4 storm and growth the next day to Cat 5 strength were the earliest in recorded history that a storm had reached either of those benchmarks, and Beryl carved a path of destruction west across the Caribbean islands then north and east into Texas and as far Vermont.

It seems as safe a bet as can be made that Beryl will not be the last major storm of 2024. Forecasters are predicting as many as 25 named storms and Nov. 1 seems a very long way away.

Ian one year later:How long will it take for Fort Myers Beach, SW Forida to fully recover?

That storm damage will occur in Florida this year is already a given; South Florida was swamped in mid-June by flash flooding caused by torrential rains nobody even figured into the hurricane season equation.

There is another aspect of hurricane season that, unfortunately, has also become something of a given, the disparate treatment of disadvantaged populations and communities of color when it comes to receiving aid after the storm and assistance in recovery.

Hurricane Ian and Harlem Heights

Richard Ryles had seen similar scenarios play out so many times before that when it became certain Hurricane Ian was going to cut a wide path of destruction through Lee and Collier counties in September, 2022 there was no question in his mind where disaster assistance would initially be deployed.

“Stevie Wonder wearing Ray Charles’ glasses could see what the reaction from the state was going to be,” he said.

And he was right. Following the storm that devastated Southwest Florida, aid stations were set up in the wealthy white coastal enclaves of Sanibel, Captiva Island, Fort Myers Beach and Naples and the poor, mostly Black, residents of communities like Dunbar and Harlem Heights were left to figure out a way to get to those areas to find relief.

“We knew they would be the last helped," Ryles said, "Based on the history of the treatment of African Americans in this state and across the country.”

Harlem Heights, a historically Black community in Fort Myers, had grown up when segregation was the way of the world. It is built in a low lying area susceptible to flooding. After Ian, Ryles said, it seemed the whole community was underwater.

Ryles, a West Palm Beach attorney, mobilized a group of fraternity brothers, who in turn reached out to others, including representatives from the Thomas Leroy Jefferson Medical Society. They gathered up food, necessities like feminine products and sanitary wipes and the medical supplies needed to assist people needing immediate treatment for ailments like diabetes and high blood pressure and set up shop at a Harlem Heights Community Center.

In a two-week span they would feed some 350 people and provide medicine and necessities to 600 more, but Ryles said when they arrived they were overwhelmed by what they saw.

"We didn't realize the extent of the problem," he said.

He said the desperation of the situation really hit home as he and others were setting up a grill to cook for residents of the community when an 11-year-old boy pulled up on a bicycle and told them that he was hungry and he and his grandmother hadn't eaten in two days.

"That kind of story was recounted multiple times," he said.

Hurricane Michael and North Port St. Joe

Tales of the misery inflicted by tropical storms are hardly uncommon in Florida, which has been hit by four major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher in just the last 10 years.

One of the saddest sagas is that of North Port St. Joe, where, according to Dannie Bolden, there are still homes bearing the scars of a savage beating from 2018's Hurricane Michael. Some of those residences have since begun literally sinking into the ground.

"This community, as its name implies, lies north of the small Gulf Coast town of Port St. Joe and is comprised mostly of African Americans. It grew up in the late 1800s and early 1900s on the other side of a series of railroad tracks separating it from the "white" side of town. Many of the homes in North Port St. Joe were built before the 1960s in the shadow of the St. Joe Paper Company mill that opened in 1934 and a nearby chemical plant, Bolden said.

'How far we've come':Looking back on Hurricane Michael 5 years after it hit Bay County

The St. Joe Paper Company had a landfill of sorts in North Port St. Joe where its workers deposited wood chips and other potentially hazardous factory debris in nearby woods and wetlands. The dumping grounds were later leveled off, parceled out and sold in the disadvantaged community for home construction.

North Port St. Joe is situated on the highest point in Port St. Joe, so its residents didn't suffer the flooding from Hurricane Michael that its neighbors to the south had, but Bolden said there was no shortage of downed trees that damaged homes and left many without power and water.

Bolden said one woman stayed in her badly damaged home because she had nowhere else to go and the mold there got so bad he had to send the local health department to the residence to talk her into leaving.

"They got her into a hotel," he said. "But shortly after she died."

Bolden lives in Columbus, Ga., but he still focuses much of his energy and attention on being active on behalf of his hometown of North Port St. Joe.

At the time he was interviewed for this article Bolden was in the community working with a professor from the Pensacola-based University of West Florida. The men have collaborated to study ways to come up with transformational scenarios to address systemic racism within the healthcare system in North Port St. Joe.

In the immediate aftermath of Michael, Boldin learned that community residents were required to board buses to more affluent areas in order to find distribution centers where they could get food and other necessities. The people of North Port St. Joe had become so acclimated to being slighted, he said, they didn’t even complain.

Boldin, though, took it upon himself to set up a location to provide aid in North Port St. Joe. FEMA would ultimately recognize it as one of the best run in the entire Panhandle.

"It was unbelievable the way he embedded himself in that community in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael and the way that community came together under his direction," said FEMA official TJ Dargan. "It was just phenomenal."

Following Hurricane Michael a whole new element of historical racism emerged for the people of North Port St. Joe. Homes in the area had been "redlined" by insurance companies, Bolden said.

Redlining is a term used to define a historically racist business practice in which red lined maps were used to identify areas, typically in neighborhoods occupied by African Americans, where property values were likely to fall and therefore deemed too risky to insure.

"In North Port St. Joe many of these homes had been there a long time and after the storm required quite a bit of repair. But the insurance, the way the insurance was rated, in this low-wealth community with high levels of poverty in an area that had been redlined, people can't afford the cost of insurance," Bolden said.

Now, six years after Hurricane Michael, homes built over the abandoned landfill have begun sinking. Bolden believes that Hurricane Michael raised the water table.

"I think Michael, with the storm surge, had a significant impact on those homes," he said.

Legal action taken over the years has forced the St. Joe Paper Company — now known as the St. Joe Company — which closed its mill in 1999, to take some responsibility for the environmental damage it has inflicted over the years on North Port St. Joe. The company, now among the largest landowners in Florida, still hasn't acknowledged any role it might have had in creating the conditions existing now, Bolden said.

Likewise, he said the Port St. Joe City Commission has "mostly ignored the community."

“Part of it is it’s not a priority, the people are not going to the city and complaining, they’re not complaining and not getting the help," he said. "To see it now, the rebuild on the south side of town and the north side are like being in two different worlds. If you ever want to know about a city, look at its budget and see where the dollars are going."

There's never been any research to study whether the St. Joe Paper Company Mill, adjoining chemical plant and abandoned landfill have had long-term health effects on the North Port St. Joe community. Bolden said he has tried to get the area designated a Brownfield, which would bring down federal dollars for an accounting and clean up.

Local elected officials have not been willing partners in that effort.

“The city has been dragging its feet. It’s like they don’t want the information known," he said. "We had a group, the International City/County Management Association, come in from New Jersey to look at the situation and explain the brownfield designation to the city commission. They told the gentlemen from New Jersey 'If I lived in North Port St. Joe I wouldn’t want my community designated a brownfield.' "

Boldin sees the city hiding behind lame excuses to keep from doing the right thing.

“The system allows people who have animus or a lack of sympathy for communities like North Port St. Joe to hide behind it," he said. "Their concern is they haven’t done what they were supposed to do and don’t want to be held accountable."

Port St. Joe City Manager Jim Anderson did not return phone calls seeking comment for this article.

Grassroots efforts to right the many wrongs

North Point St. Joe is hardly an exception, not just in Florida but across the United States. Equality activists say accountability has been hard to come by when it comes to those in power owning up to the sins of the past where communities of color are concerned.

And the continuing selective assistance seen following storms of today could have even more far-reaching effects in a future where climate change threatens to make everyday life increasingly unpleasant.

If there is good news out there it is that steps are being taken to build awareness and to assist communities of color in building resilience to coming storms and climate change.

Robert Bullard is widely viewed as the father of environmental justice, a philosophy that recognizes that historic injustices often are brought to light in the aftermath of natural disasters and that preparation for future disasters must go hand in hand with fixing the abuses − like redlining in North Port St. Joe − of the past.

"Racial disparities exist in disaster response, clean up, rebuilding, reconstruction and recovery," Bullard wrote in a novel he titled "Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina."

"Race plays out on natural disaster survivors' ability to rebuild, replace infrastructure, obtain loans and locate temporary and permanent housing," Bullard observed. "People of color spend more time in temporary housing and are more vulnerable to permanent displacement."

It may well have been Hurricane Katrina and its impact on the city of New Orleans that finally opened the eyes of the world to the disparate treatment afforded to minorities following a major natural disaster.

The iconic Superdome in downtown New Orleans, was opened as a "refuge of last resort" for those unable to escape the oncoming Katrina. It was estimated that 14,000 people entered the building the night before the storm, but, USA Today reported in an article done 10 years later that the number swelled to 30,000 as levies failed and areas of the city flooded.

The world watched as the arena and its occupants suffered through five days of hell in nightmarish conditions. A portion of the Superdome roof blew off, and the building's main generator died early on, leaving the structure reliant on a back up generator that couldn't power the air conditioning system or keep the refrigeration on to prevent "massive amounts of food from spoiling."

A promise from Mayor Ray Nagin to furnish FEMA supplies was never fulfilled, USA Today reported, and the city's police department pulled its contingent from the Dome the day after Katrina hit, based on the ultimately false premise that flood waters were going to continue to rise.

Bathrooms backed up and the stench became unbearable, the small contingent of National Guard troops became targets as people became more frustrated and desperate, according to USA Today's reporting. Three people would die, at least two, including a young girl, were sexually assaulted and many people lost to theft what little household belongings they had managed to salvage from their now uninhabitable homes.

More than 1,800 would lose their lives to Hurricane Katrina, and later assessments found injustices that included equal access to health care and healthy food choices. Many who survived the storm itself were forced to wade through waters polluted by the residue of industrial plants close to the neighborhoods in which they lived.

"In communities of color and poor communities, there tend to be more warehouses or plants that store hazardous materials," said Bruce McClue, a technical training manager for the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. "Many also lie along railroad tracks utilized by trains carrying hazardous materials."

When interviewed for this article McClue was in the company of Pensacola-based environmental justice advocate Calvin Avant. The two were traveling through Florida providing emergency response preparedness training.

"There is a problem," McClue said. "Most people don't have the money to pay clean up crews to come in, and after a disaster there's a lot of work, a lot of the initial work, that they have to do themselves."

A wide array of potential hazards exist within a typical household, he said. In many cases residents will be called upon to clean the mud and muck out of a damaged home, prevent mold from becoming a health concern and be alert to the potential for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Many who seek the training provided don't have the funds to pay for personal protective equipment, but McClue said the training insures that those seeking it learn how to decontaminate themselves following exposure to potentially harmful substances and basics like safe ways to clean and store work boots.

McClue said the training being provided extends to making people aware of potential animal threats poised by everything from poisonous snakes carried in on flood waters or fire ants. Even plant hazards like poison ivy are covered.

The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice is working primarily with minority groups and through faith-based groups like Avant's Unity In the Family Ministry.

"We're moving around, more people are being made aware of the hazards that can exist," McClue said. "We're making inroads, people are getting educated and people realize what can truly happen to them. There's still a lot of work to do."

American Red Cross and NAACP team up to assess continuing needs

Cynthia Slater grew up and still resides in an area of Daytona Beach known as Midtown. It is a historically segregated Black community she calls "almost like New Orleans."

"We sit in a low zone. The whole community is a flood zone," she said. "This is where we were pushed."

Slater's own home has flooded four times over the last 20 years, but those floods are becoming more frequent, she said.

"It's getting worse. I never remember it being like this, houses across the entire community are being flooded, and there's not a lot of money being spent to improve the infrastructure at all."

Following Hurricane Ian, the American Red Cross, realizing the need to help people who had been passed over for emergency assistance, reached out to the NAACP in hopes of developing a pilot program to better assess needs.

Slater, as the president of the Volusia County Branch of the NAACP, was asked to head up the program in heavily populated Orange and Volusia counties.

"They asked us to partner with them and identify families and homes still in need of services," Slater said. "I commend them for reaching out to say 'we know we've missed some people' mostly in the Black and brown communities who have been disenfranchised and need some help."

Interviewed in May, Slater summed up the magnitude of the endeavor upon which she and her team had embarked. By the end of April the NAACP had identified 2,714 homesteads for which they saw the need to refer requests for services to agencies that could provide assistance.

"We still have not even touched all of the people in those counties," she said.

The data has been broken down to identify the most pressing needs such as home and property repairs, she said.

Some are still in need of assistance affording food, while others need rental assistance or housing placement. There are some who need help to pay utility bills, recover lost wages, and others who might require medical and/or mental health services, or assistance finding employment or help replacing a vehicle lost in the storm.

Another segment of the program is turning over the data to government agencies to obtain assistance for residents for such things as flood mitigation and hurricane preparedness.

"We can have all of this data, but if the infrastructure is not there it's just a Band-aid on a wound. We have to have a conversation with city, county and state government. You can go through a storm and lose a house, do everything you have to to rebuild it, but the storm's going to come again," she said. "How do you stop flooding? How do you as a county address issues related to these bigger problems?"

'We started fighting water' Flood-prone Rubonia community deals with surge concerns.

Officials have tried to alleviate flooding issues in the Rubonia community for decades, but it was those very improvements that allowed floodwaters to slither into the community during Hurricane Idalia.

Mary Brown, 84, has lived in and out of the Rubonia all of her life, but had never seen floodwaters inside of her home until Idalia.

She was among many residents of the flood-prone Rubonia community in Manatee County who woke up during the early hours of the morning on Aug. 30, 2023 to find rising floodwaters infiltrating homes throughout the neighborhood.

The hurricane made landfall about 220 miles north on Keaton Beach, but caused heavy storm surge along much of Florida's western coast as it traveled up the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“We started fighting water,” Brown said. “When it got to the point that I just couldn’t see myself getting out of there I called 9-1-1. The fire department came and they could not drive up my street. So two tall firemen came and walked me out two blocks, and then they walked my brother out. That was Idalia. That’s an experience I do not want to have again.”

Rubonia, a historically Black community, has always had issues with flooding. Manatee County has worked to address those woes for years, and recently installed a new drainage system to help stop stormwater from accumulating in the community.

From the archive:Hurricane Idalia exposes storm surge concerns in Manatee County, residents fear for homes

But it was not the rain that flooded Rubonia this time. The community is located on the eastern Terra Ceia Bay — which feeds straight into Tampa Bay — and is also nestled along the northern shore of McMullen Creek. When Idalia passed nearby it caused a heavy storm surge, and the water rose straight up through the new drainage system and into the neighborhood.

“The county put a whole bunch of money into a stormwater system out there for them, which works beautifully,” Manatee County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge said. “Falling water gone, not a problem anymore.”

“However, the same stormwater system that the county put in to ensure rainwater flows out easily has also created a problem,” he said. “That’s that rising saltwater flows the opposite direction equally as easily. So they have flooding that is originating at their stormwater outlets because they are becoming inlets, if you will.”

Van Ostenbridge, who represents the community, said the county plans to install flaps on the outlets to prevent sea water from flowing through them into the community during a storm. He said the county could potentially consider installation of a levee to protect the community, but that the option comes with a slew of issues such as a high cost, need for funding partners, and concerns over the potential for litigation should it fail.

Another resident, Louis Goff, said he does not think there is much that can be done. He serves as chairman of the Rubonia Community Association.

“The county has really tried to help out with the situation, but there is really not much you can do about it at this point because the water is there,” Goff said. “There is just nothing you can do. We are real low and the water is going to rise. All we can do is just be hopeful.”

“There were maybe 35 or 40 homes affected,” Goff said. “The water was only there a day, it happened real fast. But people are still trying to deal with insurance companies, and some didn’t have insurance.”

Brown said she is among the uninsured. A lien was placed on her home after her mother died and she learned that the hurricane insurance was canceled during the process only after she finished repaying the debt only a month before Idalia.

“I am still trying to recover, I have not gotten the doors on my house,” Brown said. “We’ve been waiting for help. People have called from different areas, but I don’t have the money to pay them.”

“So that is what I am in now,” she said. “I am trying to get the house in shape to where I can get it inspected again so that I can get insurance. I will get flood insurance before I get anything else.”