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Disasters can feel overwhelming if you’re an immigrant, whether it’s because of your citizenship status, language barriers, or confusion around your rights. It’s important to remember that trusted community networks exist, along with other helpful resources. This guide offers up-to-date information on some of those resources, as well as examples of community organizing and policy work that have made it easier for immigrants to find help. It also includes best practices for navigating disaster relief and recovery at a time when there is a heightened risk of deportation for certain immigrants. This information is fact-checked and will be updated periodically as laws, practices, and resources change.

Jump to:

↓ Finding reliable information
↓ Government services in your language
↓ How federal disaster aid works
↓ What to do if you encounter ICE
↓ Best practices for staying safe
↓ How to advocate for better resources

Finding reliable information

Vetted federal, state, and community resources can help you find accurate, trustworthy information in the event of a disaster.

Dial 211

When you dial 211, you will be referred to the Federal Communications Commission’s free community services directory. This can be a key step in accessing public services. It works similar to 911, where an operator will answer the call and assist you in finding what you need, including services for non-English speakers.

Independent news outlets

News publications that serve non-English speaking individuals often provide emergency resource guides that don’t exist in traditional media. Look for an outlet published in your language in your area. Here are some examples:

• El Tímpano in California offers an emergency resource guide in Spanish.
• To prepare for this year’s hurricane season, Enlace Latino NC published an article in Spanish on how to obtain free National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, radios through the city of Raleigh, North Carolina. Radio is a primary means of communicating emergency alerts and weather information in the U.S. and can be especially useful during power outages.
• Grist published a guide in Spanish and Haitian Creole for Florida farmworkers during the 2024 hurricane season.

Immigrant rights organizations

Across the country, immigrant rights organizations offer an array of services and tips that can be helpful in disaster situations. These are trusted groups who offer support and advocate for change year-round, not just during disasters. Searching online for local organizations that focus specifically on immigrant and labor issues — by typing in the name of your state and the phrases “immigrant rights” or “worker rights” — is a great way to begin looking for support. The tools highlighted below can also inspire other search terms for your own state, like “disaster preparedness toolkit in Spanish,” for example.

• In North Carolina, the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry released a video series in Spanish to help immigrant communities and their families prepare for disasters and recuperate in the aftermath. This video explaining how emergency alerts work is applicable to any U.S. state.
• In Oregon, the farmworker union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, made a disaster preparedness toolkit in Spanish available for free on Google Drive.
• You can get involved in spreading the word throughout your own community with the help of available, trusted resources. PCUN also offers free social media graphics about the dangers of heat stress and what to do to stay safe at home and on the job.

Many of these organizations also offer legal refreshers for immigrants to understand their rights, which can be impacted by the presence of federal agents at disaster sites. You can read more about that below, under “What to do if you encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE” and “Best practices for staying safe.”

Government services in your language

Federal civil rights law requires any entity receiving federal funding — including virtually all state and local agencies — to provide language access to individuals with limited proficiency in English. And in recent years, an increasing number of local and state government agencies have amped up their language access policies as a result of organizing among community members and immigrant organizations.

In 2023, wildfires spread through the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, Hawai‘i. In the immediate aftermath, the 30 percent of Lahaina residents with limited proficiency in English had trouble accessing emergency information. Liza Ryan-Gill, the executive director of the Hawai‘i Coalition for Immigrant Rights, spent two days organizing calls with at least 80 community advocates to figure out how to get information to immigrant communities who needed it — in languages they could understand. In 2024, after advocates organized for federal funds to be allocated to local emergency management for language access, Hawai‘i passed HB 2107 and hired a limited English proficiency access coordinator for the state’s emergency management department. Now all emergency resources in the state are translated into at least seven languages.

Other states have taken similar steps: In Michigan, a 2023 law requires translation and interpretation services for languages spoken by individuals with limited English proficiency who comprise at least 3 percent of the population, or 500 individuals, in the region served by a given state agency. New York updated its language access policy in 2022 to cover the 12 most common non-English languages spoken by state residents with limited English proficiency.

While most cities and states do not require agencies to proactively translate documents and resources into specific languages, it is worth checking with your local government and emergency management agencies. If they don’t already provide information in the language you speak, you can request it.

Emergency management agencies: Your city or county has an emergency management department, which is part of the local government. Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating with other agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those texts now. Some cities have multiple languages available, but most emergency alerts are only in English. Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates as well.

If you’re having trouble finding your local department, Grist suggests typing your city or county name followed by “emergency management” into Google. You can also search for your state or territory’s emergency management department, which serves a similar function for a larger jurisdiction. Every website looks different, but many of them include translation options at the top or bottom of every page. You can also use Google Translate, or another browser-based automatic language detection program, to automatically translate any webpage.

National Weather Service: This agency, often called NWS, offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your zip code on weather.gov and customize your homepage to get the most updated weather information and receive alerts for a variety of weather conditions. The NWS also sends out localized emergency weather alerts to people’s cell phones via wireless networks, to television and radio stations, and to NOAA Weather Radio, which can receive NWS broadcasts. (Make sure you’ve opted into receiving emergency alerts in your phone settings.) Some local NWS offices automatically translate local alerts into multiple languages — including Chinese, Vietnamese, French, Samoan, and Spanish — in real time.

Read more: How to prepare for a disaster

How federal disaster aid works

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is the federal government’s main disaster response agency. It is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS. Often, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which is also under DHS, is enlisted to help after a disaster. In 2021, the Biden administration issued guidance designating places where disaster or emergency response and relief are provided as “protected areas” where immigration agents should not engage in enforcement actions. However, in January, the Trump administration rescinded that policy.

Still, experts and immigrant advocates on a national level emphasize that FEMA offers non-financial aid to anyone regardless of immigration status. This includes shelter, emergency supplies, counseling, and other resources. In order to apply for financial aid, someone in your family must be a U.S. citizen; this could be a child. A household should only apply for financial aid once per disaster, according to FEMA guidance. If more than one family member submits an application, it will cause delays in the process.

“The reassurance right now is that nothing has changed in the field,” said Ahmed Gaya, director of the Climate Justice Collaborative at the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of 82 state and local immigrant and refugee organizations.

He added that “our communities’ trust in the federal government and trust in FEMA and DHS is at a historic low,” but that the law has not changed and that undocumented folks are still eligible for immediate emergency relief. “There’s a real, credible fear that there is a shift in leadership at DHS, in administration and in the rhetoric. But legal rights remain the same currently.”

As of June 2025, Gaya said, “We have not had reports from the field of FEMA’s practices and policies deviating dramatically from how they have typically gone in regards to dealing with mixed status and undocumented communities.”

Read more: How the agencies and officials involved in emergency response work

What to do if you encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE

“You probably wouldn’t see ICE officers at disaster shelters requesting documents, but we can’t predict how ICE will behave,” says Rich Stolz, a colleague of Gaya who is also a Senior Fellow with Just Solutions, focusing on the intersection of climate justice and immigrant rights strategy and organizing. “The challenge for advocates and emergency groups is making sure that people can make informed decisions. The concern is that people will be under even more stress in a disaster context, and they may forget their rights.”

It can be helpful to have a red card, or tarjeta roja, with you to show to ICE agents in the event of questioning. These cards outline your rights — like the right to remain silent and to talk to a lawyer — and anyone can order them online. They are available through the National Immigration Law Center in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

There are several “know your rights” guides for immigrants that apply in all situations, not just disasters:

• The National Immigration Law Center provides a Know Your Rights guide recommended by legal experts. It is available in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.
• The National Immigrant Justice Center offers a guide available in Spanish, Haitian Creole, French, and English that includes laws to know, sample warrants, and helplines. 
• The National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the National TPS Alliance (an organization for people with temporary protected status) put together an illustrated guide to your rights in English and Spanish. On page 2, you can find step-by-step instructions on what to do if ICE stops you on the street or in a public space. 

Best practices for staying safe Accessing emergency shelter and supplies

You shouldn’t need identification to receive emergency supplies or stay at most emergency shelters, but you may be asked to provide some. Identification may include a photo or non-photo ID; it does not necessarily mean you need to supply a driver’s license, passport, or social security number. Some organizations offer community IDs for those who do not qualify for a state-issued ID. These may not be accepted depending on the county or location.

The Red Cross, which operates shelters after major disasters, says it does not ask for any documentation of legal status when providing aid.

Read more: How to access food before, during, and after a disaster

Going to a shelter or government-run site can be intimidating. Here are some other tips gathered from immigrant rights organizations:

• Use the buddy system: There is safety in numbers. Go with multiple people to feel more confident in getting the help you need. 
• Find an English speaker: Someone who speaks English may be able to help you get services if you are worried about language barriers.
• Request language interpretation: When talking to police, firefighters, or hospital workers, you have a legal right to an interpreter. Other agencies and institutions may have access to interpreters and translators as well.
• Contact an advocacy organization: Farmworker and immigrant advocacy organizations may be able to help you get the supplies and food you need at a safe space.
• Talk to your faith community: Speak with your local pastor, members of your place of worship, or someone else you trust about your options.

Support for disaster workers

If you are an immigrant disaster worker, day laborer, or second responder, you have rights and are legally protected by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. Day labor worker centers and labor unions are excellent resources if you have any questions regarding safety on the job. The Resilience Force put together easy-to-read illustrated guides in Spanish and English for workers specifically working in disaster recovery.

How to advocate for better resources

Each disaster has ripple effects. That’s why organizations that were not built to deal with disaster relief or response are often taking on that responsibility. “All of us need to figure that out,” said Marisol Jimenez, founder of Tepeyac Consulting, a business based in Asheville, North Carolina, for community organizers around the country. “We’re not disaster organizations, but how do we integrate this into all of our work?”

Here are some of the resources being created to help communities organize for change:

• Stolz, Gaya, and their Just Solutions colleagues representing Organizing Resilience, National Partnership for New Americans, National Immigration Law Center, and other groups plan to release a resource guide on disaster response as it relates to the Trump administration’s policies for ICE. A similar rapid response kit was published in 2022.
• Researcher Melissa Villarreal at the Natural Hazards Center in Colorado put together an annotated bibliography of academic articles, government reports, and news reports related to emergencies and language access. You can use these examples when advocating for policy change where you live.

Disasters cause communities to spring into action out of necessity, which can result in positive pressure on local governments. The more you can stay connected to your community and trusted local organizations, the more you can create change and better policies that keep immigrants safe and supported.

“So much depends on grassroots organizations actually having a presence and a plan and a strategy,” said Stolz. “A community’s ability to survive and thrive and recover is largely dependent on the existing community cohesion and relationships that exist.”

 

Download a PDF of this article | Return to Disaster 101

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Know your rights as an immigrant before, during, and after disasters on Jul 7, 2025.

Jesse Merrick was living in Alabama in 2017 when the Thomas Fire swallowed up his mother’s house in Southern California. Merrick, then a healthy sportscaster in his 20s, was on the next plane to help her salvage what was left of their belongings. 

Weeks later, back at home, he started feeling weak, tired, and feverish. Then his body started to hurt. It felt like he had been whacked all over with a baseball bat. When he put his feet on the ground, it felt like he was stepping on knives. Merrick’s doctors in Alabama tested him for every disease under the sun and pumped him full of antibiotics, but he just got sicker.  

A month into Merrick’s inexplicable illness, his doctors X-rayed his chest and spotted a mass in his lung. He recalls being prepped for a biopsy when a team of infectious disease specialists burst into his hospital room and told the doctors to stop. “It was like I was on an episode of House or something,” Merrick said. The specialists knew something Merrick’s doctors didn’t: the ball in his lung wasn’t cancer, it was a fungal mass. 

Merrick had a disease called Valley fever, caused by inhalation of the spores of a microscopic fungus called Coccidioides, which grows in the desert southwest. It is often misdiagnosed by doctors, particularly in states like Alabama where Valley fever is found only in patients who have traveled elsewhere. The fungus grows in the top few inches of soil and flourishes during periods of heavy rain. When the soil dries out, the tiny spores can be lifted into the air by any disturbance — a strong wind, an excavator on a construction site, or even, research suggests, a wildfire — and end up in someone’s lungs. That’s what Merrick thinks happened to him in Ventura as he helped his mom dig out from the wildfire. He was quickly put on a course of antifungal medications and started to feel better immediately. Within a week, he was good as new. 

Patients with Valley fever undergo an hours-long treatment at San Joaquin Valley Pulmonary in 2005. Valley fever is one of many diseases experts say are likely to worsen due to the effects of climate change.
Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Across the United States, worsening extreme weather events are jeopardizing the health of communities with increasing regularity every year. These health threats fall into two categories: direct and indirect. Direct impacts, such as deaths caused by storm surge or falling trees, most often make headlines. 

But experts warn that it’s the indirect effects of hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat waves that typically end up taking the greatest toll on public health. These include region-specific diseases like Valley fever, which you can learn more about from the Valley Fever Center for Excellence in Arizona. They also include much more prevalent threats like mold, air pollution, and E. coli. 

Read Next The disease after tomorrow Zoya Teirstein

This guide will walk you through some of the most common and widespread short and long-term health consequences to be aware of after disasters, and how to best prepare for them. To make this guide, Grist consulted longstanding resources from federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Where federal information wasn’t available, Grist relied on resources compiled by state health agencies and trusted independent groups such as the Red Cross. 

Mold

Drying out your house or apartment should be a top priority following any kind of flooding event. Mold can start growing on wet wood and fiber within 24 hours. Mold spores can cause hay fever, asthma, and nose, throat, and lung irritation — particularly in children, older adults, immunocompromised people, and anyone who already has asthma. The EPA and FEMA have a number of recommendations for responding to mold after a flood:

• Move everything that can’t be dried out thoroughly within 24 to 48 hours to the curb.
• Open windows and doors to promote airflow throughout your living space.
• Wear protective gear such as gloves, masks, and goggles when handling moldy or mildewed materials.
• Don’t paint over mold as it crops up — covering mold with paint or caulk doesn’t get rid of it.
• Don’t overuse bleach. You will likely see a lot of bleach at distribution sites to be used for cleanup. You can use bleach on hard, nonporous surfaces to kill mold, but do not use it on porous surfaces like wood. Instead, make sure those dry completely before deciding whether to keep them. And whenever you’re using bleach, ventilate the area. 
• Don’t mix different types of cleaning solutions together — some combinations, like bleach and ammonia, can create a toxic gas.  

Resources:

• Read FEMA’s guide to mold removal in English.
• Lea la guía del estado de Illinois para la eliminación de moho en Español.

Read more: How disaster response works and how to get help with cleanup

Water-borne disease outbreaks 

Floods, the most common natural disaster in the U.S., can overwhelm septic systems and sewers and send sewage spilling into streets and local bodies of open water. People don’t often think about the status of their town’s sewage system, but much of the country’s aging water infrastructure is in desperate need of upgrades. 

Local officials often warn residents never to wade into floodwater, and there’s a reason for that: It contains a hazardous mix of contaminants including gasoline, industrial waste, and a host of pathogens in feces and other human byproducts.

There are steps you can take to protect yourself from common waterborne pathogens like Vibrio cholerae, E. coli, or Leptospira, the last of which can cause diarrheal diseases, hepatitis A, and leptospirosis. 

• Wash your hands with soap and water as often as possible.
• Pay attention to local health advisories, and boil compromised tap water for at least one minute or add household bleach (2 drops per liter) to disinfect it before drinking it. 
• Don’t wade into floodwater, and be especially careful about direct contact with floodwater if you have an open wound.

Read more: How climate change impacts flooding and heavy rainfall

Resources: 

• Read the CDC’s safety guidelines for flooding in English.
• Lea el cartel de los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades sobre cómo proteger a su familia después de un huracán en Español.

Mosquito-borne disease outbreaks

The country’s worst disasters — hurricanes, wildfires, and heat waves — tend to strike during the warm parts of the year. Warmth means more insects, and some insects carry disease. 

Flooding makes things worse, since just a bottle cap full of standing water is enough moisture for a mosquito to breed in. When a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast, water often collects for days or weeks in ditches, car tires, potholes, and more. Mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus and other diseases tend to benefit from heavy rainfall and erratic weather. 

Broken roofs, open windows during power outages, and time spent outside cleaning up debris in the aftermath of disasters give the insects ample opportunity to bite people.

• Try to get rid of as much standing water near your home as possible. Empty out car tires, dump out your pots and planters, and call your local health department to report large pools of standing water you can’t drain yourself.
• Brush up on the symptoms of the mosquito-borne illnesses in your area. Look up the website for your state or local health department and search for “mosquitoes” to find out more. There’s often a week or two-week long delay between a mosquito bite and the first signs of illness, so stay vigilant.
• Keep an insect repellent containing DEET or picaridin in your home and in your emergency go bag. 

Resources:

• Read the Mayo Clinic’s guide on mosquito-borne illnesses. 
• Read the CDC’s guide on what you can do to protect yourself from mosquitoes after a hurricane in English.
• Lea el cartel de California sobre cómo protegerse de los mosquitos después de una tormenta en Español.

Air pollution 

Wildfires, dust storms caused by drought, and extreme heat all degrade air quality and make it hard to breathe. Asthma attacks, lung irritation, and cardiovascular events like heart attacks tend to rise during and after these extreme weather events. Children, pregnant people, older adults, and people living with chronic illnesses like COPD and asthma are at an especially high risk of adverse reactions to air pollution. 

• Sign up for air quality index or AQI alerts from your county or state and keep an eye on those numbers. Any AQI over 150 is hazardous for all groups, and levels higher than 100 are unhealthy for sensitive groups such as people who are older, pregnant, or asthmatic.
• Buy a high efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, purifier for your house — these appliances are affordable and can eliminate upward of 90 percent of the airborne contaminants from your home. 
• Keep an N95 mask on you and wear it whenever you’re outdoors in heavy pollution.

Resources:

• Read airnow.gov’s guide on how to protect yourself from smoke in English.
• Lea la infografía de ourair.org sobre cómo protegerse del humo en Español.

Extreme heat

In recent years, environmental, labor, and healthcare advocacy groups have pressured FEMA to classify heat waves as major disasters — a designation that would unlock federal aid and resources to states grappling with prolonged dangerous temperatures. The federal agency hasn’t acquiesced, but there is growing awareness among state and federal health officials that extreme heat poses an ever-greater risk to populations across the country as climate change gets worse. 

Anyone who has trouble thermoregulating, or maintaining a stable internal temperature, is physiologically more susceptible to heat-related illness and heatstroke during a heat wave. Children and older adults, as well as immunocompromised and pregnant people, fall into this category. 

Socioeconomic and environmental factors like access to air conditioning and the number of trees in your neighborhood can modulate your risk. People who rent their homes, particularly in low-income areas that already lack adequate tree cover due to government redlining and discriminatory housing practices, are more likely to lack access to life-saving air conditioning. 

• Stay hydrated. Drinking water (not alcohol or caffeine, which can dehydrate you) helps your body keep its organs and tissues cool. Drink water even if you don’t feel thirsty — at least 64 ounces per day, and about 32 ounces every hour that you’re working outside in the heat.
• Stay indoors during the hottest portion of the day, and try to stay in a basement or lower level of your house or apartment building, if possible. 
• If you don’t have an air conditioner, go to a local cooling center. Many cities set up such centers at libraries or sports arenas during heat waves, but they’re underutilized because people often don’t know they exist. Consult your city’s health department website. 
• If you don’t have access to air conditioning, take cool showers and put damp towels or ice packs on your neck, wrists, or forehead. 
• Older adults and people with disabilities who can’t easily get to a lower floor or take a cool shower, who have difficulty moving around or calling 911, or who might be slow to recognize the symptoms of heat-related illness or heatstroke, are especially susceptible to heat waves. Check in on your vulnerable neighbors, or make a plan with someone nearby if you know you’re at risk. 
• Watch for symptoms like dizziness, nausea, headache, muscle cramps, rapid heartbeat, confusion, or loss of consciousness — those are signs of heat-related illness and indicate that you need to go to an urgent care center or the hospital ASAP. 

Resources:

• Read the Red Cross’s extreme heat preparedness checklist in English.
• Lea la guía de preparación para el calor extremo de la Cruz Roja en Español.

Accessing medical care

Disasters can flood roads, wash away bridges, burn down community centers, and jam highways with traffic. They can destroy health clinics, displace doctors, and wreak havoc on emergency rooms. Preparing for disruptions to your medical care ahead of time can save your life. 

• Keep at least one week’s supply of prescription medications on hand at all times.
• Have a backup source of power if you rely on electric medical devices like a dialysis machine or a ventilator, and register your needs with your local emergency department so they’re aware. Ask your health care provider about what you may be able to do to keep your device running during a power outage.
• Keep a copy of your health records on hand — both digital and paper copies — in case you have to go to an emergency room or you’re not able to see your primary doctor.
• Anyone with a serious medical condition such as epilepsy, congenital heart disease, or severe allergies should wear a medical alert tag or bracelet. Also save pertinent medical information to the emergency settings on your electronic devices.

Read more: How to pack an emergency kit and make sure all your medical documents are in order

Resources:

• Fill out ready.gov’s Make a Plan form in English.
• Complete el formulario “Haga un plan” de ready.gov en Español.
• The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies has a list of things to think about before a disaster if you are a disabled person, and rights you should know if you need to access care. 

Mental health issues

Disasters tear at the social fabric that makes a life worth living and have resounding mental health repercussions that can stretch on for months, even years, after the disaster makes its first impact. These include anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, post-traumatic stress, and suicide. A study published last year, for example, showed more than 6,000 adolescents in Puerto Rico developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder following Hurricane Maria in 2017. 

Grist has a more detailed list of resources for those experiencing mental health issues or struggling with substance abuse here. Below are some of the most important things: 

• Find your local mental health support hotline by searching online or calling your local health department, or call 988, which is the national mental health hotline.
• Talk to other people who have also lived through a disaster, either in person or online. Searching on Facebook for a support group is a good place to start.
• Talk to a doctor. Some primary care physicians have been trained in psychological first aid (PFA), an approach to helping survivors or witnesses exposed to disaster or terrorism. You can search “psychological first aid” on ZocDoc or another online healthcare database to find doctors and psychologists who specialize in disaster recovery mental health work. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration also has a webpage where survivors of disasters can find helpful resources. 

Resources:

• Lea los consejos de la Administración de Servicios de Abuso de Sustancias y Salud Mental para sobrevivientes de un evento traumático en Español.
• Read psychiatry.org’s webpage on how to cope after a disaster in English.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to protect your health if a disaster strikes your community  on Jul 7, 2025.

Extreme weather seems to make the headlines almost every week, as disasters increasingly strike out of season, break records, and hit places they never have before. 

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and hurricanes. 

Every spring, the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, releases its forecast for the upcoming hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 through November 30. The agency’s projections for the Atlantic Ocean — and the communities living along the United States’ Eastern and Gulf coasts — paints an increasingly grim picture: Most seasonal predictions are now what NOAA considers “above normal,” with more hurricanes forming and warmer ocean waters fueling these storms to rapidly intensify into larger, more dangerous ones. Smaller-scale climate trends, like the El Niño and La Niña climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean, can also influence hurricane season. 

Hurricanes are intensifying at the same time that sea levels are rising, worsening the risks of flooding from dangerous storm surges. An unusual Pacific Ocean hurricane that hit Alaska in 2022, for example, caused a storm surge so powerful that a town 18 miles inland experienced major, unexpected flooding. 

Hurricanes are also developing stronger wind speeds, going through rapid intensification, and growing wetter — dropping more rain when they make landfall — as ocean waters heat up and air becomes warmer, thereby holding more moisture. In 2024, 11 hurricanes formed in the Atlantic Ocean. Five strengthened to major storms, Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Two of them — Beryl, which hit Houston in July, and Milton, which landed in Florida in October — peaked as Category 5 storms, the highest rating on the scale. 

“We would have had zero Category 5 storms without human-caused climate change,” Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist, told Grist in 2024. 

Read Next Climate change made all of 2024’s Atlantic hurricanes so much worse Matt Simon

Hurricanes or tropical storms are also increasingly moving slowly or stalling over land, unleashing devastating wind and rain on communities for days at a time, rather than the typical hours. Hurricane Harvey in 2017, for example, hit Texas as a Category 4 storm and sat over the southeastern part of the state for nearly four days, dumping upwards of 50 inches of rain and causing widespread flooding.

As storms become more intense, some scientists have cautioned that the current hurricane rating system might need an upgrade. The Saffir-Simpson scale’s categories — which only measure wind speed — are no longer a good proxy for potential danger or damage. Several recent storms have either exceeded Category 5 wind speeds or packed a wallop in other ways, from devastating rain or storm surge, not measured by the system. Meanwhile, researchers at Louisiana State University have also found that the official length of hurricane season, starting in June and ending in November, may also need to be extended. In 2023, a storm was observed forming over warm ocean waters as early as January. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is intensifying hurricanes on Jul 7, 2025.

Extreme weather seems to make the headlines almost every week, as disasters increasingly strike out of season, break records, and hit places they never have before. 

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and wildfires. 

In a hotter, drier world, wildfires have become more frequent and destructive. Scientists have definitively linked anthropogenic climate change to increased wildfire risks: A 2016 study found that, because of human-caused carbon emissions, the total number of large fires since 1984 had doubled. A 2021 study supported by NOAA similarly concluded that climate change is primarily responsible for wildfire conditions, like hotter and drier summers. Wildfires themselves also release carbon when trees and other vegetation go up in flames. Globally, in 2023, wildfires caused 8.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. 

The Western United States is the epicenter of the country’s growing wildfire crisis: Dry, hot conditions are getting more dangerous, snow is melting earlier in the spring, and summer droughts have become more severe. Warming temperatures also encourage outbreaks of pests like bark beetles, weakening or killing wide swaths of forests. This dead and dried out vegetation becomes kindling waiting for a spark — whether that’s trash or debris fires, lightning strikes, or ill-advised fireworks. 

But these risky conditions are now more common in other parts of the country as well. On the East Coast, states are experiencing more “fire weather” days per year than they were 50 years ago. In New Jersey’s Pine Barren forest, for example, dry fall and winter conditions mean that deciduous trees shed drier leaves onto the forest floor — essentially, kindling waiting for a spark. 

As the conditions that fuel wildfires have worsened, so too has the number of people living in wildfire-prone zones. Between 1990 and 2010, according to the Forest Service, housing developments in the “wildland-urban interface” — a vulnerable ecological area where housing abuts or intermingles with the edges of forest — increased by 41 percent. 

Like most climate events, wildfires are an inherent natural process, and plant species have adapted to live alongside lower-intensity, cyclical fires. For thousands of years, Indigenous tribes reduced fire risks by using controlled or cultural burns, strategically clearing areas of dried-up vegetation before nature takes its course. European settlers, and later the federal government, did not have the same relationship to fires and forests. The cultural and ecological practice was banned for centuries in some states, including California. The U.S. Forest Service also had a “10 a.m. policy” for decades that instructed fire agencies to extinguish every blaze the same day it started — even those burning low and slow. Abandoning controlled burns and focusing on fire suppression caused a buildup of dead vegetation that helped fuel larger fires. Only recently have some ecologists and lawmakers reversed course, collaborating with tribes to reintroduce controlled burns to improve forest management. 

“There are solutions we have in our knowledge and in our management approaches that can help restore these ecosystems and can also benefit the public,” U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Frank K. Lake, a descendant of the Karuk tribe, told Grist in 2020. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is supercharging wildfires on Jul 7, 2025.

Extreme weather seems to make the headlines almost every week, as disasters increasingly strike out of season, break records, and hit places they never have before. 

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and tornadoes. 

Readers from southern and central U.S. states are likely accustomed to the sound of tornado sirens during spring and summer. But tornadoes are not exclusive to that part of the world — they have been recorded everywhere except Antarctica. All it takes is a mass of cold, dry air colliding with a warmer, moist one, which usually happens during a thunderstorm. If these air masses begin to rotate, a funnel-shaped cloud forms, bringing dangerous high-speed winds that can rip homes from their foundations. 

In the U.S., these storms most frequently form in “tornado alley,” an area in the central U.S. that includes Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, and the Dakotas. But they’re also common in southern states, including Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and some parts of the Midwest. 

Predicting exactly when, why, and where a tornado may hit has long mystified meteorologists and forecasters. Tornadoes form fast and move unpredictably. The temperature, humidity, and wind speeds might be exactly right, but some thunderstorms produce dozens of tornadoes while other storm patterns don’t produce any. Forecasting and warning systems have gotten much better over the years, but the lead time for a tornado warning is still about 10 minutes, compared to days for a hurricane evacuation. 

Climate scientists haven’t yet established if global warming has impacted the frequency or strength of tornadoes. But there have been some unusual events in recent years, as more tornadoes have touched down in the eastern United States. In December 2021, an outbreak of thunderstorms and tornadoes made headlines after nearly 100 people were killed across several states in the Midwest, South, and Great Plains. Typically, tornadoes don’t occur late into winter months, so these communities were caught off guard, leaving many to scramble to seek shelter. Warmer winter temperatures may contribute to tornado conditions, but more research is needed to understand the link.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change may be affecting tornadoes on Jul 7, 2025.

Extreme weather seems to make the headlines almost every week, as disasters increasingly strike out of season, break records, and hit places they never have before. 

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and flooding. 

Flooding is one of the most common natural disasters that can devastate a community. Between 2000 and 2019, nearly 1.6 billion people globally were impacted by floods, according to a study published in Nature. 

In the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been criticized for outdated and incomplete maps that severely underestimate the number of people living in areas with a high risk of flooding. In 2018, a study estimated 41 million Americans live within a 100-year flood zone, or a region with a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year — over three times FEMA’s estimate of 13 million. 

In 2023, for example, thousands of homes in Vermont flooded during a historic storm, and some that weren’t officially listed on any floodplain maps were inundated with 5 feet of water. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 flooded some 200,000 homes or businesses, including tens of thousands of structures not classified as being in the flood zone.  

This undercount results in fewer people holding flood insurance policies than are actually at risk, leaving homeowners without financial support when disaster hits (regular home insurance does not cover floodwater). And because there are no federal requirements for a seller to disclose previous floods, potential home buyers might not even know they should have a policy. 

Floods can happen almost anywhere — not just next to bodies of water. Heavy rain can cause rivers and even small creeks to overflow. Strong winds can create storm surges, causing ocean water to inundate coastal communities. In urban and suburban areas, flash flooding takes place when heavy rain can’t drain through paved, concrete surfaces; it pools in streets and overwhelms sewer systems. 

Climate change is creating more extreme rainstorms, as warmer air can hold more moisture that will eventually come down as rain. Put another way: Earth “sweats” more as warmer air causes more water to evaporate and then condense and fall as rain. Models suggest that these storms can also stall for an extended period of time, deluging an area with more water than it can handle. Making matters worse, these storms can hit after extreme droughts and heat waves, a climate trend known as “weather whiplash.” When soil becomes hard and dry, it acts more like concrete, unable to soak up the excess water as effectively as it would in normal conditions. 

The warming oceans are also affecting rainfall: The Gulf of Mexico’s waters supercharged Hurricane Helene, for example, which made landfall in Florida before quickly moving inland and dumping 40 trillion gallons of water across the Southeast and into Appalachia. 

As rainfall becomes more extreme, experts have warned that existing flood control infrastructure won’t be adequate to protect communities in the future and is struggling under current conditions. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ annual infrastructure report card rates the nation’s dams, levees, and stormwater systems. This year, none of these categories received a grade above a D. These systems are in need of billions of dollars of repair and upgrades already, on top of the added stresses of climate change. In 2025, the Trump administration pulled funding for these types of projects as it reversed course from the previous administration’s climate goals, so many planned improvements are tied up in legal battles. Meanwhile, other projects being studied and planned aren’t factoring in the risks posed by climate change. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is worsening flooding and heavy rainfall on Jul 7, 2025.

Extreme weather seems to make the headlines almost every week, as disasters increasingly strike out of season, break records, and hit places they never have before. 

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and extreme heat. 

The relationship between climate change and heat waves is perhaps the most straightforward of any disaster. “If we have an extreme heat wave, the null hypothesis is, ‘Climate change is making that worse,’” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, told Grist after a record-breaking heatwave hit the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The planet has already warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit compared to pre-industrial times, and most heat waves we’ve experienced since have either been caused or strengthened by that. In 2020, scientists concluded that extreme heat in Siberia — with temperatures nearing 100 degrees in the Arctic Circle — was made 600 times more likely because of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Cities in the U.S. are seeing 100-degree days more often, and they’re not just reserved for the dead of summer. Some places, like Houston, have hit triple digits in February. Cities with mild climates might be ill-equipped to respond to the new normal, and will need to invest in interventions like better warning systems and outreach, subsidizing air conditioning installations in low-income housing, maintaining a network of public cooling centers and transportation services during heat waves, and strengthening the electrical grid to withstand the additional energy load. 

Policies barring utility companies from disconnecting electric services can also protect vulnerable residents, who may be afraid to run their AC all day due to the costs. Forty states have disconnection moratoriums during extreme cold — but only 21 have similar laws for extreme heat. 

Nighttime temperatures are rising as well, intensifying the risk of heat waves. This is especially troubling for people who don’t have access to air conditioning (over 35 million people in the U.S., for example), or those who live in urban heat islands, where the abundance of heat-trapping concrete combined with a lack of trees and shade in some neighborhoods can cause temperatures to rise 15 to 20 degrees higher than neighborhoods with parks and green spaces.  

Extreme heat can cause a myriad of health problems and even be deadly, particularly for the elderly, those who work outdoors, unhoused people, and people with pre-existing heart or lung conditions. Even for healthy adults, extreme heat can make it difficult for the body to cool itself off, which puts acute stress on the heart and kidneys. A recent study found that chronic heat exposure ages the body more than habitual smoking. Between 2004 and 2021, the number of Americans who officially died from heat exposure rose by 439 percent. On average over the last 30 years, heat waves have killed more people than hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. 

Even though it’s becoming more common and more dangerous, FEMA still does not classify extreme heat as a natural disaster, so federal funding to support local relief efforts is not available. Labor unions, environmental groups, and health professionals are pushing the federal agency to change that. Some advocates even say that heat waves should be named and ranked on a simple scale, like hurricanes are, to increase public awareness about the risks of extreme heat. For example, a pilot program in Seville, Spain, named heat waves (similar to hurricanes), and ranked them in three classifications based on severity. Each category triggered specific alerts and public health interventions like cooling centers and wellness checks. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is worsening extreme heat on Jul 7, 2025.

Los desastres pueden ser abrumadores si usted es un inmigrante, ya sea por su estatus migratorio, barreras del idioma o confusión en torno a sus derechos. Es importante recordar que existen redes comunitarias confiables, junto con otros recursos útiles. Esta guía ofrece información actualizada de algunos de esos recursos, así como ejemplos de organización comunitaria y trabajo de políticas que han hecho más sencillo que los inmigrantes encuentren ayuda. También incluye buenas prácticas para gestionar la ayuda y la recuperación ante desastres en un momento en el que existe un mayor riesgo de deportación para ciertos inmigrantes. Esta información ha sido verificada y se actualizará periódicamente conforme cambien las leyes, prácticas y recursos.

Read this in English.

Saltar a:

↓ Cómo encontrar información confiable
↓ Servicios gubernamentales en su idioma
↓ Cómo funciona la ayuda federal para desastres
↓ Qué hacer si se encuentra con ICE
↓ Mejores prácticas para mantenerse a salvo
↓ Cómo abogar por mejores recursos

Cómo encontrar información confiable

Los recursos federales, estatales y comunitarios revisados aquí pueden ayudarlo a encontrar información precisa y confiable en caso de desastre.

Marque 211

Cuando marque 211, será enlazado al directorio de servicios comunitarios gratuitos de la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones. Este puede ser un paso clave para tener acceso a los servicios públicos. Funciona de manera similar al 911, donde un operador atenderá la llamada y le ayudará a encontrar lo que necesite, incluyendo servicios para quienes no hablan inglés.

Medios de comunicación independientes

Los medios de noticias que atienden a personas que no hablan inglés a menudo ofrecen guías de recursos de emergencia que no existen en los medios tradicionales. Busque una fuente de noticias publicada en su idioma y en su área. He aquí algunos ejemplos:

• El Tímpano en California ofrece una guía de recursos de emergencia en español.
• Para prepararse para la temporada de huracanes de este año, Enlace Latino NC publicó un artículo en español sobre cómo obtener radios gratuitas por parte de la Oficina Nacional de Administración Oceánica y Atmosférica, o NOAA (por sus siglas en inglés), en la ciudad de Raleigh, en North Carolina. La radio es un medio primario para comunicar alertas de emergencia e información meteorológica en Estados Unidos y puede ser especialmente útil durante cortes de energía.
• Grist publicó una guía en español y criollo haitiano para trabajadores agrícolas de Florida durante la temporada de huracanes de 2024.

Organizaciones de derechos de los inmigrantes

A lo largo del país, organizaciones de derechos de los inmigrantes ofrecen una serie de servicios y consejos que pueden resultar útiles en situaciones de desastre. Se trata de grupos confiables que ofrecen apoyo y abogan por el cambio todo el año, no solo durante los desastres. Buscar en línea organizaciones locales que se enfoquen específicamente en asuntos de inmigrantes y trabajadores — escribiendo el nombre de su estado y las frases “derechos de los inmigrantes” o “derechos de los trabajadores” — es una excelente forma de comenzar a buscar apoyo. Las herramientas destacadas a continuación también pueden inspirar otros términos de búsqueda en su estado, como “herramientas o recursos de preparación para desastres en español”, por ejemplo.

• En North Carolina, el Episcopal Farmworker Ministry lanzó una serie de videos en español para ayudar a las comunidades de inmigrantes y a sus familias a prepararse para los desastres y para recuperarse después de ellos. Este video explica cómo el funcionamiento de las alertas de emergencia aplica a cualquier estado del país.
• En Oregon, el sindicato de trabajadores agrícolas Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, o PCUN, armó un conjunto de herramientas de preparación para desastres en español que está disponible de manera gratuita en Google Drive.
• Usted puede involucrarse esparciendo la voz en su propia comunidad con la ayuda de los recursos disponibles y confiables. PCUN también ofrece gráficos gratuitos para redes sociales sobre los peligros del estrés por calor y qué hacer para mantenerse a salvo en su hogar y lugar de trabajo.

Muchas de estas organizaciones también ofrecen cursos de actualización legal para que los inmigrantes entiendan sus derechos, los cuales pueden verse afectados por la presencia de agentes federales en zonas de desastre. Puede leer más al respecto más adelante, bajo “Qué hacer si se encuentra con el Servicio de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas, o ICE (por sus siglas en inglés)” y “Mejores prácticas para mantenerse a salvo”.

Servicios gubernamentales en su idioma

La ley federal de derechos civiles exige que cualquier entidad que reciba fondos federales — incluyendo prácticamente todas las agencias estatales y locales — proporcione acceso lingüístico a personas con un manejo limitado del inglés. Y en años recientes, un número creciente de agencias gubernamentales locales y estatales han reforzado sus políticas de acceso lingüístico como resultado de la organización de miembros de la comunidad y de organizaciones de inmigrantes.

En 2023, los incendios forestales se propagaron por la ciudad de Lahaina, en la isla de Maui, Hawái. Como resultado inmediato de ello, el 30 por ciento de los habitantes de Lahaina con manejo limitado del inglés tuvieron dificultades para acceder a la información de emergencia. Liza Ryan-Gill, directora ejecutiva de la Coalición Hawaiana por los Derechos de los Inmigrantes, pasó dos días organizando llamadas con al menos 80 defensores comunitarios para decidir cómo hacer llegar la información a las comunidades de inmigrantes que la necesitaban — en idiomas que pudieran entender. En 2024, luego de que activistas se organizaran para que se destinaran fondos federales a la gestión local de emergencias para el acceso lingüístico, Hawái aprobó la ley HB 2107 y contrató a un coordinador de acceso lingüístico con manejo limitado del inglés para el departamento de manejo de emergencias del estado. Actualmente, todos los recursos de emergencia del estado se traducen a al menos siete idiomas.

Otros estados han tomado acciones similares: en Michigan, una ley de 2023 exige servicios de traducción e interpretación para idiomas hablados por personas que tienen un manejo limitado del inglés y que representen al menos al 3 por ciento de la población, o 500 individuos, en la región atendida por una agencia estatal. New York actualizó su política de acceso lingüístico en 2022 para cubrir 12 de los idiomas más comunes, distintos al inglés, hablados por residentes del estado con un manejo limitado del inglés.

Aunque la mayoría de las ciudades y estados no exigen a sus agencias que proactivamente traduzcan documentos y recursos a idiomas específicos, vale la pena consultar con el gobierno local y las agencias de manejo de emergencias. Si aún no brindan información en su idioma, puede solicitarla.

Agencias de manejo de emergencias: Su ciudad o condado cuenta con un departamento de gestión de emergencias, que es parte del gobierno local. Los gestores de emergencias son responsables de comunicarse con la gente acerca de los desastres, de organizar las labores de rescate y respuesta, y de coordinarse con otras agencias. Generalmente cuentan con un sistema de alertas vía SMS, así que suscríbase ahora para recibir esos mensajes de texto. Algunas ciudades disponen de varios idiomas, pero la mayoría de las alertas existen solo en inglés. Muchas agencias de manejo de emergencias están activas en Facebook, así que también consulte allí actualizaciones al respecto.

Si tiene problemas para localizar su departamento local, Grist le sugiere que escriba en Google su ciudad o condado seguido de “manejo de emergencias”. También puede buscar el departamento de manejo de emergencias de su estado o territorio, que brinda una función similar para una jurisdicción mayor. Cada sitio web luce distinto, pero muchos de ellos ofrecen opciones de traducción en la parte superior o inferior de cada página. También puede usar el Traductor de Google, u otro programa de detección automática de idioma ligado a su navegador, para traducir automáticamente cualquier página web.

Servicio Meteorológico Nacional: Esta agencia, a menudo llamada NWS (por sus siglas en inglés), ofrece información y actualizaciones sobre todo, desde incendios forestales, pasando por huracanes y hasta calidad del aire. Usted puede ingresar su código postal en weather.gov y personalizar su página de inicio para obtener la información meteorológica más actual y recibir alertas sobre distintas condiciones climáticas. La NWS también envía alertas de emergencia meteorológicas localizadas a los celulares de la población a través de redes inalámbricas, así como a la televisión y estaciones de radio, y la NOAA Weather Radio, que puede recibir transmisiones del NWS. (Asegúrese de haber elegido recibir alertas de emergencia en los ajustes de su teléfono). Algunas oficinas locales de NWS traducen automáticamente alertas locales a varios idiomas — incluyendo chino, vietnamita, francés, samoano y español — en tiempo real.

Lea más: Cómo prepararse para un desastre

Cómo funciona la ayuda federal en caso de desastre

La Agencia Federal para el Manejo de Emergencias, o FEMA (por sus siglas en inglés), es la agencia principal de respuesta a desastres del gobierno federal. Pertenece al Departamento de Seguridad Nacional de los Estados Unidos, o DHS (por sus siglas en inglés). Con frecuencia, la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza de Estados Unidos, que también es parte del DHS, se moviliza para ayudar luego de un desastre. En 2021, el gobierno de Biden emitió una guía que designaba los lugares donde se proporciona respuesta y ayuda ante desastres o emergencias como “áreas protegidas”, donde los agentes de inmigración no debían realizar acciones de cumplimiento de la ley. Sin embargo, en enero, el gobierno de Trump derogó esa política.

Incluso así, expertos y defensores de los inmigrantes a nivel nacional enfatizan que FEMA ofrece ayuda no financiera a cualquier persona, independientemente de su estatus migratorio. Esto incluye albergue, suministros de emergencia, asesoría y otros recursos. Para solicitar apoyo financiero, algún miembro de su familia debe ser ciudadano estadounidense; este podría ser un niño. Un hogar podrá solicitar ayuda económica solo una vez por desastre, según las directrices de la FEMA. Si más de un integrante de la misma familia presenta una solicitud para ello, provocará un retraso en el proceso.

“Lo tranquilizador de este momento es que nada ha cambiado en este campo”, señaló Ahmed Gaya, director de Climate Justice Collaborative, del National Partnership for New Americans, una coalición de 82 organizaciones estatales y locales de inmigrantes y refugiados.

Añadió que “la confianza de nuestras comunidades en el gobierno federal, así como la confianza en FEMA y DHS, está en su punto más bajo”, pero que la ley no ha cambiado y que las personas indocumentadas siguen teniendo derecho a la ayuda de emergencia inmediata.

“Existe un miedo real y creíble de que haya un cambio en el liderazgo del DHS, en términos de administración y retórica. Pero los derechos legales siguen siendo los mismos actualmente”.

Gaya afirmó que, hasta junio de 2025, no han “recibido informes desde el campo sobre prácticas y políticas de FEMA que se desvíen drásticamente de su funcionamiento habitual en lo que respecta al trato con comunidades de estatus mixto e indocumentadas”.

Lea más: Cómo trabajan las agencias y los funcionarios involucrados en la respuesta a emergencias

Qué hacer si se encuentra con el Servicio de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas, o ICE

“Probablemente no verá a los agentes de ICE en los albergues para desastres solicitando documentos, pero no podemos predecir cómo actuará ICE”, señala Rich Stolz, un colega de Gaya, quien también es investigador Senior en Just Solutions y se enfoca en la intersección entre la justicia climática y la estrategia y organización de los derechos de los inmigrantes. “El reto para los grupos defensores y de emergencia es asegurarse de que la gente pueda tomar decisiones informadas. La preocupación es que las personas estarán bajo más estrés en el contexto de un desastre, y podrían olvidar sus derechos”.

Puede ser útil tener a la mano una tarjeta roja para mostrarles a los agentes de ICE en caso de un interrogatorio. Estas tarjetas describen sus derechos —como el derecho a guardar silencio y a hablar con un abogado — y cualquiera puede ordenarlas en línea. Están disponibles a través del Centro Nacional de Leyes de Inmigración en español, árabe, chino, criollo haitiano, coreano, tagalo y vietnamita.

Existen varias guías “Conozca sus derechos” para inmigrantes que aplican en todo tipo de situaciones, no solo en desastres:

• El Centro Nacional de Leyes de Inmigración (NILC, por sus siglas en inglés) ofrece una Guía ‘Conozca sus derechos’ recomendada por expertos en leyes. Está disponible en árabe, chino, coreano y español.
• El Centro Nacional de Justicia para Inmigrantes (NIJC, por sus siglas en inglés) ofrece una guía disponible en español, criollo haitiano, francés e inglés, que incluye leyes que debe conocer, ejemplos de órdenes de arresto y líneas de ayuda.
• La National Day Laborer Organizing Network y la Alianza Nacional por el TPS (una organización para personas con estatus de protección temporal) armaron una guía ilustrada de sus derechos en inglés y español. En la página 2, usted puede hallar instrucciones paso a paso sobre qué hacer si ICE lo detiene en la calle o en un espacio público.

Mejores prácticas para mantenerse a salvo Acceso a refugios y suministros de emergencia

Usted no debería necesitar una identificación para recibir suministros de emergencia o para albergarse en la mayoría de los refugios en caso de emergencia, pero es posible que le soliciten alguna. Podría tratarse de una identificación con o sin foto; no significa necesariamente que deba proporcionar una licencia para conducir, pasaporte o número de seguridad social. Algunas organizaciones ofrecen identificaciones comunitarias a aquellos que no califiquen para una ID emitida por el estado. Estas podrían no ser aceptadas dependiendo del condado o la ubicación.

La Cruz Roja, que opera refugios luego de grandes desastres, afirma que no solicita ninguna documentación sobre estatus legal cuando brinda ayuda.

Lea más: Cómo tener acceso a comida antes, durante y después de un desastre

Acudir a un albergue o centro de acogida gubernamental puede ser intimidante. A continuación, algunos otros consejos recopilados por organizaciones defensoras de los derechos de los inmigrantes:

• Utilice el sistema de compañeros: Estará más seguro si va acompañado. Vaya con varias personas para tener más confianza de que recibirá la ayuda que necesita.
• Encuentre alguien que hable inglés: Si le preocupa la barrera del idioma, alguien que hable inglés podrá ayudarlo a obtener los servicios que busque.
• Solicite un intérprete: Cuando hable con la policía, los bomberos o empleados de un hospital, usted tiene el derecho legal a un intérprete. Otras agencias e instituciones también podrían tener acceso a intérpretes y traductores.
• Póngase en contacto con una organización de defensa: Las organizaciones defensoras de los derechos de los trabajadores agrícolas y los inmigrantes podrían ayudarlo a conseguir los suministros y alimento que necesite en un lugar seguro.
• Hable con su comunidad de fe: Hable sobre sus opciones con su pastor local, miembros de su templo o alguien más en que confíe.

Apoyo para los trabajadores de desastres

Si usted es un trabajador de desastres inmigrante, jornalero o un segundo interviniente (brinda ayuda a los socorristas), tiene derechos y está legalmente protegido por la Administración de Seguridad y Salud Ocupacional, u OSHA (por sus siglas en inglés). Los centros de jornaleros y sindicatos son excelentes recursos si tiene preguntas sobre la seguridad en su trabajo. Resilience Force reunió guías ilustradas y de fácil lectura en español e inglés para personas que trabajan específicamente en la recuperación de desastres.

Cómo abogar por mejores recursos

Cada desastre tiene un efecto dominó. Es por ello que las organizaciones que no fueron creadas para lidiar con la ayuda o respuesta a desastres, asumen esa responsabilidad. “Es tarea de todos resolver eso”, indicó Marisol Jimenez, fundadora de Tepeyac Consulting, una empresa con sede en Asheville, North Carolina, para organizadores comunitarios de todo el país. “No somos organizaciones para atender desastres, pero, ¿cómo integramos esto en toda nuestra labor?”

He aquí algunos de los recursos que se están creando para ayudar a las comunidades a organizarse para el cambio:

• Stolz, Gaya y sus colegas de Just Solutions, que representan a Organizing Resilience, National Partnership for New Americans, National Immigration Law Center y otros grupos, planean lanzar una guía de recursos sobre respuesta ante desastres en relación con las políticas del gobierno de Trump para ICE. En 2022 se publicó un kit de respuesta rápida similar.
• La investigadora Melissa Villarreal, del Natural Hazards Center en Colorado, reunió una lista bibliográfica de artículos académicos, reportes gubernamentales y reportajes relacionados a emergencias y acceso lingüístico. Usted puede usar estos ejemplos cuando abogue por un cambio de políticas en el lugar en el que vive.

Los desastres impulsan a las comunidades a tomar acción debido a la necesidad, algo que puede generar presión positiva sobre los gobiernos locales. Entre más conectado esté usted con su comunidad y sus organizaciones locales de confianza, más cambios y mejores políticas podrá conseguir para mantener a los inmigrantes a salvo y apoyados.

“Mucho depende de que las organizaciones de base realmente tengan presencia, así como un plan y una estrategia”, afirma Stolz. “La capacidad de una comunidad para sobrevivir, prosperar y recuperarse depende en gran parte de la existencia de una cohesión de la comunidad y las relaciones que ahí existen”.

Esto fue traducido por Sonia Ramírez.

 

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Conozca sus derechos como inmigrante antes, durante y después de un desastre on Jul 7, 2025.

Gary Yerman, 75, sat nervously in a noisy ballroom in Virginia Beach, Virginia, counting down the minutes until he could shed his ill-fitting double-breasted suit for a sun shirt and blue jeans. He introduced himself as a fisherman of 50 years to a stranger seated next to him at the banquet table.

“That sounds really hard,” the other man replied.

“Not as hard as it’s going to be to go accept this award and talk to a room full of people,” joked Yerman. Moments later, his name was called, and he walked onto a professionally lit stage to accept a small crystal trophy from the Oceantic Network, a leading trade group for the burgeoning multibillion-dollar U.S. offshore wind industry.

It was an unlikely sight. America’s fishermen have long treated wind developers as their sworn enemies.

The conflict started in the early 2000s, when the first plans for New England’s offshore wind areas were sketched out. In packed town hall meetings that often devolved into shouting matches, fishermen claimed the projects would make it harder to earn a living: fewer fishing grounds, fewer fish, damaged ocean habitat.

Few of these predictions have come to pass in places like the U.K., which has already built over 50 offshore wind farms in its waters. Wind areas there are thriving with sharks and serving as a surprising habitat for haddock. But even today, fisher-led groups in the U.S. are spearheading lawsuits aiming to halt at least two offshore wind farms under construction on the East Coast. One former offshore wind executive told Canary Media that the amount of pushback from fishermen in America has made offshore wind investments riskier than in Europe.

Offshore wind turbine blades sit in the staging area of the recently modernized Marine Commerce Terminal in New Bedford, Massachusetts, awaiting deployment in 1 of 3 projects being actively built off the coast in spring 2025.
Clare Fieseler/Canary Media

Yerman was one of the first fishermen in the U.S. to cross this bitter divide. He’s become the reluctant face of a group of over 100 fishermen and fisherwomen who go by the name Sea Services North America. They’ve decided to work for offshore wind farms — not against them. Doing so supplements their income from scalloping, a centuries-old bedrock of the New England fishing economy that has seen revenues dry up.

Pursuing work in wind power has come at a cost. After the awards event, back in blue jeans and with a celebratory beer in hand, Yerman recounted the exact word New England fishermen used when he and his crew first crossed the Rubicon.

“They called us traitors,” he said.

Those tensions have become supercharged with the election of President Donald Trump, who has called offshore wind ​“garbage” and ​“bullshit” and, in the weeks leading up to his inauguration, pledged that ​“no new windmills” would be built in the U.S. during his presidency. He’s backed up those words with action since taking office, stopping new projects from proceeding and attempting to block some of the country’s eight fully permitted offshore wind projects, too.

Yerman and his crew are left wondering if the industry they’ve bet their livelihood on — and work they’ve risked their reputations for — will all come crashing down.

Many of the fishermen who work through Sea Services voted for Trump. And if the president fulfills his promise to halt the industry, it would be devastating not only for the Northeast’s climate goals and grid reliability — but for thousands of workers in the region, from electricians to welders to Sea Services’ fishermen.

One of Sea Services’ captains, Kevin Souza, put it simply: The impact would be ​“big time.”

‘Everyone was skeptical‘

Six years ago, Yerman was like the others — angry with offshore wind developers, particularly Danish giant Ørsted, which had set up shop in his hometown of New London, Connecticut.

Concerned that wind turbines might push his son out of the scalloping business, he pulled one of the only levers he could think to pull and contacted his state senator at the time, Paul Formica, a Republican who owned a local seafood restaurant.

Formica wanted to see the two sides get along. He arranged a meeting between Yerman and an Ørsted executive named Matthew Morrissey, who happened to be a native of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the most lucrative commercial fishing port in America.

Yerman found in Morrissey a sympathetic ear, and in turn, he listened to what the executive had to say — that Ørsted was open to partnering with fishermen. Morrissey had seen, with his own eyes, fishers working for and coexisting with Ørsted in a tiny port in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland. The energy firm had a team of about two dozen marine affairs employees, Morrissey relayed, who could help make something like that happen in America if Yerman was on board. He pitched it as a win-win.

Co-founders of Sea Services North America wait among gala attendees on April 29, 2025, to receive a Ventus Award from the Oceantic Network, one of America’s largest offshore wind industry groups.
Clare Fieseler/Canary Media

“Everyone knows that fishermen hate offshore wind companies. Well, guess what? Offshore wind companies hate fishermen, too,” Morrissey, who no longer works at Ørsted, told Canary Media earlier this year. ​“Our goal here is to spread the understanding that these two industries can and do and will work together.”

The idea intrigued Yerman. In the U.S., profits from scalloping have fluctuated from year to year, and, following a crash in the 1990s, scallop numbers remain unpredictable. In his view, if offshore wind companies were moving into their waters — like it or not — they might as well make some money from it.

Yerman got to work.

His first call was to Gordon Videll, a longtime friend and affable small-town lawyer, who knew things about contracts that Yerman didn’t. The two flew to Kilkeel — on their own dime — to see the model for themselves. Videll noticed that some of Kilkeel’s fishermen were driving cars nicer than his. He and Yerman were inspired.

When they returned to Connecticut, Yerman recruited about a half dozen of his commercial fishing buddies, and Videll started putting together the paperwork. They dubbed themselves Sea Services North America and in 2020 landed their first small contract, with Ørsted. It was a pilot, said Morrissey, to see if this arrangement would work here in America.

“Everyone was skeptical,” recalled Morrissey with a laugh. ​“Because their boats were in such poor safety condition. But you know what? They pulled it off.”

Today, Sea Services operates like a co-op and has brought 22 fishing boats up to certified safety standards. With Videll at the helm as part-time CEO, the group has completed over 11 contracts in eight different wind farm areas, from Massachusetts to New Jersey. Instead of hiring ferries or work boats, developers rely on Sea Services fishermen to provide safety and scout services for offshore wind vessels.

It’s important work: making sure, for example, no fishing gear, like crab traps, is in the way of cables, monopiles, or survey operations. If necessary, Sea Services fishermen move gear — with the owner’s approval. When not cleared, these obstacles have caused days and sometimes weeks of costly delays for developers, according to Morrissey.

Sea Services was an ​“indispensable partner” in helping to build South Fork Wind, which went online last year and became America’s first large-scale offshore wind project, wrote Ed LeBlanc, a current Ørsted executive, in an email to Canary Media. The firm has since contracted the group for other projects, in no small part because of their expertise about local waters, he added.

Cooperation between these two sides — offshore wind and commercial fishing — does exist elsewhere in America. For example, Avangrid and Vineyard Offshore, the codevelopers of the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, have paid out $8 million directly to local fishermen unaffiliated with Sea Services for similar safety jobs over the past two years.

But Sea Services is unique. Today the group offers an expansive network of 22 partner vessels based in six states and is led by a commercial fisherman. Videll brought on new technology, allowing developers to track their work in real time. He said they adopted a co-op model to maximize the amount of money going into participants’ pockets.

Receiving the Oceantic Network award in late April was a big deal for the collective, said Videll. It’s an example of how successful the venture has been in a short period of time — and, more importantly, it should be good for business. Industry awards mean visibility. More visibility could mean more Sea Services contracts.

But, right now, the Sea Services business faces headwinds that no award can help overcome.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has launched an all-out assault on the offshore wind industry. On his first day in office, he halted new lease and permitting activity and called for a review of the nine projects that already had their federal permits in hand. In March, his Environmental Protection Agency chief revoked a key permit for Atlantic Shores, a fully permitted project that has since been called off in part due to roadblocks created by the administration.

The most eyebrow-raising step came in April, when Trump’s Interior Department issued a stop-work order for Empire Wind 1, two weeks after the project had begun at-sea construction.

It was a wake-up call for Sea Services, which works for Norwegian energy giant Equinor on the project. Videll, Sea Services’ CEO, said at the time that the cessation of Empire Wind would be a crushing blow that could cost the co-op a total of $9 million to $12 million worth of work.

In May, the administration suddenly lifted the stop-work order. Sea Services’ contract was safe, at least for the time being. But it was the most bracing illustration yet that the business, in spite of all its success, now faces very choppy waters under the Trump administration.

Taking a risk

On a cloudless late-February day at the New Bedford port, 57-year-old Souza hovered over a checklist and laptop in the captain’s quarters of the Pamela Ann. Souza is the captain of the boat, and he needed to make sure everything was in order before he and his crew left New Bedford that afternoon. They’d be at sea for 10 days, working in many of the spots Souza had fished in for decades.

Those 10 days at sea would not be spent dredging up scallops from the seafloor and tallying their catch, however, but conducting safety operations for the Revolution Wind offshore wind project, which is being built off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The hulking scalloping boat, with its ebony-painted hull and wood-paneled interior, was bustling ahead of the journey. In the galley, Souza’s 25-year-old son, one of the three mates onboard, sorted through the food they’d need. Jack Morris, a 73-year-old scalloper and Sea Services manager, paced around the Pamela Ann checking in on its recently updated safety assets, like a new tracking beacon and safety suits.

City of New Bedford; Binh Nguyen/Canary Media

Trips like these have become a lifeline for Souza, his crew, and an increasing number of fishermen who depend on the struggling scalloping industry.

Today, there are roughly 350 vessels sitting in ports from Maine to North Carolina that have licenses to harvest sea scallops. For several decades, East Coast scallopers managed to eke out a comfortable middle-class lifestyle on scalloping alone. Morris said that ​“years ago” he’d pull in $200,000 to $300,000 of profit annually as a scallop boat captain.

“Yeah, those days are gone,” scoffed Morris.

While the price of scallops remains high, making it one of the most lucrative U.S. fisheries, rules passed over the last 30 years have restricted when and where scallopers can harvest, resulting in fewer days at sea, fewer scallops caught — and less money for the entire industry.

Souza has mixed emotions about the regulations.

On the one hand, scallops are no longer being overfished. A 2024 third-party audit of the fishery said it ​“meets the requirements for a well-managed and sustainable fishery.” In fact, for over a decade, U.S. sea scallops sold on grocery store shelves have carried a little blue-check label — the mark of a seafood certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.

But most scallop fishermen are now limited to an extremely short window of time during which they can harvest scallops — in 2025, it was just 24 days. Some of their favorite fishing grounds are regularly closed for scallop recovery. There are simply fewer scallops to go around. Souza estimates that captains who stick to scalloping alone are making half of what they did in years past: ​“They’re probably lucky to make a hundred [thousand].”

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Offshore wind work has helped fishermen like Souza and Morris ease the sting of that lost income.

Across Revolution Wind’s two-year construction window, Souza expects to make over $200,000 as a part-time boat captain. For the younger generation, who Souza said as deckhands can expect to make only around $30,000 per year from scalloping, offshore wind work makes it possible to keep earning a middle-class wage.

In the past year, Souza has recruited to Sea Services both of his sons, his nephew, and a few other young folks from longtime fishing families who might have otherwise left the scallop industry if not for the supplemental income.

“This wind farm business is the number one way for scallop guys, captains, mates, deckhands, to make extra money,” said Morris.

It’s also helping to revitalize the port of New Bedford, a city of 100,000 that is not only the most valuable fishing port in America but also a place of tremendous historic importance to the industry. It was once the epicenter of the whaling world and serves as the backdrop for the opening scenes of Herman Melville’s ​“Moby Dick.”

In just 10 years, the offshore wind industry has ushered in a transformation the city hadn’t seen ​“since the whaling era,” according to Jon Mitchell, the city’s mayor since 2011.

The companies building Vineyard Wind now stage their offshore wind infrastructure in New Bedford. Their presence has brought a flood of public and private funding to the city, with over $1.2 billion already invested and pledged to help give the terminals, docks, and harbor a facelift, according to Mitchell.

For all the money offshore wind has brought to the city — and into the pockets of locals like Souza and Morris — offshore wind remains highly controversial among many commercial fishermen in New Bedford.

That’s in spite of Mitchell’s insistence that, when push comes to shove, New Bedford’s local government will always side with scalloping.

Still, Mitchell, one of New England’s fiercest offshore wind defenders, remains unpopular with many down at the boat docks. ​“I’ve put myself in the loneliest place in American politics, which is right in the middle. Between offshore wind and commercial fishing,” he said.

Trump flags, full pockets

The fishermen who take part in Sea Services also float in that lonely place.

It’s not uncommon for them to face harassment from other fishermen over the radio when out on the water, Yerman said. One time, he said a Sea Services fisherman was turned away from a Rhode Island dock, in what Yerman characterized as an act of revenge.

The hardest part of Yerman’s job is overcoming this cultural aversion and getting fishermen to the table, convincing them that working for the offshore wind developers is a way to sustain a livelihood whose viability has begun to fade.

Captain Kevin Souza goes through a checklist on the Pamela Ann, a scallop-fishing vessel, docked in New Bedford, Massachusetts, preparing to go offshore in late February 2025. Clare Fieseler/Canary Media

“You’ll have the lobster guys and they’ll say shit to you — like, ​‘traitor.’ Or ​‘Trump’s gonna shut that down, ha ha ha,’” Souza said, imitating the taunts he receives over the marine radio bolted to the wall near the helm of the Pamela Ann.

The lobstermen have a point regarding Trump. As frustrating as their remarks may be, the biggest threat to offshore wind is not snipes from colleagues, but the actions of a president who many Sea Services members — including Souza — voted for. 

As Souza prepared to leave the New Bedford port in February to go help Ørsted build giant wind turbines in the ocean, something Trump swore would not happen during his term, he explained his support for the president.

“Trust me, I want Trump to ​‘drill, drill, drill.’ I’m all for it,” said Souza of the president’s plans to expand oil and gas production.

But he still thinks offshore wind is necessary to get more power onto New England’s grid and lower energy costs. Experts say that the federal permitting process for offshore wind in America takes too long — about four years. But, in the Northeast region, according to energy analyst Christian Roselund, finishing the deployment of the offshore wind projects already in the permitting pipeline will be much faster than starting up new nuclear or fossil-gas power plants.

“Once we ​‘drill, drill, drill,’ you’re still gonna need more electricity,” Souza said. ​“Where are you gonna get it? My electric bill at my house is stupid high!”

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Most of the fishermen in New Bedford are Trump supporters, he insisted. Morris, who also voted for Trump, agreed. Overall, Trump won 46 percent of the city’s votes in last November’s election — a much higher proportion than his Massachusetts statewide total of 36.5 percent. The ​“TRUMP 2024” flags flown from the dozens of scallop boats docked across New Bedford’s port underscored the point. A few of those Trump flag-flying boats even work for the offshore wind companies, Morris claims. The Pamela Ann, for its part, does not have a Trump flag.

“I support Trump even though I know he’s against wind. … I believe this will still be around,” said Souza, gesturing toward the ocean, where somewhere over the horizon an array of wind towers was being erected. ​“He’s gonna see the light.”

Trump, of course, has not seen the light — though he did revoke his stop-work order against Empire Wind.

After being grounded for a month, Sea Services fishermen began operations on Empire Wind again in early June, when the project resumed at-sea work. The co-op’s members are helping Equinor’s construction vessels lay boulders on the seafloor to stabilize all 54 wind towers that will be raised over the next two years and eventually supply much-needed carbon-free power to New York City.

But nothing is certain. When the Trump administration unpaused the project, it left open the door to stopping it again — or killing it altogether. A May letter from the Interior Department to Equinor noted that it is still conducting an ​“ongoing review” to determine if the project’s permits were ​“rushed” and therefore illegitimate in the eyes of the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, a coalition of a dozen fishing companies and several anti-offshore wind groups typically allied with Trump sued the administration on June 3, just days before Empire Wind restarted at-sea construction, in an attempt to reinstate the stop-work order. The move came weeks after wind opponents asked Trump to also pause Revolution Wind, one of the more lucrative contracts Sea Services holds.

In his opposition to offshore wind, Trump has positioned himself as a defender of the commercial fishing industry, claiming falsely at a May 2024 campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, for example, that the turbines ​“cause tremendous problems with the fish and the whales.”

But for the increasing number of fishermen working with offshore wind companies, halting the industry would not help — it would crush a financial lifeline.

Not long ago, in 2017, Sea Services captain Rodney Avila remembers being one of the only fishers in New Bedford willing to seize this lifeline. He recalled with a laugh what a long-time fisherman friend said to him then: ​“When you put that first wind turbine up there … we’re going to hang you from it!”

Times have changed. In the New Bedford area, almost 50 local fishing vessels have performed some kind of safety or scouting work for Vineyard Wind. At least one captain lowers his MAGA-supporting flag before setting out to work on the projects the president has sworn to stop, according to Avila. He said politics has always been tangled up in fishing. And work is work.

“They don’t care whether it’s red, or blue, or whatever color. … They don’t care,” Avila shrugged, while sipping coffee inside a Dunkin’. Five scalloping boats bobbed on calm water just beyond the parking lot. ​“It’s money that they need to support their families, wherever it comes from.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline These fishermen made peace with offshore wind. Then Trump came along. on Jul 6, 2025.

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