I grew up in the Northeast; I've seen hurricanes before and trees down and cars destroyed.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've been through quite a few hurricanes. I worked in North Carolina, where there's a housing development whose name was Landfall.
I have lived through many major hurricanes during my lifetime: Camille, Frederic, and Ivan, to name just a very few. However, never have I seen destruction, panic, and fear on this massive scale.
I've been fascinated with severe weather since I was four, when I saw a tornado at night in my mom and grandmother's southeast Minnesota hometown while everyone else was asleep - an experience I encoded in 'The Stormchasers.'
We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.
Through meteorology, we know essentially how hurricanes form, even though we can't say where the next storm will arise.
No one can prevent hurricanes, but prosperous communities are much better able to withstand them than poor ones.
When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn't just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms.
When I left school, I never wondered whether my apartment in New York was vulnerable to storm surges, but my three daughters have to consider the realities of extreme weather and how it may destabilize communities around the globe.
I've been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.
I grew up in Texas, but that was 20 years ago. Last year, in Fort Worth, they had hail the size of softballs. We're seeing more and more powerful storms, of all types, almost on a biblical level.