New data set shows the nationwide impacts of US climate disasters

Earlier this month, the remnants of Hurricane Beryl pushed rivers and streams beyond their banks in Vermont. It came exactly one year after another devastating flood.

"The people who struggle and don't have surplus savings — they really get knocked down and some of them never get back," said Patti Komline.

Komline has helped Vermonters with flood recovery assistance since 2011, when the state was also reeling from the historic floods caused by Tropical Storm Irene.

"There's trauma and PTSD," she said. "There it happened once it happened twice. And now is it going to happen again?"

Right now, she is helping people recover from the latest rounds of flooding.

"We've got somebody — he's about to live in a tent. We're trying to find him housing. His house is ruined. To get a 400 square foot mobile home new, but to get one of those delivered here and get the site prep for that is $120,000."

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While she usually works for a local law firm as head of government relations, she now is working for Vermont Main Street Recovery Fund — a fund that gives direct cash assistance to local businesses damaged by flooding, since FEMA does not give that kind of assistance to businesses.

What she has noticed, as more floods impact the state, is that people can no longer donate the funds they had in the past. She also says it's been harder to work with government agencies or to navigate the red tape that keeps someone from getting help.

She gave the example of a family of new Americans, who are here legally, but who are on visas so they don't qualify for federal grants. They had their home and business hit by floods, twice.

"This time around, a year later, they had their house yet again flooded and they don't know if they can go back. So there is so much need for small business owners," she said.

Komline says the cumulative impacts this amount of disasters in recent years — on low income individuals, local businesses and the housing market — are past the ability of communities to bounce back from themselves.

"It has to be simpler for people. There's so many hoops to jump through, and it's so overwhelming," she said.

From 2011 to 2023, the United States has been hit with more than 700 FEMA declared disasters like the ones experienced in Vermont. And the areas where it's happening the most aren't necessarily the ones getting the most national media attention.

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"That's when we had the real 'aha' moment because we realized that it was not the states that we thought it would be," said Amy Chester, the director of Rebuild by Design , which is located at New York University. "Now updated in a year and a half and overlaid with congressional districts, it's just as interesting."

Her group recently published an atlas of areas of the country that have seen the most FEMA-declared disasters since 2011. One data set looks at this by county, the other by congressional district.

Kentucky had eight of the nine counties with the most federally declared disasters since 2011, totaling more than $475 million in post-disaster assistance.

After California, the states with highest disaster declaration counts were Tennessee, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Iowa. Vermont was in the top 10.

"Vermont's a hard place to kind of figure out how to rebuild because it's a lot of it is rural. So we need to have these conversations and the only way to do it is if we're having them together and we're deciding where the places are we able to fortify," said Chester.

24 states saw every county in them impacted by a major disaster declaration at one point or another, an indication of how disruptive weather fueled by climate change is having consequences far and wide.

"What we wanted to do is show congresspeople that they actually can work together. They can see across the entire U.S., all of their districts, and realize that they're all in this together," said Chester.

As Komline continues to work to get her neighbors the funds they need to yet again start over, she hopes for more assistance and more solutions from state and federal government.

"Unfortunately, this is going to be ongoing, so it needs to be more institutionalized, but in an effective way, which is key and not just a lot of bureaucrats doing a lot of talking, not out there doing the work," she said.