An example I encountered when trying to understand jet streams is the Ferrel Cells. Hadley Cells and Polar Cells in the atmosphere are simply heat engines driven by air being heated and rising and cool air falling.
The Ferrel Cell is driven by air dragged along by the Hadley and Polar Cells, this means air dragged downward at 30° Latitude by the Hadley Cell is compressed, warming surroundings and moving along the ground to 60° where the Polar Cell drags the air up, expanding it allowing it to absorb heat from cool air around it before returning to 30°. Apparently consuming ~275 terawatts with a COP of 12.1
I agree this would certainly be better than an outright ban on price gouging, though I don’t understand the advantage over not treating disasters differently.
The larger the tax base, ceteris peribus, the less distortionary the tax, so if you want more money for the poor during disasters, just raise normal sales/income/or property tax rate an amount to equal the revenue needed to help poorer people in disasters, and then don’t have the more heavily distortionary high tax that only applies to disasters. As an added plus, doing it this way avoids a high tax when adherance is lower and may be more popular than an onerous tax when goods are at their most expensive.