How Hurricane Ian and other disasters are becoming a growing source of inequality – even among the middle class

Ian resulted in the deaths of at least 44 people in Florida and tens of billions of dollars in damage. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

Friendswood, Texas, is the type of community that one might think of as a “best case scenario” when it comes to recovering from a disaster.

It is a small tight-knit town with well-resourced residents and a strong social infrastructure of local institutions that provided a huge outpouring of support in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. It is also the type of community that typically receives a disproportionately high amount of aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wake of a disaster.