You could say James Guill has been running from hurricanes for his whole life. The New Orleans native was just two years old when Hurricane Katrina swallowed his city in 2005 and became the most costly hurricane in U.S. history, claiming 1,833 lives. During and after the storm, Guill’s family evacuated and sheltered in Virginia for two months. Then they returned, salvaged their house, and spent nearly two more decades – enduring other life-threatening storms and evacuations – at sea level. Guill’s mother, Terenia Urban Guill, calls her son a Katrina baby, in the same way young parents today call their 2020 kids COVID babies: the world-altering moment shaped and informed them in fundamental ways. “I don’t have direct memories,” James Guill said of Katrina. “But I say it’s in my bones.” His history with torrential rains, flooding, and roof-shearing winds influenced his trajectory straight out of high school. He enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where he’s studying environmental science. “Being high up in the mountains felt a little bit untouchable,” Guill said. “It felt like one of the more secure areas.” In recent years, many people have uprooted their lives to relocate to these mountains, driven by the growing risks of extreme weather events elsewhere. Asheville, North Carolina, has ranked high on lists of cities that some thought would be relatively shielded from climate change. Hurricane Helene upended that understanding. At least 230 people died across six states, nearly half of those in North Carolina, during the storm’s September 2024 rampage. Two weeks after Helene, many communities in the region remained without water or power. The devastation blindsided many residents, shaking their sense of climate security. It’s a feeling that I know intimately. I grew up in western... |