National Hurricane Preparedness Week is a timely reminder that the best moment to get ready is before a storm is on the map. Each year the Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1 and runs through November 30. As we well know, all it takes is one storm to turn a quiet season into a devastating one. For those of us in coastal and island communities, hurricanes aren’t abstract. They are a predictable part of life that can upend routines, damage homes, and strain essential services. The good news is that preparation works. Small actions taken now can dramatically reduce harm later, especially when neighbors prepare together. Community preparedness starts with getting clear on the risks and making a simple, shared plan. Know your sheltering plan, if you will need to stay somewhere other than your home. Identify who in your household or neighborhood may need extra support, like seniors, people with access and functional needs, families with infants, and anyone without reliable transportation. Pick a few check-in contacts, decide where you will reunite if separated, and write down key numbers in case phones or internet are unreliable. Next, strengthen preparedness at home. Build or refresh an emergency kit with water, shelf-stable food, medications, first aid supplies, batteries, flashlights, and hygiene items to last 5 to 7 days. Secure important documents in a waterproof bag and keep a small amount of cash on hand. If you can, walk your property: trim trees, clear gutters and drains, bring in loose outdoor items, and make a plan for shutters or window protection before a storm is on the radar. Preparedness is also collective. Check on your neighbors, share resources, and identify who has tools like generators, tarps, chainsaws, or extra fuel storage. Agree on a plan for how you’ll communicate and help each other safely after a storm. Follow trusted local updates, not rumors, and consider volunteering or training with community response efforts so support is organized when it matters most. Hurricane season can be stressful, but preparation is a form of confidence and care. If you take one step this week, make it a short plan or a quick supply check. If you take two, add a neighbor check-in. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s readiness. When the next storm forms, we’ll be stronger if we’re prepared as individuals and as a community.

Year-End Update: Resilient Housing Initiative

Recovery is often called “the second disaster” because it lasts long after the wind dies down. On St. John, the housing crisis that followed the 2017 hurricanes has not resolved with time, but rather has grown more serious. Addressing the island’s housing needs has required sustained effort, skilled local labor, patient navigation of complex systems, and consistent community support. That is why Love City Strong launched the Resilient Housing Initiative (RHI) in 2018: to help permanent, full-time St. John residents return to safe, stable homes, rebuilt to be stronger and more disaster resistant than before.

What RHI has accomplished (so far)

Since launching RHI, Love City Strong has repaired or rebuilt 40 homes on St. John, with additional small-scope resilience upgrades (like ADA ramps, stairs, and railings) completed through the RHI Minor Works Program at more sites. This work matters because each repaired home:

• Brings a neighbor home safely.
• Reduces pressure on a strained long-term rental market.
• Strengthens the island’s ability to withstand future storms.

Where we are right now

The need is still significant. Love City Strong currently has dozens of households in the queue for repairs, spanning a wide range of scopes. In early 2026, we plan to:

• Complete the next home in the program (our 41st site), using a BAUHU steel frame kit.
• Begin two full rebuilds using alternative construction methods (BAUHU and Insulated Concrete Form), as part of a broader push to test approaches that may reduce costs over time.

Telling the story, and why it helps

This year, we also worked to improve how we communicate the reality of long-term recovery and what resilience looks like on the ground. We are grateful to have partnered with ElevateWI, a nonprofit based on St. Thomas, USVI, on a video that helps share this story and amplify community-driven solutions.

A year-end request: help us keep building

RHI is sustained by people who choose to invest in the work for the long-term. If you believe St. John residents deserve to live in safe, hardened homes, please consider making a year-end gift. Your donation helps fund:

• Construction materials and skilled labor.
• Repairs and rebuilds for households with the highest needs.
• The steady project management and casework required to move homes from “in the queue” to “back home.”

Give today: Donate to Love City Strong Thank you for being part of a community that shows up, year after year, to make sure recovery is not reserved for the few.

Asheville, North Carolina has long been revered for its temperate climate. In the 19th century, its growth was fueled by the theory that it had the climate to cure tuberculosis, and its fresh air and natural beauty have drawn tourists and would be residents ever since. In recent years, climate migration and climate gentrification became increasingly critical conversations as Asheville became touted as a “climate haven”, a city deemed more resilient to climate change, and better able to take in newcomers due to (relatively) affordable housing options and (relatively) forward thinking governance. In 2020, I encouraged my mother to move to Asheville instead of Savannah, or Charleston, on the grounds that it was safer from the impacts of climate change.  The last several days have obliterated any sense of Asheville as a haven from the effects of climate change, and I spent a frantic few days trying to find a way, from the USVI, to help my mother get out of the safe haven I’d recommended. As always, there are lessons to be learned from the devastation. In this case, the growing risks from inland rain events associated with tropical systems, the resulting resource islands and related barriers to recovery, and the importance of cultivating local knowledge and valuing state- and federal-level expertise in emergency management.  Inland Impacts At 5 pm on September 25th, Hurricane Helene was a Category 1 storm located just north of Cancun, Mexico. A mere 30 hours later, following a period of rapid intensification, Helene made landfall on Thursday evening, September 26th, near Perry, Florida, as a Category 4 storm with winds of 140 mph. The storm then proceeded inland just east of Tallahassee, leaving a trail of destruction north into Georgia, South Carolina, and the southern Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. As of October 1st, there are at least 130 deaths attributed to Helene, and more than 600 people still missing. Asheville sits at 2,000 feet above sea level, nearly 300 miles from the nearest coastline. Nowhere, it would seem, remains safe from the inland impacts of the modern major hurricane.  Inland flooding as a result of tropical cyclones has increasingly become a concern over the past several years. A warmer atmosphere also holds more moisture – approximately 7% more moisture per 1°C of warming. This can help drive rapid intensification, but also means that warmer years are producing wetter storms, driving torrential rain impacts further inland. Over the last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been rolling out their new “Cone of Concern”, which includes tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings for inland counties in addition to coastal counties. Additionally, increased outreach regarding the risks of storm surge and flash flooding has been prioritized by federal, state, and local agencies.  In Western North Carolina last week, the region was already experiencing flooding as a result of a front that had stalled. When Helene passed through, more than 20 inches of rain fell on already waterlogged ground, sending the major rivers in the area into extreme flood stage with startling intensity. The Swannanoa River crested at 26.1 feet, more than five feet above the recorded record from 1919. The French Broad River crested at 30.3 feet, exceeding the previous record by more than ten feet. This deluge of water washed out roads across the region, effectively cutting Western North Carolina off from the rest of the world.  Resource Islands Here in the US Virgin Islands, we are familiar with the logistical challenges of islands. In the seven years since Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall here within two weeks of each other, Virgin Islanders have navigated an extensive and complex recovery process. Love City Strong’s mission since day one has been to create programs and build capacity in pursuit of a more resilient, sustainable community, to ensure that in future disasters, we understand how to navigate our own recovery.  Over the past few years, we have spoken more and more about how our lessons learned can be applied not only to neighboring Caribbean island communities, but to rural communities anywhere. Many rural communities, whether located in mountainous regions or in the plains of the west, have limited access routes. When these roads are damaged, destroyed, or become inaccessible, these communities face the same challenges as remote Caribbean islands. Relief becomes very difficult to come by, and very expensive to provide. Federal and state resources take time to deploy, and needs assessments take time to complete. In our experience, these needs assessments are best facilitated by local resources, by neighbors, by mutual aid partners. Familiar faces provide comfort in traumatic times, and response experience nurtured and cached in local communities is a major asset in times of crisis. Increasingly, communities that have never been impacted by a major disaster will find themselves suddenly in the aftermath, with their reality altered in unimaginable ways. In these circumstances, it is critical to have experienced, seasoned professionals at the local, state, and federal levels. Local nonprofits and faith-based organizations know their communities like no one else, and can provide efficient unmet needs assessments at ground level. Emergency management professionals can build local capacity, fill gaps in the response, and help map the path forward to recovery. As we learned firsthand here on St John, it is rarely necessary to reinvent the wheel. Often you just need that wheel schematic, subject matter expertise, and local knowledge to iterate a version that will suit your community’s needs. Foundations of Experience and Subject Matter Expertise If there is one resource to prioritize as we look at the future of climate driven disasters, it is experience. At the local level, agencies and organizations have experience advocating for local needs, culture, and priorities. At the state or territorial level, agencies develop capacity, build knowledge, and nurture local talent. At the national level, subject matter experts are building on decades of practical experience and lessons learned, innovating for the future, and lifting up communities experiencing these challenges for the first time. In the past week there’s not a person in the southeast United States who has not been glued to NOAA’s forecasts, or waited for updates on disaster declarations and FEMA deployments.  As the southeast navigates a years-long recovery from the impacts of Helene, each state will benefit from federal support that makes an otherwise inconceivable recovery more navigable. FEMA will provide Individual Assistance, Critical Needs Assistance, Public Assistance, Hazard Mitigation Grants, and more. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will provide Community Development Block Grants in both Disaster Recovery and Mitigation tranches. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will provide disaster loans to help businesses recover, and countless other departments will roll out recovery funding related to their specific mandates. These financial resources can be, as we’ve learned in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the last seven years, cumbersome to navigate. The subject matter experts at FEMA, HUD, and SBA collaborate with private philanthropy and nonprofit organizations to weave an intricate web of funding sources, technical capacity, and deeply ingrained knowledge that is invaluable to communities facing unprecedented disaster. In a future with climate-driven disasters impacting more areas previously deemed “safe”, our collective focus should be on maintaining and cultivating valuable knowledge, experience, and resources, and integrating them efficiently at the local, state, and federal levels. 

I have been anxious.  As we watch Tropical Storm Lee approach the Lesser Antilles, my anxiety has been increasing despite strong and unified forecasts projecting its passage to our north. It’s an anxiety shared by the rest of the community for a simple reason – Lee’s path reminds us of Irma.  It’s been six years, but for most of us it might as well have happened yesterday. Irma, then Maria, changing the course of our lives forever.  In late August and early September of 2019, I felt the anxiety of disaster empathy for the first time. Hurricane Dorian ravaged the Abacos and Grand Bahama Island, and the USVI collectively held our breath as we remembered our own trauma and knew exactly what was in store for the communities impacted by Dorian. In the years since then, this particular form of worry and care and fear has cropped up at least annually, sometimes monthly. Most recently, Lahaina’s heartbreak echoes back to our own, familiar as we are with small island communities both beset and supported by tourism, communities facing devastating disaster impacts in many ways exacerbated by the very things we’re told keep us alive.  Whether it is hurricanes, or fire, or flooding, or earthquakes, or some other hazard that imparts disaster, the commonly resounding theme is this: communities save themselves.  As disaster impacts increase in scope and frequency (2023 had seen 15 “billion dollar” disasters even before the Lahaina Fire and Hurricane Idalia, and we’re still four days from the peak of the Atlantic Hurricane season), federal resources are stretched thin. It is often assumed that FEMA’s arrival post-disaster is supposed to herald “Recovery”, but the truth is, FEMA is not there to make us whole. Preparedness, response, and recovery are all grassroots initiatives, at their core. No one knows unmet needs like community and faith-based organizations. No one knows the nuances of response like local first responders and emergency services. A federal response is never going to roll into town and succeed unless they are plugging in to local knowledge, customs, and experience.  I’m not dropping any groundbreaking information here. The National Preparedness Goal endorses a whole community approach, FEMA has placed increased emphasis on community partnerships and lifelines over the past several years, and any community that has been impacted by a disaster will tell you categorically that community engagement and community readiness are at the heart of resilience. The question now is, how do we engage communities BEFORE the disaster? Over the next decade, more and more communities are going to experience disasters that are historically unprecedented. There are lessons out there to be learned, best practices to be adopted, and relationships to be built. How do we best cache this knowledge so that small communities are learning from one another, proactively, and how do we build a system that allows federal mitigation dollars to truly build capacity and support local resources? When I think about where we were on this day six years ago, and I think about where we are now, the antidote to my anxiety is this: I know readiness is a growth-game in my community. I feel confident in our collective preparedness and in our ability to support ourselves and each other. My neighbors, my colleagues, our partners… that’s who I find solace in. The past, present, and future of preparedness and resilience is community. Let’s build the systems that lift up communities in blue skies, so that when gray skies come, we’re ready.  To learn more about what we do at Love City Strong, or to donate in support of our work, please visit www.lovecitystrongvi.org.

From June 11th to 16th, Love City Strong is hosting an opportunity for the St. John community to come together and share ideas for the future of Cruz Bay. Plan Cruz Bay is a chance to have your voice heard, listen to others, and work together to form a common vision for the area. With a plan in place that reflects the community’s wants and needs, near and long-term development and reuse of property can continue to support a resilient Cruz Bay. The goal of Plan Cruz Bay is to generate a dynamic near and long-term strategy that includes a conceptual urban design plan to guide future growth and development. The plan will, based on community input, address opportunities and challenges and aim to improve connectivity, pedestrian safety, civic spaces, building form and appearance, and more. The plan will include analysis, before-and-after visualizations, and an implementation strategy. Plan Cruz Bay recommendations will include proposals for housing, transportation, community facilities, stormwater management, and land use. Ideally, the Plan will serve as a guiding document to define residents’ future vision of the area, inform government decisions, and guide implementation actions. Plan Cruz Bay is sponsored by Love City Strong to amplify the community’s voice and produce a framework for a more resilient future. The recommendations for this Plan will supplement the territory-wide Comprehensive Land & Water Use Plan (CLWUP) that is currently underway, and will take into account other existing and relevant plans in the Territory. Community involvement is critical to the success of Plan Cruz Bay. The charrette will feature a variety of events on different days and at different times, offering multiple opportunities for residents to participate in the planning process. We encourage you to come to at least one event, if not more. The team leading this important planning effort is made up of recognized local and national experts in the fields of town planning, preservation, and sustainability. All are familiar with the unique conditions of St. John and respect and recognize the value of community. The team has successfully worked on plans in the territories and are currently working together on the territory-wide Comprehensive Land & Water Use Plan (CLWUP). The team is ready to listen and learn, build relationships, and help the community build the best plan forward for Cruz Bay. The charrette for Cruz Bay will take place June 11 – 16, 2023. During this time, the planning team will set up a design studio in town and host a series of interactive workshops, meetings, and planning sessions. By working on-site, this important plan will be created in real time, in public, with continuous opportunities to share and gather community input. After the charrette, the planning team will return to their home offices to refine the plans, visualizations, and produce a draft plan document. Updates to the project website and communication from Love City Strong will continue to ensure that the plans and corresponding visualizations and policy recommendations meet the goals of the community. The plan will help inform the territory-wide Comprehensive Land & Water Use Plan (CLWUP) as well as government decisions on the direction of development of public lands. Once the draft plan from the charrette is refined, the planning team will return to St. John and present plan recommendations. We hope you’ll join us for this exciting opportunity to shape the future of Cruz Bay, address the most pressing needs of St. John residents, and establish a lasting legacy for generations to come. If you have questions or feedback, please reach out to Love City Strong Executive Director Meaghan Enright via email, meaghan@lovecitystrongvi.org, or during office hours at Suite 102 in The Marketplace.

At Love City Strong, we believe that a community-based approach to preparedness is critical to success in disaster response. Research and first hand experience both show that when we are more prepared as families and neighborhoods, we improve recovery outcomes. When embraced year-round in an all-hazards context, community preparedness improves the ability of individuals and groups to limit the effects of hazard impacts and manage their resources until help arrives. As residents of island communities, isolated by definition, it is particularly important to lean into individual and community preparedness. Our communities thrive when we develop internal resources, skill sets, and commodities that help jump start response and recovery following a disaster.  According to FEMA, many people who believe themselves “prepared” have really done very little in the way of preparation. In a survey, 40 percent of respondents did not have household plans, and nearly 60 percent did not know their community’s evacuation routes. Perhaps most troubling, while 20 percent of respondents indicated that they had a disability that would affect their capacity to respond to an emergency situation, only 1 in 4 of those reported having made any arrangements specific to that disability to help them stay safe in the event of an emergency.   So where can you begin? Community preparedness has three parts: take personal responsibility, seek out training and skill building opportunities, and connect with your community.  Take Personal Responsibility You can’t support your neighbors and friends if you are struggling yourself. Make emergency planning for your household and your family a priority. Create an emergency plan, practice it regularly, and make sure that each member of your household is taken into account, including the needs of children and pets. Household preparedness includes building an emergency kit, learning evacuation routes and shelter locations, and planning financially for hazard impacts.  Seek Out Training and Skill Building In the event of a disaster, you may be the first help on hand for someone. There are many opportunities to build the skills necessary to be helpful in a response, from first aid and CPR to Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, to HAM radio operations, and much more. In the US Virgin Islands, if you’re interested in being a medical first responder, each island has a Rescue organization you can volunteer with. For all-hazards training, you can register for CERT through the Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA). Another resource is your local Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD), which can connect you with volunteer opportunities. Connect With Your Community Knowing your community is key in the aftermath of a disaster. You can start small, by making sure you know your neighbors. Who has medical issues? Who has access and functional needs that might require extra support in an emergency? Connect with your church or your local community organizations to see how you may be able to volunteer. Reach out to your local business community, including Rotary and Chamber of Commerce, to start important conversations about business continuity of operations (a topic for another day!) and emergency planning. One of the most important things after a disaster is making sure resources reach those most in need, and by knowing your community, you can help ensure that happens.  Here in the US Virgin Islands, we are used to the issues that surround hurricane preparedness. What we’ve learned over the past two years as a result of the pandemic, however, is that we can’t anticipate when, what, or where the next crisis will be. The best way to make sure our communities are safer, more resilient, and more prepared, is to start close to home.   For more resources, please visit our website, www.lovecitystrongvi.org