Atlanta’s Mayor on how he prepares the city as Hurricane Milton gets closer

Dickens—alongside White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi—spoke with reporter Sheryl Estrada about building climate-ready cities at Fortune’s Impact Initiative conference Tuesday. The conversation’s timing was painful; Hurricane Milton, a category 5 storm as of Tuesday evening, could be the strongest to hit Florida in two decades, and is expected to make landfall Wednesday evening.  

Dickens is fresh off preparing for Hurricane Helene, which devastated the mountains of North Carolina last week. “We didn’t know what was going to happen, so we prepared for the worst,” Dickens said. The storm ended up mostly sparing Atlanta, but Dickens’ his general approach to preparedness relies on one basic tenet: “Don’t take any storm for granted.”

He went on to outline what he does as mayor to prepare for increasingly strong storms spurred on by warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico. His playbook includes cleaning out city storm drains, building a good communication network, and spreading awareness among residents to prepare themselves as best they can. “Don’t have your birth certificate or social security card in your basement,” he said. “You have to tell people these things.” 

As Milton heads for Florida, the mayor said he wasn’t taking any chances, and is currently using a “whole government” approach. Whenever meteorologists begin mentioning a storm in the Gulf, Atlanta’s Office of Emergency Preparedness springs into preparatory action, Dickens said. Going into Wednesday, when Hurricane Milton is set to make landfall, people in Atlanta have been encouraged to work remotely in an effort to clear the roads. Emergency personnel will be on standby.

“Being collaborative is so important; I have to know everything, have a good feel for what the weather patterns are, and be able to communicate with power companies and various entities that help us, and everyone has to have some self-resiliency,” he said. “Our rail system, our water systems, our hospitals, our challenged communities, our seniors, those experiencing homelessness—do they have provisions? Battery backups?”

Zaidi, Biden’s climate advisor, called Dickens’ approach a “masterclass of leadership in the climate crisis.” He added that the Biden administration has been focusing on getting federal approaches to climate preparedness to local governments.

“We’ve been trying to get all these tools in the hands of local leaders, and recognize that a big part of it all is investment,” Zaidi said. He added that the federal government has invested $2 million for climate preparedness in Georgia alone. 

Hurricane Milton could spell catastrophic loss for millions of Florida residents, both in terms of casualties and economic devastation. “Milton should be a double-digit billion insured loss,” Wells Fargo said in a Tuesday research note, estimating those losses could add up to $100 billion—or at least $20 billion. Many families are already suffering from high insurance premiums, a problem that is only becoming more dire; the average property insurance payment for U.S. single-family homes is 52% above its pre-pandemic rate.