Debt, missed classes and anxiety: how climate-driven disasters hurt college students

In August 2016, Maameefua Koomson had just moved into her dorm at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Sophomore year was shaping up to be excellent. Koomson was a strong student, she was pursuing her dream of studying creative writing and she had landed a plum job as a Resident Assistance, or RA, in an honors dorm.

"I was, like, I'm going to be the best RA to these freshmen," she remembers. "I did a Sponge Bob-themed hall. I had events planned out."

And then, just a few days before classes began, it started to rain. At first it seemed like just another rain storm in a part of the country where heavy rain is normal. But then it turned into something else entirely. A record-shattering deluge that drowned much of the greater Baton Rouge area in multiple feet of floodwater.

Koomson's dorm stayed dry. But her family's home in nearby Denham Springs was destroyed. It was one of more than 100,000 local homes damaged in the flood.

"I mean, they lost completely everything," Koomson says . "The whole house had to be gutted out."

And, even though Koomson wasn't living at home anymore, the disaster affected her college experience, and her broader life, in profound and lasting ways. Within a year, she had lost her beloved RA job and changed