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Connie Vickers, 63, typically resides about an hour outside of Asheville, North Carolina. It cost her about $5,000 to book the first available Airbnb she could find to evacuate from Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 hurricane that heavily impacted the Southeastern US, including Asheville,  late last month. 

She considers herself fortunate — she could pay that out of pocket, with the hope that her insurance would cover some or all of the cost. “I’ve been thinking about the socioeconomic differences,” she tells Vox. She knows that others aren't able to pay these high costs.

In a 2021 University of South Florida survey, over half of Florida’s residents said that finances would impact whether they evacuated from a hurricane or not, with almost 43 percent saying they had under $1,000 for emergencies. People escaping both Hurricane Milton this week and Helene report spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to get to safety.

Anecdotes about outrageous flight, hotel, and rental car prices spread like wildfire on social media in the lead-up to Hurricane Milton’s landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. On TikTok, one woman in Southwest Florida has been explaining why it’s so difficult to leave home with six children and four dogs. Many shelters don’t accept pets. “I would have to book an Airbnb or something,” she says in one video. “I can’t afford to do that.”

So, how much does it actually cost to evacuate? A Fox Business report from 2017 estimated that hurricane preparation and evacuation could cost an average family as much as $5,000; a New York Times report from 2018, when Hurricane Florence ravaged North Carolina, cites one family having to cough up over $2,000 to evacuate. 

Either way, it can be prohibitively expensive to survive a storm.

As climate-related disasters like Milton and Helene continue to affect communities that have little infrastructure to protect them, what can be done to ensure even those with limited resources have a chance to leave for safety – and can afford it?

The longer someone waits to evacuate, the costlier evacuation is likely to be. One 2011 study estimated that evacuation costs for a Category 3 hurricane could increase from $454 about 3 days before expected landfall to $526 mere hours before landfall, which is about $632 to $732 in today’s dollars. 

Part of this is because plane tickets are priced dynamically, typically shooting up during busy travel periods and when you’re booking last minute. A United spokesperson told Vox that the airline implemented fare caps this past Sunday. “Since then, the average price for a one way, economy-class ticket to our hubs from affected Florida markets was below $500,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.  Delta and American Airlines have also capped fares.

At time of writing, many hotels in Northwest Florida had also filled up.

While there are free shelters available across Florida counties where evacuation orders have been issued, as well as free shuttle services or other free transportations options, not everyone may be in an area where they can access them. There are also several reasons why people choose not to go to a shelter: They may not be sure exactly where it’s located, whether it’s full, or may not be able to bring their pets.

For all these reasons, people with the least money are also often least likely to be able to escape a natural disaster. They are less able to leave work in advance to beat traffic or book lodgings and flights before they’re all sold out, and in the long-term, less able to permanently move to an area at lower risk of hurricanes — yet another example of how it can be more expensive to be poor. 

The Gulf Coast faces some of the highest poverty rates in the US, and the combination of extreme poverty and higher rates of poor health (often due to racial inequality and environmental factors) leaves residents in this region especially vulnerable during disasters.

Carson MacPherson-Krutsky, a research associate at the Natural Hazards Center at University of Colorado Boulder, is currently studying the factors that motivate people to evacuate and shelter — or not — for hurricanes and tornadoes. “A huge one is resource constraints,” she tells Vox.  

For some, the risk of lost wages or other consequences of missing work may have influenced their decision to stay put. During Hurricane Helene, a factory called Impact Plastics in Erwin, Tennessee, allegedly told employees to continue working despite flood warnings in the area.

The company denies that it discouraged employees from leaving, saying in a video statement last week that they had been told to leave “at least 45 minutes before the gigantic force of the flood hit the industrial park.” It’s currently being investigated after 11 workers went missing, at least five of whom have since been found dead.

To ease some of the costs of evacuation, the state of Florida  suspended road tolls and  encouraged hotels to waive pet fees. Uber, which famously came under fire for surge pricing in New York during Hurricane Sandy, is giving people fleeing Milton free rides to shelters. Major US airlines, including United, American, and Delta are waiving some fees if you need to rebook a flight.

A few hotels have also been offering “distress rates” for evacuees that run as little as $39 per night before taxes.

The supply-and-demand explanation for why things like flights and hotels can cost more during emergencies is that a lot of people are trying to snap them up at the last minute. That doesn’t mean it’s in a company’s best interest to hike prices. In some cases, it could even be illegal price gouging.

“Price gouging is different than a normal market increasing prices,” says Teresa Murray, director of the Consumer Watchdog office at the Public Interest Research Groups. It usually needs to occur during some kind of emergency, and only applies to essential goods.  

Right now, 37 states have some sort of anti-price gouging law in the books. Florida’s anti-price gouging law doesn’t kick in unless an official state of emergency has been declared, as it was this past weekend. If the price of food, water, or gas, for example, “grossly exceeds” the average prices seen in the 30 days before the state of emergency, that’s illegal — but it’s not clear what “grossly exceeds” exactly means.  

The Florida attorney general’s office has urged residents to report any price gouging they see; it was already investigating potential price gouging after receiving hundreds of complaints during Hurricane Helene. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said on X that the Department of Transportation is “keeping a close eye on flights in and out of areas affected by Hurricane Milton” to ensure there’s no price gouging.

Typically, Murray adds, price gouging — whether it’s water, food, or supplies needed for clean up and repair, like chainsaws — rises in the aftermath of a disaster. 

With Milton, too, we might see more of it occurring as recovery efforts begin. “It’s just unconscionable that some companies might be taking advantage of this crisis by jacking up their prices,” Murray says. “We’re talking about people’s lives here.”

Visit Vox for more hurricane coverage

Find more stories about hurricanes Helene and Milton and their aftermath on Vox.com. 

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