INSTITUTE INDEX: The disparate devastation of Hurricane Florence
Hurricane Florence's floodwaters inundated numerous pollution sources, including this industrial hog farm in Duplin County, North Carolina. Hog farms tend to be concentrated in communities where fewer white people live. (Photo by Rick Dove for Waterkeeper Alliance via Flickr.)
Gallons of rain Hurricane Florence dropped on the Carolinas: at least 8 trillion
Number of people killed in the disaster: at least 37
Conservative estimate of the financial damage caused by the storm: $17 billion
Of the 18 North Carolina counties that have been officially declared disaster areas, number where the percent of the population that's nonwhite exceeds the statewide average of 31.5 percent: 9
Percent of the population that's nonwhite in Robeson County, one of the hardest-hit areas and a center of the state's Native American population: over 67
In North Carolina, number of times higher the proportions of African Americans, Hispanics and American Indians living within three miles of an industrial hog operation are, respectively, than the proportion of whites: 1.54, 1.39, 2.18
Minimum number of lagoons — massive open-air pits where hog waste is stored — that were overtopped by the flooding, sending feces and urine into downstream communities: 21
Minimum number of lagoons at imminent risk of spilling waste: 89
Tons of toxic coal ash held in open-air pits at Duke Energy's shuttered H.F. Lee power plant near Goldsboro, North Carolina, that were completely submerged by Florence's floodwaters: 1 million
Percentage points by which the concentration of people of color living within three miles of coal-fired power plant exceeds their presence in the overall U.S. population: 3
In U.S. counties that experienced at least $10 billion in damages from natural disasters between 1999 and 2013, the average increase in wealth for white people, according to a study released last month: $126,000
The average decrease in wealth for nonwhites: $10,000 to $29,000
According to the same study, the disaster-related increase in the black-white wealth gap during that period in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston: $87,000
Rank of Florence among the wettest storms to ever strike the East Coast, with the wetness linked to warmer ocean waters due to climate change: 1
If nothing is done to address the problem, the number of people worldwide that the World Bank estimates will be driven to extreme poverty by climate change and related extreme weather events: 100 million
(Click on figure to go to source.)
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Billy Corriher
Billy is a contributing writer with Facing South who specializes in judicial selection, voting rights, and the courts in North Carolina.