At 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2024, Tara Green and her partner, Steven Taylor, were at home on Siesta Key, deciding what to make for dinner. Outside, the wind had started to pick up and gray clouds hung low in the sky, a reminder that Hurricane Helene was churning more than 100 miles offshore. The hurricane, a violent Category 4 storm, was forecast to make landfall near Florida’s Big Bend later that night, so most residents thought Sarasota would be spared the worst.

Green, 45, an elementary school science teacher, and Taylor, 47, a restaurant manager, lived in an older neighborhood off Midnight Pass Road, the main thoroughfare that runs up and down the key between the Gulf of Mexico and Sarasota Bay. Lined with old-growth oaks and home to a freshwater pond stocked with tilapia and other fish, it was a close-knit community. Most everyone knew one another. Unlike so many other neighborhoods on Siesta Key, the homes there were relatively untouched by development; there were some new builds, but many were single-story ranches like Green’s.

Green, a lifelong Sarasota resident, is no stranger to hurricanes. In fact, earlier in the summer, she had dealt with water damage from Hurricane Debby, which dropped nearly 17.2 inches of rain and caused widespread flooding when it passed over Sarasota. But Debby was an anomaly—the only time Green’s home had ever flooded in the 15 years she’d lived there.

As the evening weather began to deteriorate, Green and Taylor moved some plants inside in case the wind picked up. They thought maybe they’d lose power, but that would be the worst of it. Then the lights flickered, and the flooding began.

When the rain started, Green and Taylor began checking their yard and pool deck to make sure water wasn’t getting in. After the power went out, they noticed water in the street and the back yard, but it was still far from the house.

“Within 15 minutes, I heard a bubbling sound, and that’s when water started coming inside,” says Green, whose voice still shakes when she recalls the events of that evening. “It was coming up through the foundation and through the walls.”

She and Taylor started grabbing towels and pushing them against patio doors to stop the water from coming in. “The towels were soaked in seconds,” Green says. Realizing how quickly conditions were deteriorating, she and Taylor scooped their cats into carriers, gave them sedatives and put the animals on a bed while they began frantically trying to move items on the floor to higher ground.

“That’s when I noticed that the water was up to my calf and realized it wasn’t safe to be there anymore,” Green says. They decided to evacuate to their neighbors’ house, a newer build with a second floor high enough to avoid significant storm surge. Green had texted their neighbors prior to the storm to see if she, Taylor and the cats could take shelter there if needed, but never thought it would be necessary.

Outside, the water was knee-high. With both of them wrangling a cat carrier, she and Taylor waded through the water—a mix of storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico and freshwater from the neighborhood pond, which had breached. “I felt fish hitting my legs,” Green says.

She arrived at the neighbors’ house soaked and crying, and pounded on the door. The neighbors, a married couple named Dino and Heather, didn’t hesitate. They ushered Green, Taylor and their cats to the second floor and offered them a guest room and bathroom. All the while, the water continued to rise.

As the flooding worsened, Taylor decided to go back to the house to try to save more of the couple’s belongings. After he’d been gone 20 minutes, Green began to worry. The wind was howling and water was pouring into the neighborhood. It was like someone had wrenched open a fire hydrant and then walked away.

Green decided to head back home to check on Taylor. When she did, she discovered that the water—by then almost hip height, “and higher in other areas,” she says—was pushing against the door and creating so much suction that Taylor couldn’t open it from inside. The couple spent the next several minutes trying desperately to force open the door. There were moments when Green thought Taylor would be stuck until the storm passed, and no one knew how high the storm surge would get. “He was saying, ‘I’m pushing! It’s not opening!’” Green says, her voice thick with emotion. “I was crying, and we were screaming to each other through the door.”

The couple’s combined determination and adrenaline eventually forced open the door, and they made their way back to their neighbors’, where they watched water rush into their home with a flashlight.

The next morning, they surveyed the damage. Water had soaked the cargo area of Green’s Toyota 4Runner and totaled Taylor’s Subaru Forester. Because Sarasota County hadn’t completely turned off water service to Siesta Key, the floodwaters from the pond and Gulf mixed with raw sewage. “There was an absolutely horrific odor,” Green recalls. “It was scary.”

Around 11 a.m., when the water receded enough for them to go inside the house, Green and Taylor were shocked by what they saw. There was mud and sewage everywhere. Water had filled their dishwasher, washer and dryer. Photos, pieces of art and even mundane daily items were drenched. “When I opened the refrigerator, water just spewed out,” Green says. She asked another neighbor, who had also chosen to wait out the storm, how their family had fared. “They said they got their dog and cat and stood in the back of their pickup truck,” she says. “I said, ‘Wasn’t that scary with the wind and the lightning?’” Her voice catches. “And they said, ‘It wasn’t as bad after 3 a.m.’”

As more neighbors began to make their way outside to assess the storm’s impact, Green continued to take stock. She knew the damage was catastrophic. What she didn’t know was that it would all happen again just two weeks later, when Hurricane Milton made landfall on Siesta Key, or that she would never spend another night in her home.

Much has been written about the economic effects of Debby, Helene and Milton. In Sarasota and Manatee counties, businesses lost $187 million in direct revenue from the start of Debby through the aftermath of Milton compared to the same three months the year before, according to an analysis of sales tax data conducted by Suncoast Searchlight, a local investigative news provider.

But often lost amid the analysis of what the storms did to our homes and our livelihoods is another looming question: What did they do to us?

Green says that prior to Debby, Helene and Milton, her mental health was in good shape. “I’ve struggled with anxiety and a little depression, and it takes work to maintain a homeostasis,” she says. “I’ve worked really hard to live in peace and manage my anxiety.”

But after the storms, she says, “I was crying constantly. A friend would come to help, and the emotion of being so sad and also so grateful for their support would take over. But I think the hardest part was that I would work my ass off cleaning up all day, and then I couldn’t go home at night.”

She and Taylor bounced around to five different houses—staying with family members and friends and even renting an Airbnb—before finding a more permanent rental near Arlington Park. “I know for a lot of people, that’s not a big deal, but for someone who cherishes their own space, it was really hard for me,” she says. “I couldn’t get calm, or find my center, because nothing was familiar.”

Even now that the couple is settled, Green has frequent nightmares about the hurricanes. She wakes up panicking that water is rushing into their home. “The first time it rained hard after the storms, I went around with a flashlight checking doors, because I didn’t know what was going to happen or if water was going to come in,” she says. “And I’m a water person! I’m a Pisces. The Gulf of Mexico has always been calming for me. But that was taken away, too.”

As major hurricanes become more common, and Earth’s temperature continues to climb, so does what experts call “climate anxiety.” According to Sarah Lowe, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health, “climate anxiety is fundamentally distress about climate change and its impacts on the landscape and human existence.”

In 2021, Google searches for the phrase “climate anxiety” rose by 565 percent, according to the independent news outlet Grist, which reports on climate change and its impacts. And last fall, a Yale research survey titled “Climate Change in the American Mind” found that 54 percent of Americans were “alarmed” or “concerned” about global warming.

It’s hard not to be anxious. Powerful storms like Debby, Helene and Milton have become the rule, not the exception, during hurricane season—and they’re happening more often. A 2021 study in the journal Science found that “children born in 2020 will experience a two- to sevenfold increase in extreme events, particularly heat waves, compared with people born in 1960.”

Bob Bunting, the chief executive officer of Sarasota’s Climate Adaptation Center (CAC), which educates the public on Florida’s evolving climate, doesn’t mince words. “The risk profile for the west coast of Florida has changed when it comes to hurricanes,” he says. “The past is not relevant to what’s going to happen in the future.” The center forecasts 17 named storms this season, including 10 hurricanes and five major hurricanes of Category 3 or above.

Bunting cites 2017’s Hurricane Irma as a turning point for local hurricane activity. “The CAC predicted that there would be a shift in the climate in general” after Irma, he says. “We said hurricanes would come closer to us as a result of shifts in the jet stream, oceans being so much warmer and sea levels being roughly 8 or 9 inches higher than they were 100 years ago. Even if a storm isn’t that intense, the impacts are greater.”

Data backs that up. The average number of named storms per year has increased from 14—the National Hurricane Center’s new baseline—to 18 in the past decade, and data from 2015 to 2024 points to an increase in both the frequency and intensity of storms.

“We need to be ready for this,” Bunting says. “We can either prepare like we used to, or we can shift our preparations, because we know these storms are going to happen more frequently and have more impacts than they used to.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to have three hurricanes in Sarasota again this year,” he says. “But it does mean it’s becoming harder and harder to avoid a storm’s impacts.”

In the weeks after Helene and Milton, more stories like Green’s and Taylor’s emerged—of homes and businesses devastated beyond repair, of people forced to move to the highest points in their houses to avoid drowning, of cars filled with sand as the storm pushed inland. Local institutions like Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, the Hermitage Artist Retreat and Sarasota Bradenton International Airport sustained major damage. According to Sarasota County’s Planning and Development Services department, a total of 127 homes were destroyed as a result of the hurricanes, but that doesn’t take into account people whose homes weren’t officially marked as unlivable but experienced damage and who decided to leave.

A 2012 study in the journal PLOS Currents: Disasters found that while most people who survive disasters can recover thanks to support from friends, families and colleagues, the effects on their physical and mental health can be “extensive and sustained.” Flooding, in particular, “can pose substantial social and mental health problems that may continue over extended periods of time.” That’s in part because of a flood event’s lengthy recovery period, “which increases the risks of secondary stressors and the impact of worry about recurrence on people who are affected.”    

Another study from the National Institutes of Health surveyed 1,637 Floridians in the wake of Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Michael in 2018, and found that “repeated direct, indirect and media exposures to Hurricanes Irma and Michael were positively associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms.” The study’s authors went on to say that their findings showed that the more hurricanes we experience, the higher the risk of developing mental health issues. Now consider that Irma and Michael happened more than a year apart. Helene and Milton happened within two weeks of each other.

Last fall, as families and business owners began to pick up the pieces in the wake of the hurricanes, they also began to absorb the scope of what had occurred. Nearly every local conversation began with, “How did you fare in the storms?”

Green says she felt like she was constantly in fight-or-flight mode. As she tried to process the trauma of living through two hurricanes in just 10 days and started fixing her home, Sarasota County notified her that the structure would need to be elevated and brought up to current flood standards—in her case, at least 9 feet above sea level, according to FEMA flood maps—if she planned on continuing repairs. That’s due to what is known as the “50 Percent Rule,” a Federal Emergency Management Agency and National Flood Insurance Program regulation that bars homeowners from making repairs and improvements to their homes if the cost of those improvements exceeds 50 percent of the home’s market value, unless the entire building is brought up to current flood codes.

“We stopped work, and that’s when I realized we weren’t going back,” Green says. “The cost to rebuild is about $600,000. I don’t know if I’ve fully accepted it, but I don’t have a choice.”

Hurricanes have no regard for income, ethnicity or social status. Sprawling estates on the region’s barrier islands, home to some of the most concentrated wealth in the area, were demolished, and so were humble inland structures and apartment complexes. But the effects of climate change and storms like last fall’s do disproportionately affect low-income, underrepresented populations who are already struggling with the day-to-day stress of trying to stay afloat amid rising costs for basic necessities.

 

Dr. Cheryl Holder is a physician, the co-founder and executive director of Florida Clinicians for Climate Action, a professor at Florida International University and a sought-after expert who’s given TED Talks on the link between climate change, health and poverty. She works to provide health care to people in underrepresented communities.

“The population that I work with understands that it’s hotter than ever before,” Holder says. “They know the storms are worse. They think, ‘It’s hotter, my FPL bill is higher, where I work is more uncomfortable and nobody cares.’ Folks who don’t have money and power know the climate is changing. They don’t have the luxury and privilege of denying it.

“There's a lot of stress, a lot of worry, and I think there's more depression than I've ever seen,” she continues. “I see more expression from people about problems with economic concerns and sleep, diet and exercise."

Holder points out that the anxiety created by the socioeconomic effects of natural disasters is very real—and can also worsen one’s physical health. “Your cortisol levels go up and there’s an inflammatory response that triggers a whole bunch of physiological changes and puts you at higher risk,” she says. “The data shows economics play a huge role in health. How protected you are is going to be dependent on your money, your power and your access. And the decay of public health infrastructure is going to make us all at risk of getting sicker.”

Living in Florida presents unique challenges that residents of other states don’t face. Floridians’ mental health is tested every day, Holder says. “Once heat season and hurricane season come, it’s going to be more intense,” she says. “Repeated trauma can make you more anxious. Every hurricane season, you have to pack up while thinking, ‘What am I going to bring? Will my house be here when I get back? Will I be lucky?’ There’s only so much you can take.”

Of the Florida residents who are well off enough to consider relocating, many wonder whether it’s safe to stay in the Sunshine State. The problem is that even if you want to escape hurricanes, climate change is everywhere. Just look at the now-common Northwest heat waves, the January deep freeze in the Florida Panhandle, the devastating California wildfires and the way Hurricane Helene decimated western North Carolina.

Holder calls what we’re experiencing “eco grief.” “We’re losing so much,” she says. “You mourn the loss [of your environment] and what’s happened over time. It begins with worry and concern, and then you move into grief and sadness when you see all those changes.”

Experts say one way to combat all the mental health stressors is to get involved.

“The prescription for climate anxiety is to take action—and in addition to your individual action, take collective action,” Holder says. “You start feeling as if you may have some impact.” She suggests joining a group that goes into the community to provide resources about climate and health. “Within your sphere, there's some action you can find to help reduce anxiety,” she says. “The more you feel like you're working toward this goal, the more it makes a difference.”

The Climate Adaptation Center’s Bunting echoes this. “When people see that they have choices they can control for themselves, their families, their school systems, their cities and their communities, we’ll see rapid progress,” he says. “I get satisfaction from seeing that the CAC is helping our community inch forward on these topics. We’re better off than we were two years ago or five years ago because our message is landing with so many people—they’re now considering solutions they didn’t even know they needed. That makes me, personally, optimistic.”

Green teaches science to elementary school students and points to the power of education starting at a young age. She saw firsthand how Debby, Helene and Milton affected her students.

“When I teach my lessons on weather, one of the standards specifically focuses on being prepared for severe weather in Florida,” she says. “The kids were much more serious and nervous about it this year. They were like, ‘We know what this feels like, and it’s scary.’ I want to keep them prepared and knowledgeable. We are lacking education around preparedness for climate change.”

Outside of work, Green says the storms sucked joy from her life. Six months later, she was still spending large chunks of her time on the phone with FEMA or responding to emails about insurance claims. “In a matter of moments, it was like, ‘Your life has been torn apart,’” she says. “‘You no longer have a house to live in, and now you have a neverending to-do list and things to follow up with that are never completed.’ I don’t have time to do as many things that bring me joy because these other things bog me down every day.”

Green spent nearly her entire life on Siesta Key. She says that even though she’s devastated to leave the island, she ultimately plans to sell her home and move inland—not only due to the cost of rebuilding, but also the fear of another hurricane season like last year’s.

Still, she feels optimistic that one day she’ll return to some version of her normal self, and credits Taylor for reminding her that life is too short to spend all her time feeling down. “I know I’ll find peace, and it is getting better,” she says. “But I’m not just grieving the loss of a home that I loved. It’s a loss of my entire old life.”