<p>As climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of hurricanes, displacement has become a recurring and disruptive reality for many coastal and island communities. In the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, households in The Bahamas were not only forced to navigate the immediate challenges of evacuation and loss, but also the longer-term process of rebuilding lives amid severely reduced resources and constrained mobility. A little over six months after the hurricane, and three months before the subsequent hurricane season, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced new anxieties and travel restrictions locally, nationally, and internationally. The unfolding of the two events provided an opportunity to examine adaptive capacity not as latent, but through the explicit use of resources in response to two consecutive events, highlighting the critical needs of displaced households in the context of compound disasters. Drawing on interviews conducted with Hurricane Dorian-displaced households in The Bahamas during the COVID-19 pandemic, this research examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these households’ recovery, and the implications for household vulnerability, through the lens of adaptive capacity. The research finds that when mobility is constrained, as it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, the adaptive potential of displaced households is significantly reduced. This paper contributes to broader discussions on climate adaptation, disaster recovery, and mobility by showing how vulnerability is produced by not only hazard exposure, but also the erosion of adaptive capacity through successive and overlapping crises.</p>