Homelessness and Extreme Weather Are Converging Climate Crises
Terri Domer visits the riverside encampment in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she weathered last August s derecho.
Andrew McCormick / NBC News
This story originally appeared in
NBC News and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa Terri Domer knows well what a brewing storm looks like.
Domer, 62, an Iowa native, has spent her life watching thunderstorms gather and tornadoes dash across rolling hills. Last August, when the midday sky darkened over the riverside homeless encampment where Domer and four other people spent most nights built on a sandy bank near downtown, under tall trees she quickly set about covering up their supplies.
As if in an instant, the sky grew âblack,â Domer said â darker than sheâd ever seen it.
The derecho hit with a fury, winds whipping up sand and snapping limbs overhead. Domer rushed for cover, pulling a tent canopy over her head. All around her, branches and whole trees crashed to the ground.
âI kept thinking, âWhen is it going to stop?ââ Domer said. She said a prayer that she would live.
Itâs an immutable truth of the climate crisis that the most vulnerable are hit first and hardest. At a time of rising homelessness in the US and as climate-related disasters become common â wildfires in California, monster hurricanes that thrash the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico, an arctic blast in Texas â the rule holds.
Storm damage after the 2020 derecho in Iowa. (KC McGinnis / For the Washington Post via Getty Images)
This story originally appeared in NBC News and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story
Cedar
Iowa Terri Domer knows well what a brewing storm looks like.
Domer, 62, an Iowa native, has spent her life watching thunderstorms gather and tornadoes dash across rolling hills. Last August, when the midday sky darkened over the riverside homeless encampment where Domer and four other people spent most nights built on a sandy bank near downtown, under tall trees she quickly set about covering up their supplies.
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