Extreme Weather Survivors
A nationwide community bringing together fire, flood, hurricane, tornado and heat survivors from all 50 states.
Leader
Chris Kocher, Co-Founder & Co-Executive Director
Sierra Lindsey Kos, Co-Founder & Co-Executive Director
Based in
San Francisco, CA
Website
Who they are.
In 2024, 108 major disaster and emergency declarations touched 137 million people across the United States, roughly 41% of Americans. Quietly, survivors of extreme weather are one of the fastest growing groups in the country. Extreme Weather Survivors (EWS) is a nationwide community built around helping this population where they bring together fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, and heat survivors from all 50 states.
EWS offers survivors free resources in English and Spanish, including a network of mental health professionals and peer support from people who have lived through similar events. For those who want to go further, and about half of members do, EWS provides trainings in media literacy, storytelling, and legislative advocacy to address the political and policy impact on all Americans. Their work recently caught the attention of The New York Times Magazine, which profiled EWS and a group of survivors in September 2026.
Why we believe in the leader.
Alta Futures supports leaders with lived experiences and knowledge. EWS co-founders Chris Kocher and Sierra Kos each came to this work through their own experiences with extreme weather. For Chris, it was Hurricane Ida, which flooded New York City, where he lives, in 2021 and killed 14 people. For Sierra, it was Oregon's 2020 Labor Day fires: after a week in a Portland hospital with her sick newborn, she and her family drove out of the garage straight through the orange skies and smoke of a wildfire.
Chris previously directed the survivor network at Everytown for Gun Safety and founded COVID Survivors for Change. Sierra was President Obama's video producer in 2012, has led creative at Meta and Lyft, and has produced numerous television shows including one that sold to Hulu and premiered at Sundance Film Festival. Together they pair deep expertise in trauma informed organizing with an instinct for how to make it real for people to understand the ways in which climate fueled extreme weather events are impacting more and more people every year.
Why the work got us excited.
Alta Futures supports a communications project at EWS, where they are helping survivors grow into community leaders, storytellers, and creators who can reach audiences that climate communication has so often missed. For a growing number of Americans, climate change is impacting them directly through days trapped inside because of unrelenting extreme heat, flooded basements, or lost homes. As the cofounders put it, people find it far easier to grasp one person’s current story than a sweeping warning that climate change will upend the future.
“Building the sustained political power required to tackle the climate crisis and the rise of extreme weather means we need to be in community with and offer real support to Americans across all political beliefs, disasters and regions. Real systemic change requires strong stories told to new audiences that can shift culture, politics, and policy. ”
— Chris Kocher and Sierra Kos
