Joyce Jiang remembers being 8 years old and floating down her street in a plastic bin, fish swimming alongside her in the rainwater that had reached the height of nearby mailboxes.
“It was one of those clear bins that you store your jackets and stuff in over the winter, there was a huge one from, like, Walmart,” she said.
Her parents had decided to wait how the storm — Hurricane Irene, which was traveling through Jiang’s home state of New Jersey — played out before evacuating. While she floated in the bin, her parents and other adults in the neighborhood rode canoes to safety.
Just over a year later, Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeast U.S., and Jiang and her family were left without gas or power because of the intense winds.
In 2021, Jiang’s family faced yet another hurricane, Hurricane Ida, but this was the first time it happened when she was away at school. She found out when her dad sent her a photo of her backyard completely covered in water. Her parents had to clean up the damage while juggling their small business.
“I just knew that they were spreading themselves thin,” she said.
While the hurricanes came with a warning, severe rainstorms this past December happened unexpectedly, costing Jiang’s family a lot of money. There were two storms in the span of two weeks, and her house flooded twice.
“I felt like I couldn’t be of much help,” she said. “Obviously I wasn’t going to fly home for a day to help them clean up, but my mom would call me saying how tired she was, how she’s been cleaning all day, I could hear her sighing over the phone. It’s sad being across the country not really being able to do anything about it.”
