“We keep ourselves safe”: How Memphis residents mounted their own storm recovery
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The storm that swept through the Memphis area on Aug. 22 lasted about 30 minutes. It was enough to leave downed trees, damaged homes and an estimated $18 million in destruction in its wake. More than 100,000 people in the city and surrounding region initially lost power.
Amber Sherman was among the east Memphis residents who lost electricity. Her first thoughts were for her neighbors. “My main thought was that the power’s going to be out for a while and people aren’t prepared for that and it’s very hot outside,” said Sherman, the Memphis coordinator for Black Voters Matter.
Several days after the storm, temperatures in Memphis reached 91 degrees Fahrenheit (32.8 degrees Celsius), and tens of thousands of households were still without power. The storm that caused the outages was a bow echo, a fast-moving cluster of severe thunderstorms known for producing straight-line winds and widespread damage.
Sherman had spent years doing community organizing, so her response followed familiar patterns. She contacted her supervisor with Black Voters Matter and partner organizations to map out relief efforts. She checked on neighbors, helped serve meals and used social media to keep people informed.
The outages in Memphis did not happen in isolation. Shortly before the storm hit, Gary, Indiana, a majority-Black city more than 500 miles to the north, had lost power, and many Gary residents ended up waiting about two weeks for electricity to return. Sherman pointed out that people outside these cities often do not realize what residents are going through.
“I think a lot of times, people outside of Memphis don’t know what’s happening here, and I thought it was really important because of what was happening in Gary, too,” she said.
The timing carried a deeper resonance for many: the outages came close to the 21st anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a storm that exposed how unevenly disaster protection and recovery can be distributed. Sherman said the repeated failures should not be treated as separate incidents. She wanted to highlight that “this issue with infrastructure in Black cities is not a new problem, but a consistent problem that we really need to address.”
City officials opened three cooling centers on the day after the storm from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Later, branch libraries, Memphis parks and senior centers were available to people who needed air conditioning, a device charge or a meal. Mayor Paul Young and Memphis City Council Chair Jana Swearengen-Washington announced MemphisCares, a partnership with the city, the council and the United Way of the Mid-South, and set aside up to $100,000 to help residents replace lost groceries and get food assistance.
“For many Memphis families, days without power also meant losing groceries they simply can’t afford to replace,” Young said in a statement. “We know recovery looks different for every family. Through MemphisCares, we’re working with City Council and United Way to get help to the Memphians who need it most.”
But the hotline did not open until Aug. 31, more than a week after the storm. Within hours, the funding was gone. Callers were directed to a recording saying that more assistance requests had come in than the program could cover and that staff were processing requests for as long as money remained.
The delay helped define the shape of the recovery. Without enough public money or visible government support, residents became the response.
Derrick Tillman owns the Memphis home contracting company Detailers Multi-Service. He drove 85 miles south to Oxford, Mississippi, to buy generators from Ace Hardware. With units sourced from Jackson, Mississippi, and Nashville as well, he distributed about 15 generators from his home. Then he went out to install them for residents, running cords through their houses and explaining how they worked.
The outage in Tillman’s own neighborhood was not long. Trees came down around him, but his electricity was restored after about two hours. “I was able to still operate, to just help people, because I wasn’t stressed out on my end, mentally or physically,” he said. “We all stick together and make things happen and use our resources, most likely, we can take care of each other with no problem.”
Similar efforts were underway across the city. Young, Gifted & Green, an environmental justice organization; Da Sammich Spot, a restaurant and community resource hub; the Mid-South Environmental Justice Center; and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition all helped distribute food and water. The Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition, formed during the Covid-19 pandemic and later strengthened by Jackson, Mississippi’s water crisis, helped move generators into Memphis. Organizers prioritized older residents, pregnant women and children. Some volunteers delivered groceries to families who were not comfortable leaving their homes because of their immigration status. Church kitchens opened in several neighborhoods to keep people fed.
“I don’t think that there’s been a greater testament to the character of Memphis and Memphians than what we’ve seen,” said Richard Massey, a Memphis community organizer and environmental justice advocate. “Regular people pitched in, donated resources, pooled resources and prepared hot meals for the community for free. In addition to that, we also had two networks of generators flowing into the city from Mississippi and from Nashville, and we were able to reach capacity. It’s been an intensive, week-long effort across the board in every corner of Memphis.”
There is pride in that work, but also frustration that it had to happen in the first place.
“Community is always going to keep each other safe, and we can’t depend on systems to do that because they’ve shown us time and time again that they won’t,” Sherman said. “In this instance, I, as a regular citizen, had to recruit people in Jackson, Mississippi, and Nashville to drive generators up and help to set up food distributions because our government isn’t doing that.”
The frustration runs deeper because the power stayed on for some large users. The xAI data center complex in Memphis, including what has been described as the largest data center in the United States, maintained service while homes around it were still dark. State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, whose campaign volunteers canvassed the Hickory Hill neighborhood to check on residents and share resources, said in an Instagram video that “working-class Black and rural communities are bearing the brunt of fallout from extreme weather events and the pressure that our grids are facing from the AI data center boom.”
Massey said the data centers were not the cause of the outage, but their presence points to larger priorities. “These AI data centers are significant consumers of power. They demand significant amounts of electricity; they strain power grids, and they make power grids more susceptible to failure during periods of inclement weather. That’s not to say that they were the prevailing cause. That wasn’t the case. But the fact that our public utility has prioritized these massive allotments of power and corporate expansion over the maintenance of the power grid that residents rely on speaks to a deeply structural issue. They are prioritizing the interests of corporations over people.”
By Sept. 2, power had been restored to most residents, though small areas were still waiting. The heat was not letting up: another heat wave was pushing feels-like temperatures in Memphis to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius), and the U.S. Department of Energy warned of an increased risk of blackouts.
Massey said he is proud of the community for “being able to step in and fill in the gaps,” but the experience also left him unsettled. “It’s a sobering reminder that we have a lot of work to do to build out a more sustainable, resilient grid that’s able to endure periods of inclement weather like this,” he said.