College students in Boston have watched powerful hurricanes tear through their hometowns in the southeast over the past three weeks, and the storms have left in their wakes ravaged communities and stark signs of climate change.
Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton made landfall on Sept. 26 and Oct. 10, respectively, and have since claimed the lives of at least 268 people, according to CBS News.
Both storms intensified as they crossed over the Gulf of Mexico. The region’s water has reached record high temperatures due to climate change, according to the Climate Adaptation Center.
Brian Buma, a senior climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said hurricanes are “effectively heat engines.”
“They feed off the heat of the water, effectively cooling the water and powering themselves,” Buma said.
As Boston University students from at-risk regions in the south received updates on the storms’ damage, some could not shake the feeling of helplessness that came with being so far from home.
Brianna Beers, a junior from Somerville, South Carolina, was in Boston when Hurricane Helene passed through her hometown.
“It was definitely scary, not being there and not knowing what was going to happen, because I’m basically helpless. There’s nothing that I can do,” she said. “If they lost power completely and had no way of reaching me, I just would have not known what happened to them.”
While Beers’ home ultimately experienced minimal damage, she said multiple members of her close friend’s family in Buncombe County, North Carolina, are still missing, more than two weeks after Helene ripped through their neighborhood.
“They still have no idea where they are, and her other family members, who they have finally located, have completely lost their homes,” Beers said. “They’re basically completely without resources, living off of donations and volunteer efforts.”
Buncombe County is located in Southern Appalachia, a mountainous region devastated by Helene.
“Some of these towns might not ever be towns again,” Beers said. “It’s obvious they’re getting worse and that we’re not prepared for what’s coming.”
Beers said she is currently raising money for affected families through larger organizations like the Red Cross, Samaritan’s Purse and Project Hope. She added that the BU community has been “really supportive through it all.”
Anjali Byju, a junior, is from Sarasota, Florida, a coastal city that stood directly in Milton’s path. Byju was worried to hear that her family decided not to evacuate Florida entirely but rather move to a safer region within the state.
“[News outlets] were saying that it was going to be a Category 5 hurricane with 10 to 15 feet of storm surge,” Byju said. “Because my city is coastal, that was really scary, the idea that it could potentially take out a huge portion of Siesta Key, or all of it.”
While the impact of Milton was “not as bad” as she anticipated, Byju has become more concerned about natural disasters, especially as global warming intensifies.
“This is serious,” Byju said. “We should anticipate these issues to increase in frequency in the future.”
Bostonians can also expect to experience the effects of global warming in the future. The city’s 47 miles of coastline makes it “particularly vulnerable” to storm surges and flooding, while heat spells are also becoming more extreme and frequent, said Hessann Farooqi, executive director of the Boston Climate Action Network.
“Climate action isn’t just about protecting our coastline. It isn’t just about reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Farooqi said. “It’s also about making sure that all of us are better off, that our communities are better empowered and that all of us [can] live better lives.”
Despite the increasing frequency of climate-related disasters, activists and scientists alike are optimistic about the availability of solutions surrounding climate resilience and adaptation issues.
“It’s the challenge of our time,” he said. “We have the tools to address it. We just need to figure out how to do that in the best possible way.”
Anjali Byju wrote for The Daily Free Press from April to December 2023. She was not involved in the reporting, writing or editing of this article.
