Hi friends!
It is my distinct honor to share with you the next iteration of Fenix:
www.readfenix.com 🎉
As I mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, we’ve spent this last year reimagining what Fenix could be. The end result is a beautiful new website created with you in mind. There are no auto-play videos or pop-up ads here. Instead, we’ve designed an experience focused solely on your reading comfort.
From the fonts we picked (made especially to help your eyes adjust to long-form stories online) to the months we spent reporting, writing, and editing these stories — it’s all made to inform and delight you.
And now, for the best part, the journalism.
For this story, we partnered up with the incredibly talented Colleen Hagerty who used her expertise in climate reporting to investigate how 2020 became a flashpoint for how we deal with disasters.
Colleen has an informative and impeccably sourced newsletter called My World’s on Fire (10/10 would recommend). She’s the kind of reporter that voluntarily listens in on FEMA webinars and reads Red Cross reports that are hundreds of pages long just to understand the landscape of her beat.
Her story for Fenix is called “The Disaster Flashpoint,” and it exemplifies all of these qualities.
Below you’ll find an exclusive Q+A with Colleen in which she explains more about her process, the story, and what inspires her and gives her hope.
1. Your story focuses on 2020 as a flashpoint for how the U.S. will handle disasters moving forward. When did you see 2020 in this light?
As the long-lasting impact of COVID-19 became more clear this spring, I started seeing a number of experts and officials sounding the alarm on what this would mean for hurricane and wildfire seasons. Then, in June, I attended a FEMA webinar about planning for disasters during the pandemic, and I learned that this was the first time in about a decade that the agency had updated some of its basic planning guidelines. That really sparked my interest – think of all that has happened in the past ten years! – and that's when I started digging more into this idea.
2. One of the things that makes this story so compelling is hearing from folks who are directly impacted by these disasters. What is it like to interview people going through such a sensitive time?
I am always grateful to everyone who takes time to speak with me, but it's a particularly deep gratitude I have for those who do it during some of their darkest days. My top concern is always that the person I am interviewing is somewhere safe – that they are not putting themselves at risk during a storm or fire to have this conversation. Once that's established, I try to be as accommodating as possible. Someone who has recently been through a tragedy is likely experiencing a myriad of emotions, concerns, and needs all at once. Speaking with me, understandably, is at the bottom of that list, so I want to make it as easy as possible for them to fit these conversations into their schedules. When it comes to the actual interviews, I always try to be sensitive to the difficulties of resharing these traumatic events, so my questioning really differs person-to-person pending on their comfort levels.
3. We wrapped up reporting and writing, for the most part, by early October. There were still a lot of strong storms rolling in then. What was it like to update the story in real-time as storms directly targeted some of the areas where your sources lived?
It was such a stomach-sinking feeling when I saw the projections for Hurricane Delta, which came incredibly close to following the path of its predecessor, Hurricane Laura. One of the women I was speaking with for this article had just gotten her power back after weeks without it in extreme heat, and now it seemed all but inevitable that she would now lose it again. I did my best to communicate to my sources that I wanted to stay in touch but only when they were safe and felt they had the capacity to speak about these experiences. For some, that was immediately after the storm hit to let me know its impact, while others took a while to get back in touch.
4. What was most surprising to you about this story once the reporting process was finished?
Honestly, the scope of it! This all started from a FEMA webinar and is grounded in the experience of those who survived this unprecedented hurricane season, but to really tell the story also required reporting on politics, capitalism, and culture. I think that's all I can say without giving too much away!
5. You have covered a lot of stories about the changing climate. What inspires you or gives you hope as you're covering what can feel like a hopeless situation?
When disasters strike, there tends to be a compulsion for people to help each other – it's why writer Rebecca Solnit has referred to the immediate aftermath of disasters as "a paradise built in hell." The capacity for communities to step up for each other like this always amazes and inspires me, even though it is so common!
When it comes to what gives me hope, I have a bit of a longer answer, because there are definitely times when "all of this" feels discouraging. The word disaster literally breaks down to "ill-starred," nodding to the longstanding belief that disasters are beyond our control. But today, we know that's not entirely true. Looking back at the past century of disasters, we have seen a real impact when we've chosen to invest in science and mitigation strategies. And there are so many smart, invested people working towards making those tools more accessible today. I won't say that's always enough to make me feel hopeful, but I do think it is empowering.
6. What are you reading right now?
I just finished (and can't stop thinking about) "Leave the World Behind" by Rumaan Alam, which actually touches on some of the themes in this article. No spoilers, but if anyone else has also read it, find me on social media, and let's talk about it!
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That’s it for now! Thank you all so much for your support. We’ll be back next week with our next story: a deep dive into the world of #herping 🦎