NY Times: Where Americans Have Been Moving Into Disaster-Prone Areas

Sept. 30, 2024 By Mira Rojanasakul and Nadja Popovich 

The country’s vast population shift has left more people exposed to the risk of natural hazards and dangerous heat at a time when climate change is amplifying many weather extremes. A New York Times analysis shows the dynamic in new detail:

• Florida, which regularly gets raked by Atlantic hurricanes, gained millions of new residents between 2000 and 2023.

• Phoenix has been one of the country’s fastest-growing large cities for years. It’s also one of the hottest, registering 100 straight days with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this year.

• The fire-prone foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada have seen an influx of people even as wildfires in the region become more frequent and severe.

• East Texas metro areas, like Houston, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth, have ballooned in recent decades despite each being at high risk for multiple hazards, a fact brought into stark relief this year when Hurricane Beryl knocked out power in Houston during a heat wave.

“The more that people are moving into areas exposed to hazards,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia’s Climate School, “the more that these hazards can turn into disasters of larger and larger scale.”

In some places, population growth and development have already made disasters worse and more costly, leading to widespread damage and destruction, major stress on infrastructure and soaring losses for insurers and individuals alike. Yet studies show people continue to flock to many “hazard hotspots.”

Americans’ decisions about where to move are largely motivated by economic concerns and lifestyle preferences, experts said, rather than potential for catastrophe. Some move seeking better job prospects and a cheaper cost of living; others are lured by sunnier climates and scenic views.

“There are 20 different factors in weighing where people want to move,” said Mahalia Clark, a graduate fellow at the University of Vermont who has studied the links between natural hazards and migration in the United States. “Higher up on the list is where friends and family live, where I can afford to move. Much lower down is what is the risk of hurricane or wildfire.”

Widespread use of air conditioners has also supported Americans’ long-term southward shift, making places with hot summers but mild winters more attractive.

Yet even in booming southern metro areas, growth has not been evenly spread. Nor have departures from places like the Northeast. In many parts of the country, suburbs and exurbs have seen the biggest population gains in the last decade, while inner cities have often lost residents. The coronavirus pandemic turbocharged this trend.

This outward growth of population and development has increased many Americans’ exposure to natural hazards too, bringing more people into wildfire zones and giving tornadoes and hurricanes more chances to hit populated areas, a trend scientists call “the expanding bull’s-eye effect.”

To be sure, few places are completely safe. Much of Vermont, which is not highlighted as high risk in the maps above, saw devastating flooding last year following a record-breaking storm. But the Times’s maps focus on places with the highest risk, according to hazard data from CoreLogic, a property and risk analytics firm.

Other forces, including improvements to early warning technologies and stricter building codes, have helped reduce disaster risk and losses even as rapid population growth and development in high-hazard areas and climate change have increased the potential for harm.

“In a way, I see it as a race,” said Virginia Iglesias, a research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Earth Lab. “We are trying to mitigate,” she said, even as hazards multiply and more people move into harm’s way, “increasing the probability of disaster.”