The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: Why Living in Mobile Homes Is Becoming Riskier Due to Climate Change
Dear Diary. Mobile homes are death traps for those living just about anywhere east of the Rockies due to the threat of tornadoes. Helene wrecked many of these and people died residing in their mobile home as the hurricane roared through the Southeast into the southern Appalachians, unfortunately. Still, for those wanting the independence of home ownership but cannot afford to buy and live in a traditional house, mobile homes remain enticing. If you do live in a mobile home, please be very weather aware by using apps to get alerts to vacate the premises, having a plan to go to a safe location when threats arise.
Helene proved that climate change just adds one more danger for mobile homeowners. Due to climate change, destructive winds and flooding rain will trend farther inland from hurricanes moving at a good clip from the Gulf or Atlantic.
Here are more details from the New York Times:
For charts that I did not repost from the article, hit the following link:
How Climate Disasters Are Making Mobile Homes a Huge Risk
Millions of Americans, many poor and vulnerable, live in mobile and manufactured homes. When catastrophe strikes, they’re often on their own.
A mobile home destroyed by flooding from Hurricane Helene in the Mountain View Mobile Home Park in Damascus, Va.
By Hilary Howard and Christopher Flavelle
Photographs by Caitlin Ochs
Hilary Howard reported from North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, and Christopher Flavelle from Washington.
- Oct. 14, 2024
By the time the murky brown water in the house reached his chest, Joe Rogers realized it was too late to leave safely. Then, in an instant, his mobile home shifted violently, creating a wave that swept up furniture and trapped his wife, Sandra, in their bedroom.
Mr. Rogers pleaded with his wife to leave, but she was stuck. He said he would break the bedroom window from the outside. He went to his front door, grabbed a rope thrown by a neighbor, and pulled himself to the nearest perch, pausing to catch his breath.
Before he could return to the trailer, it broke loose from its foundation and was pulled into the adjacent Pigeon River, churning with rain from the remnants of Hurricane Helene. He watched his home smash into a bridge, his wife still inside.
Her body was recovered days later, 16 miles from where they had lived in Clyde, N.C.
Joe Rogers has been staying with a friend since the catastrophe.
A damaged home in Clyde, N.C., where Mr. Rogers lived with his wife Sandra.
Mr. Rogers inspected a pile of debris and belongings near the site of his former home.
Back-to-back catastrophic hurricanes this fall, first Helene and then Milton, have exposed the risks climate change poses to the 16 million Americans who live in mobile or manufactured homes. Built in factories and lighter than conventional houses, manufactured homes are transported to a property and secured to the ground.
They are among the least expensive forms of housing; those who live in mobile home parks are three times as likely to live in poverty as those who live in traditional housing and are more likely to be older or disabled. Manufactured homes are also more likely to be located in flood zones, according to data compiled by CoreLogic, a property information and analytics company.
Manufactured homes make up 6 percent of the nation’s housing stock. But the proportions were much higher in several areas hard-hit by Milton and Helene. In western North Carolina, 14 percent of homes were mobile or manufactured. Around Tampa Bay, Fla., the share was 11 percent. South of Tampa, in Manatee County, 14 percent of homes were mobile or manufactured.
The people who live in mobile homes are often poorly served by federal disaster programs, experts say. The result is compounded loss as they are uprooted from their communities with nowhere to go.
“Manufactured housing shows how the affordable housing and climate crises collide,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow and expert on the issue at the Urban Institute, a Washington research organization. “Our most affordable housing supply is the most vulnerable to climate disasters and often falls through the cracks during recovery.”
Just how sturdy mobile and manufactured homes are during a disaster is the subject of some dispute.
Mobile homes built before 1976 were typically not required to meet any type of building code. That year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development set the first building standards for mobile homes, and it has since updated them several times. Prefabricated houses built after that year are called manufactured homes.
Across the United States, there are 1.3 million mobile homes built before 1976, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute, and they are generally considered unsafe in a disaster. In the North Carolina counties hit by Helene, there were 19,000 of these aging mobile homes. In the Tampa area, there were about 50,000. It is unclear how many were destroyed by the storms.
The line for gas at a filling station near Bradenton, Fla., on Friday.
The owner of a mobile home in Plant City, Fla., surveyed damage.
Insulation and other debris around the home of David Kraus in Bradenton, Fla., on Saturday. “I’m tired of hurricanes,” said Mr. Kraus, who plans to resettle in Alabama.
In Manatee County, at the Bradenton Tropical Palms mobile park, many of the homes predate 1976. Three days after Milton, David Kraus was examining the damage to two of his homes, both of which were built in 1969 and had lost their roofs. He estimates repairs will cost up to $20,000 per home, neither of which was insured.
“I’m tired of hurricanes,” said Mr. Kraus, 76, who plans to resettle in Alabama.
The manufactured home industry maintains that homes built under modern federal standards are as safe as conventional structures if they are correctly installed, though experts say proper installation isn’t guaranteed. Taking no chances before Milton hit, officials in the Tampa Bay area ordered people in all manufactured homes, regardless of when they were built, to evacuate.
At the Piney Point Mobile Home Park, north of Bradenton, Tyler Johnston, a contractor, was assessing the damage to a manufactured home built in the 1990s. He said the unit had been built using wooden studs more narrow than traditional two-by-fours, and the roof had been attached with screws instead of reinforced with metal straps that are standard for newer units. That roof was sitting in a lake.
Fishing parts of a home out of a lake at the Piney Point community in Palmetto, Fla.
Sandra and Joe Rogers had made their home in another one of those manufactured houses built after 1976.
The couple had found each other later in life. In 2006, Mr. Rogers was coming off a rocky divorce when he reconnected with his high school flame, Sandra Unrath, who was in a toxic relationship. “It was like no time had passed,” said Mr. Rogers, who manages the deli in a Food Lion.
Mr. Rogers was living in a 1995 manufactured home that his father had bought for $10,000, on a lot that flooded in 2004. Neighbors assured Mr. Rogers that such floods happened every 40 years in their corner of the world.
Ms. Unrath, a hair stylist who by then went by the name Sandra Lynn Justus, moved in. They married in 2021.
That year, Tropical Storm Fred flooded their trailer with three inches of water. The Federal Emergency Management Agency gave the them about $12,000 and the couple decided it was time to move.
They ordered a new manufactured home for a parcel of land on higher ground that they had bought with a loan a few years earlier and that they were still paying off. They were weeks away from relocating when Helene tore through Appalachia.
Sandra and Joe Rogers often slept in a queen bed with their seven dogs, who were like her children, he said. On the day of the storm, firefighters knocked on their door, telling them to evacuate.
Ms. Rogers, 57, got dressed but worried it would be too hard to get the dogs out safely. “She decided right then and there, ‘I’m not leaving my babies.’”
As the house filled with water, Ms. Rogers changed her mind and asked her husband if he could get the dogs to safety. More water gushed in and five of the dogs swam out into the storm.
Mr. Rogers with the dogs that escaped his home before it was washed away.
Mr. Rogers reconnected with his old high school flame, Sandra Unrath, in 2006.
A memorial for Sandra Rogers at the site of the home she shared with Mr. Rogers.
Now, Mr. Rogers, 58, seems visibly stunned all the time. After the catastrophe, a FEMA official told him they could put him up in a hotel for four days if he could show them his driver’s license. But his license was in the river, along with the rest of his life.
So, he moved in with a friend. A few days ago, before “wearing out my welcome and friendship,” Mr. Rogers said, he moved into his new home, although it has no power or water. A family member lent him a truck to get around.
Federal policy disadvantages people in mobile homes in myriad ways as they try to rebuild, experts say. Survivors need to prove they owned the home, which isn’t easy when documents are damaged or destroyed, though FEMA has relaxed its requirements recently.
FEMA spends billions of dollars each year to protect communities against disasters like flooding by investing in bigger berms and storm pumps while elevating structures and other types of public infrastructure. But mobile home parks seldom benefit from that spending.
“It is a challenge for us to provide assistance directly to privately owned companies,” said Julia Moline, FEMA’s deputy assistant administrator for logistics operations.
The challenges don’t stop there. Americans in standard housing often have insurance, which, together with FEMA payments, can help cover the cost of repairs. But people in mobile homes are less likely to have insurance, according to Dr. Rumbach.
In the Plant City mobile home community near Tampa, residents were trying to make repairs. Olga Summers, 61, whose uninsured home was damaged when a tree fell on it, expects that her husband will try to fix it himself.
“Most of these people don’t have insurance,” said Lauren Cook Wike, 68, who lives in the same community. “We will all work together.”
FEMA provides disaster survivors up to $42,500 for emergency repairs, which can be put toward a new home. (That maximum payment increased by $1,100 for disasters declared after Sept. 30.) But new manufactured housing typically costs more than twice that amount.
Lauren Cook Wike cleared debris from her yard in Plant City, Fla.
Olga Summers and the tree that fell on her house in Plant City during Hurricane Milton.
A CountryWood mobile home community in Plant City, Fla.
And even if a survivor can afford to replace a mobile home, other hurdles exist. After a disaster, mobile home parks must be repaired to comply with current local building codes, which require things like elevating foundations above the expected height of future floods.
Those changes are expensive, said Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who studies climate adaptation. The cost often gets passed on to residents in the form of higher rent. Or park owners decide to sell to developers, who build permanent housing because it’s more profitable.
“Many of these mobile home parks are being converted over because they’re in prime locations,” Dr. Keenan said.
Park owners can sell to FEMA or the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which will sometimes buy flood-prone land to clear it and prevent anyone from living on the property again. The system works well for homeowners, who get money to start fresh somewhere else.
But with mobile home parks, the buyout money goes to the park owners, not the residents, who typically only rent the ground beneath their units. Residents can qualify for relocation money from FEMA but they still need somewhere to live.
Those challenges are now playing out for Dee Wolfe, 84, a retired librarian in Damascus, Va., who lived in a mobile home by the Laurel Creek River that was demolished by Hurricane Helene.
Ms. Wolfe moved into the Mountain View Mobile Park in 2010. She got a loan for a new $32,000 mobile home; after home and flood insurance, her monthly payment was $350, plus $240 to rent the lot. With an annual income of about $22,000, Ms. Wolfe was on a tight budget.
On the day that Helene struck, the river breached the berm surrounding the park. Rescuers arrived and Ms. Wolfe grabbed what she could and left. By the time the storm had passed, most of the homes wound up wrapped around trees.
Though she had flood insurance, the company is asking her to itemize, by serial number and receipt, every item she lost. Her belongings are rusted, and her receipts, if they exist, are now pulp. Ms. Wolfe’s insurer told her to keep making mortgage payments, despite her home being uninhabitable, until it decides what to do.
The Mountain View Mobile Home Park in Damascus, Va.
Dee Wolfe at her damaged home in the Mountain View park in Damascus.
Nikki Wolfe, Ms. Wolfe’s daughter, in the kitchen of her mother’s home.
Even if she gets money to buy a new mobile home, it’s not clear where to go. Mike Smith, who owns the park that Ms. Wolfe lived in, said removing the debris, fixing the sewage and electric service and making other repairs would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In most places, FEMA would pay much of the cost of those repairs after a storm. But privately owned communities like mobile home parks have difficulty getting federal recovery funds.
“I’m not going to rebuild it,” Mr. Smith said. “I’m just done.”
In North Carolina last week, Mr. Rogers walked where his home used to be. There was nothing left. At the bridge that had split his house into pieces, he spotted his old pine bed, its box springs sticking out. His Jeep lay nearby, upside down. His other two cars were also destroyed.
The five dogs that escaped the trailer bounded out from behind a barn and surrounded him, barking. The other dogs have not been found.
Those five survivors now have space to run on his new property, which is up a hill and surrounded by trees. “It was our dream house,” he said.
His wife was particularly looking forward to their new home. Sandra had designed sliding doors, Mr. Rogers said, so that she could walk outside whenever she wanted.
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting from North Carolina.
Hilary Howard is a Times reporter covering how the New York City region is adapting to climate change and other environmental challenges. More about Hilary Howard
Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter who writes about how the United States is trying to adapt to the effects of climate change. More about Christopher Flavelle
More on the Aftermath of Hurricane Milton
- A Tale of Two Storms: Power outages, gas shortages and pockets of flooding were among the lingering issues as Floridians return. But Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage could have been worse.
- Storm Dogs: Amid major disasters, shelter animals are often sent to other states. And people are more likely to foster and adopt a pet. Here’s what to know.
- A Climate Resistant Community: On the west coast of Florida, a town built to weather hurricanes hosted more than 2,000 people during Hurricane Milton. Could communities like this help shape Florida’s future?
- Hurricane Disinformation: Amid the conspiracy theories and falsehoods that have spiraled online after Helene and Milton, meteorologists say the harassment and threats directed at them have reached new heights.
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is some more September 2024 climatology (Prior reports are listed on older daily diary blogs for each calendar day.):
Here is More Climate News from Wednesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)