This week, we witnessed the scope of devastation in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. The miles between northern Minnesota and the impacted area create only the illusion of distance. In truth, the effects of this far-away storm will soon hit home.
Asheville and many surrounding cities and towns face historic flood and storm damage in what some are calling that region’s storm of the century. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, more than 100 people were reported killed by the disaster, with higher numbers trickling in through the week.
Asheville is located hundreds of miles from coastal areas usually affected by hurricanes. This freak storm might be a one-off event, but it comes amid a rising number of more powerful tropical storms and hurricanes. More storms will reach farther inland as warmer ocean currents drive violent weather into the continent.
Here in northern Minnesota, we might feel insulated from this story. Nothing like this should ever affect us. But it does affect us in ways that you will notice: the cost of building, buying and insuring your home.
Furthermore, it is naive to believe that the wildfires of the west and the storms of the east would never impact our lives. While severe storms are more rare in northern Minnesota, just one unusually severe storm could change everything.
This summer, the Little Fork River flooded downtown Cook, requiring significant public and private funds to repair. Early summer storms dumped unusually high amounts of rain across our region. Torrential downpours tested the limits of our infrastructure. City sewers and water systems found themselves one failed pump from multi-million dollar disaster. Water in mine pits reached halfway up giant haul trucks, each of them chock full of complex electrical systems.
It wasn’t the worst we’ve seen, but it was a mere inch or two from annihilating public resources and threatening key industries and transportation corridors. It’s easy to imagine a “century storm” hitting us in the next ten years, because such storms now pepper the map like buckshot.
Three big factors converge that require deliberate collective action.
First, we face an epidemic of rising construction costs that make rebuilding much more expensive. We already know that housing prices have grown prohibitively expensive, something I wrote about last June. Now imagine having to constantly rebuild towns and neighborhoods at higher prices every few years.
That brings me to the second problem: insurance. We pay insurance companies to help us survive unusual disasters, hoping never to file a claim. But the number of claims filed against disaster and flood insurance plans have caused rates to go up for everyone, prodigiously so in high risk areas.
Nationally, home insurance rates jumped 11 percent last year. Residents in some places find they simply can’t afford insurance at all. In June, CBS News reported that some companies that wouldn’t cover parts of Florida anymore. The Washington Post reported just last week that Hurricane Helene might have caused up to $26 billion in property damage in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. The grim good news for insurance companies is that the storm hit many areas were people don’t commonly carry flood insurance, passing costs onto devastated families instead.
The third problem is that American infrastructure is decaying faster than we’re fixing it. Of course, we know that roads, bridges and ports cost money to build and maintain. But we also hear subterranean time bombs ticking under our towns: sewers, pipes and pumps pushed way beyond their natural lives. Decades of extending new lines beyond old city limits now confronts the fact that most towns — especially our towns here on the Iron Range — didn’t plan for the actual maintenance costs.
These are big problems, hard to fix in the face of human suffering. But we may dedicate our precious tax dollars and collective energy toward solutions. Repairs are just as important, maybe more important than growth. When we build public infrastructure, we must build to weather coming storms and to serve multiple purposes.
Finally, we must address the cost of living crisis that makes disasters so uniquely threatening to working families. I’d encourage you to consider specific plans from any candidates for public office. We should incentivize single-home households to bolster their properties and savings instead of propping up wealthy people who build expensive second homes where they don’t belong.
Sound impossible? Too bad. The storms are coming. We can use the threat to form stronger communities or we can keep arguing about whether or not it’s raining. Eventually, the bill will come due.
Aaron J. Brown is an author and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He writes the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and co-hosts the podcast “Power in the Wilderness” on Northern Community Radio. This piece first appeared in the Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024 edition of the Mesabi Tribune.
Well said. I only hope this is read and taken to heart by the majority. But there are still those among us who don’t believe in science and global warming.