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FEMA Was a Lifeline After Hurricane Helene Decimated What Was Once Considered a ‘Climate Haven’
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FEMA Was a Lifeline After Hurricane Helene Decimated What Was Once Considered a ‘Climate Haven’

The Center for American Progress' award-winning documentary, "Asheville is Calling: A Climate Change Emergency," centers on Colleen Daly, an Asheville, North Carolina, native and small-business owner who lost her home and nearly lost her business to Hurricane Helene. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided the essential lifeline that got her through the immediate crisis, seven months later, she and her community were still struggling to rebuild.

Tackling Climate Change and Environmental Injustice, Climate Change, Climate Disasters, +4 More

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Part of a Series
Extreme weather disasters are becoming more common, more powerful, and more deadly. Today more than ever, federal agencies that help Americans prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters need to be fully funded, staffed, and ready to act. Instead, changes enacted by the Trump administration are leaving communities to fend for themselves against extreme weather disasters, while the oil and gas CEOs behind these fossil fuel-induced climate disasters are reaping the benefits of the repeals to carbon pollution standards and rollbacks of clean energy incentives. Americans deserve better than a government that abandons them when disaster strikes and then denies that climate change is happening.
“Asheville is Calling: A Climate Change Emergency” won “Best Micro-Short Film” at the Toronto Documentary Feature and Short Film Festival, was a festival nominee at the SHORTS! – European Short Film Festival, was featured during a Reality Check Forum event at DC/DOX Film Festival, and is a featured film for the Climate Action Campaign’s Museum of Unnatural Disasters.

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The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Author

Margaret Cooney

Senior Campaign Manager of Storytelling, Energy and Environment Campaigns

Producers

Hai-Lam Phan

Managing Director, Creative

Olivia Mowry

Video Producer

Team

Energy and Environment Campaigns

Explore The Series

In an instant, families and communities across the United States and around the world are seeing their lives, homes, and belongings wiped out by extreme weather disasters. From hurricanes and catastrophic flooding to wildfires and scorching heat waves, extreme weather is only intensifying as fossil fuels continue to drive climate change.

In this series, the Center for American Progress explores how human-caused climate change is fueling these disasters and how these events threaten communities’ safety, economy, health, infrastructure, and future. The series also explores how support for recovery, rebuilding, and resilience is essential in the short term and how transitioning away from fossil fuels is critical to avoiding even more catastrophic impacts in the long term.

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