What if you can’t afford to flee a hurricane?
Even when a life-threatening hurricane is headed your way, there are many reasons why you might stay put. You might have dependent family members who can’t leave due to disabilities or other health-related reasons; you might not have reliable transportation to get to a safer area, and what’s more, no gas to get there. Sometimes, you simply refuse to leave your home and everything you own behind.
In a 2021 University of South Florida survey, over half of the state’s residents said that finances would impact whether they evacuated from a hurricane or not, with almost 43 percent saying they had under $1,000 for emergencies. People escaping both Hurricane Milton and Helene — a Category 4 hurricane that heavily impacted the southeastern US in late September — report spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars to get to safety.
Connie Vickers, 63, typically resides about an hour outside of Asheville, North Carolina. It cost her about $5,000 to book the first available Airbnb she could find to evacuate from Hurricane Helene. She considers herself fortunate — she could pay that out of pocket, with the hope that her insurance would cover some or all of the cost. “I’ve been thinking about the socioeconomic differences,” she tells Vox. She knows that others aren’t able to pay these high costs.
