Can you afford to evacuate ahead of a disaster?

Storms can also destroy people's homes and livelihoods. Take Hurricane Helene. That's a storm that slammed the Southeast, especially North Carolina. Carolina last year. That storm alone caused nearly $80 billion in damages.

Evacuating can cost someone hundreds and in many cases, thousands of dollars. And the bad news, that cost is only getting more expensive. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong, and I'm here with friend of the show, Stephen Bes from the Gulf States newsroom. Welcome back, Stephen.

The city did not have an evacuation order, so people in New Orleans had to ask themselves a way too familiar stay or go.

So Nick and his family loaded up the car to drive from New Orleans to Alabama. He agreed to give us real time updates. And we got our first video call from Nick about an hour or so into the drive.

Ugh. As someone who would just get car sick after one minute in the car, just like I can't imagine. So, to calm down those backseat drivers, Nick paid for his first evacuation expense.

Okay, so first thing on the spreadsheet, grapes. Now, Nick is also an accountant, and he agreed to use his number crunching powers to help us track his evacuation expenses.

Not so bad, right? I mean, I guess the baby probably isn't eating a lot of solid food at this point.

And the big multiplier on top of everything is how long an evacuation lasts.

Given all of that, Nick hoped the final cost would come in under $1,000.

Right. Because hurricane season is long. Like, consider possibly the most infamous hurricane, Hurricane Katrina. Katrina made Landfawn, Louisiana 20 years ago as a Category 3 hurricane. And it was one of five major hurricanes that hit the Gulf coast that season.

Paul studies hurricanes, including how much evacuations cost. He surveyed about 450 evacuees to get those costs. For both hurricanes Irma and Harvey In

Those evacuations were also way more expensive compared to ones about a decade earlier, even after adjusting for inflation, like roughly four or five times higher, according to Pahlb.

probably changed direction or the storm quickly intensifies. Like Hurricane Milton last year, in less

Now, there are supposed to be price gouging laws in states like Florida to protect against this. For example, in Texas, two gas stations were forced to refund customers for charging nearly $10 a gallon for gas during Hurricane Harvey.

Depending on the storm, FEMA can help cover some evacuation costs. FEMA is the federal government's disaster relief agency. And back during Katrina, FEMA gave $2,000 checks to evacuees.

Trump says he plans to phase out FEMA after this current hurricane season ends. He wants states to be the ones covering more of the costs. But an analysis from the Urban Institute found that would leave states with several financial challenges in the years after a disaster.

Pahlav says he's not aware of any state programs that reimburse evacuation expenses. And he says whether it's the states or the feds, someone has to pick up the tab.

The White House declared last September's Hurricane Francine a disaster, but not in New Orleans. The worst of the damage was in the Louisiana bayou, not where Nick Oquin lives.

The final total for his two day evacuation, $505.

But with hurricane season continuing to intensify, that luxury may become more often a necessity, whether or not people can afford it. This episode was produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and edited by Julia Richie. Our editor is Kate Concannon and the indicator is a production of NPR.