Same Hazard, Different Barriers
Water, Chairs, and Nowhere to Plug In
Phoenix's heat relief sites must have water, chairs, and air conditioning. Not ramps, not outlets for a power wheelchair, not anyone assigned to notice you never came.
Same Hazard, Different Barriers
The Railing Was Also the Way In
A burned hand and an RV in El Mirage mark the two points where Phoenix's heat warning chain breaks for disabled residents, and only one of the breaks has an owner.
The Full Circuit
The Chair Had Two Days in It
During a Napa wildfire blackout, a woman with quadriplegia counted the hours left in her wheelchair battery. Every system that lists her name moves slower than that.
Two Ways Out
Valmeyer Voted on Its Own Future From Other People's Spare Rooms
Displaced families voted from FEMA trailers and borrowed bedrooms to move their Illinois town uphill. The records kept the parcels and lost the people.
Two Ways Out
Soldiers Grove Bought the Ground Before Anyone Promised to Pay for It
A Wisconsin village of 600 turned down a levee, spent its own money on a town nobody had funded yet, and made the sun heat what it rebuilt.
The Logic of Staying
Flood Free Was a Name, Not a Condition
Johnstown rebuilt behind federal flood walls, made "flood free" its own name, and in 1977 found out the protection was guarding the wrong water.
