From Governing: How the New Tax Law Could Slow Disaster Recovery in Small Towns. A lesser-known provision in the GOP tax overhaul ends the benefits for victims of small-scale disasters.
End of Casualty Loss Tax Break
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Author Archives: recoverydiva
Flood Risks Increase Haz Mat Risks
From the NY Times: Floods Are Getting Worse, and 2,500 Chemical Sites Lie in the Water’s Path.
Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding.
Pollution After a Disaster
From the HSWire: Comparing pollution levels before and after Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall in late August 2017, brought more than 64 inches of rain to the Houston area, flooding 200,000 homes, 13 Superfund sites, and more than 800 wastewater treatment facilities. As disasters become more frequent and populations living in vulnerable areas increase, interest in the health effects of exposure to the combination of natural and technological disasters has grown.
Disaster Preparedness
The NYTimes featured an article today titled How to Prepare Your Community for a Disaster. This article focuses on personal and community preparedness. Generally the advice is good although many of the steps and info sources listed can readily be found as part of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training and manual. That source is not noted until the list of references at the end of the article.
Mitch Stripling has also written a useful handbook for emergency management practitioners: Managing Chaos.
Note to Researchers
The Diva wants to remind you that there are seven years of information stored on this site. If you are researching a topic, use the search function in the right-hand column of the homepage to enter the descriptor term. It usually works quite well.
For those of you interested in details about the most recent hurricanes (Harvey, Irma, and Maria) and their effects on Houston, cities in FL, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, search the name of the hurricane rather than the place impacted for best results.
What Puerto Rico Needs
From the NY Times: Puerto Rico Needs More Than Bandages.
Puerto Rico needs more than bandages. It needs to rethink and redesign its electric, water and wastewater systems, both to protect them against the next big storm and to provide the dependable service they were failing to give residents before Hurricane Maria. To accomplish that and other rebuilding needs, Puerto Rico had sought $94.4 billion in total disaster aid in November. That included nearly $18 billion to rebuild the power grid — nine times what Congress has provided.
Achieving resiliency in the face of powerful storms will require the wholesale rebuilding of the island’s utilities. Simply patching them up will not be enough. If that’s the extent of the fix, the island is likely to find itself back in the same place after the next big storm, with taxpayers asked to spend new billions on more life preservers.
Disaster Recovery Resources – News from New Zealand
This is a guest posting from recovery colleagues in New Zealand, Elizabeth McNaughton and Jolie Wills.
The first year after a disaster is incredibly demanding and it’s difficult to imagine how much harder it can be. But for those working in places like Houston, Puerto Rico and bushfire-affected California and the Canadian Cariboo, year two and subsequent years can be even tougher. For those working hard to do meaningful things after disaster, funding, attention and energy all diminish, yet need doesn’t. McNaughton & Wills is a service that helps people working after disaster do more for communities, for longer, and realize their opportunities for personal and professional growth.
Through personal experience, Elizabeth McNaughton and Jolie Wills know well the challenges and opportunities of disaster recovery. They have researched leadership and support strategies in disaster recovery settings around the world and have worked with many people in challenging leadership positions. They understand how it feels to be thrust unprepared into new terrain, under intense pressure over a prolonged period, with uncertainty and high expectations as constant companions. With this in mind, Elizabeth and Jolie have developed training in disaster recovery leadership, in working well with disaster-affected people and in storytelling for evidence-based advice after disasters.
Exhaustion of those working (and often living) disaster recovery becomes a real feature over time. This often isn’t recognized until the effects take hold and show up on those working in recovery, their families, and their recovery programs. Practical and emotional support for leaders and others working in recovery is essential. Elizabeth and Jolie have worked to raise awareness of these support needs with funders, governance and decision-makers. Through conversations with over 100 recovery leaders and personnel around the globe, they have developed principles of recovery leadership and support, https://www.preparecenter.org/resources/leading-in-disaster-recovery. More recently, they’ve created a wrap-around support service that gives a power boost to people and organizations working in recovery, believing this to be vital to good outcomes for disaster-affected communities. The training, the wrap-around services and the power boost offered by McNaughton & Wills are important for those with big dreams of transformative change and the brave who are just trying to get through.
Recovery in Houston – not going well
The recovery process is always long and difficult, but the reasons for local problems vary. See this account from The Guardian: ‘We’ve been forgotten’: Hurricane Harvey and the long path to recovery
Nearly six months after the storm, residents of a Texas town face red tape, long waits and ‘a gigantic housing crisis’
Flood Disasters, Data and Map
Interesting report from the Weather Channel. I found the map of past events rather surprising. See: Flood Disasters in Inland States.
Two Articles re City Water Supply Shortages
From HuffPost: We Have Seen The Future Of Water, And It Is Cape Town
Article in HSNewswire: Can Israel Help Solve CapeTown’s Water Crisis?
Within three months, South Africa’s capital city and biggest tourist destination may become the first major city in the world to run out of water. The four million residents of Cape Town will have their water supplies cut off unless the city manages to reduce daily consumption by 20 percent. The “Day Zero” shutdown is expected for mid-May 2018 and is recalculated every week based on current reservoir capacity and daily consumption. The crisis is mostly attributed to three years of unprecedented drought that has dried up the city’s six-dam reservoir system.
Recovery Diva 