Category Archives: Hurricane Sandy

Excellent New Article – in Environment Magazine

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Since Michelin ranks restaurants with stars, the Diva has decided to award stars to documents re recovery. Here is the first one I would give 4 stars to:

Making America More Resilience toward Natural Disasters: A Call For Action, by Howard Kunreuther, Erwann Michel-Kerjan and Mark Pauly. From Environment Magazine, July/August 2013.  The title does not really do justice to the wide array of useful content here, so I suggest you download the full article and decide for yourself how you would categorize it.

Some excerpts:

Hurricane Sandy caused an estimated $65 billion in economic losses to residences, business owners, and infrastructure owners. It is the second most costly natural disaster in recent years in the United States, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but it is not an outlier; economic and insured losses from devastating natural catastrophes in the United States and worldwide are climbing.

According to Munich Re,2 real-dollar economic losses from natural catastrophes alone have increased from $528 billion (1981–1990), to $1,197 billion (1991–2000), to $1,23 billion (2001–2010). During the past 10 years, the losses were principally due to hurricanes and resulting storm surge occurring in 2004, 2005, and 2008. Figure 1 depicts the evolution of the direct economic losses and the insured portion from great natural disasters over the period 1980–2012.2

There is a wealth of useful information in this article, which makes it hard to summarize. It is thoughtful and clearly writtten. I consider this an essential document, one that I think will be a classic in time.

NYC Makes Big Plans To Protect Against Future Hurricanes

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nyc skyline

See the article titled Levees, removable walls part of $20 billion plan to protect NYC from storms, climate change.

And this article from the NY Daily News: Bloomberg rolls out $20 billion plan to protect city from natural disasters

Issue of new Flood Maps and Their Effect on Rebuilding, from ProPublica.

From the NYTimes on June 13, an article about the need for a major overhaul of local building codes.

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Businss Recovery After Superstorm Sandy

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The American Planning Association New York Metro Chapter presented a report, Getting Back to Business: Addressing the Needs of Rockaway Businesses Affected by Superstorm Sandy, to the Rockaway Development and Revitalization Corporation (RDRC), culminating a seven-month effort to address business recovery and resilience on the Rockaway peninsula after Superstorm Sandy.

Despite best efforts, approximately half of the Rockaway’s 1,100 businesses are still closed. To address this, the chapter brought together dozens of planning experts to volunteer their services to develop medium and long-term strategies for RDRC, the peninsula’s largest community development corporation.

Read the full press release about the report at the APA New York Metro Chapter website or read the entire report:  “Getting Back to Business: Addressing the Needs of Rockaway Businesses Affected by Superstorm Sandy”

Costly New NFIP Rules Discourage Rebuilding After Superstorm Sandy

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Rebuilding After Sandy But With Costly New Rules. NYTimes, May 8. The discussion of subsidized insurance and issues with older homes is useful to understand some of the rebuilding delays occurring currently.

Here are some excerpts:

It’s been more than six months since Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, yet many people whose homes were ravaged by the storm still do not know how to put all the pieces back together.By now, most know how much insurance money they have to work with, though plenty of people are still struggling to get more. But a new federal law that happened to coincide with the arrival of the storm will cause flood insurance premiums to skyrocket and require stricter, and thus more expensive, rebuilding standards

So in the most devastated communities, families are being forced to make difficult financial calculations: can they afford the new flood insurance premiums, which, at worst, can reach as high as $30,000 a year? Do they have the money to rebuild their homes to the government’s new specifications? Does it even pay to stay?

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Two readers called this article to my attention. And Ian McLean from New Zealand pointed out that his country has a similar problem with earthquake insurance in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes.

Federalism at work – for better or for worse

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Some days you just have to wonder about our federal system and how ponderous it can be when it comes to serving its citizens after a disaster. This story highlights the role of NJ state government in its role as recipient of a presidential disaster declaration and the federal funds that flow from it.  In my view, the victims of  Superstorm Sandy, not to mention the general public, might expect a quicker pace from state government. Superstorm Sandy occurred in October 2012, yet this article is dated April 21.

$1.8B in post-Sandy federal grants might not reach homeowners until July

Victims of Hurricane Sandy, expecting federal grants of up to $150,000 to help them rebuild their battered homes, will have to wait until summer before they see any money, the governor said Thursday.

Gov. Chris Christie said he hopes the federal government next week approves the nearly $1.8 billion earmarked for a massive New Jersey rebuilding program. Some $600 million of that will be reserved for homeowners to repair and elevate their houses.

But that money might not reach homeowners until July, Christie said in Long Branch Thursday.

Richard Constable, commissioner of the state Department of Community Affairs, said earlier this week his department still has to build the framework for administering the funds. And Christie said the application process for homeowners will require environmental approvals.

Business owners, meanwhile, may get grants sooner, Christie said. Nearly $500 million of the $1.8 billion fund would go to small-business grants, community revitalization programs and a tourism marketing campaign.

“The business side will happen much more quickly because the application process on the business side is much easier ….

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Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force – precedents

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Ever since the H. Sandy Task Force was formed, with the HUD Secretary named as the lead, I have been trying to figure out where this idea came from. I think I have part of the answer.

After the Deepwater Horizon-B.P Oil Spill (2010), Pres. Bush issued an Executive Order that created the Gulf Coast Reconstruction effort.  The organization was headed by then Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mobus, who was the former governor of MS. His mission was to create the Long-Term Gulf Coast Restoration Support Plan.

Then to implement the plan, the president asked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to chair the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task. Force. This was an advisory body whose purpose was “… to focus on efforts to create more resilient and healthy Gulf Coast ecosystems, while also encouraging support for economic recovery and long-term health issues.” This group was formed by Executive Order #13554 on October 5, 2010.

For more information, see the Restore the Gulf website.

If anyone has any more information, or knows of other precedents, please let me know.

NJ Plans To Rebuild Better than LA Did After H. Katrina

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NJ Keeping Eye on 600M for Superstorm Sandy Relief.

As New Jersey prepares to spend $600 million on homes clobbered by superstorm Sandy, the state is taking steps to avoid the pitfalls of the country’s largest-ever rebuilding effort — in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

There, hundreds of millions of federal dollars were given to residents to elevate homes in New Orleans. But in many cases, the work was never done, federal auditors have found. Eight years after the 2005 hurricane, Louisiana can’t account for how most homeowners spent grants intended to raise homes above the threat of floodwaters.

Unlike Louisiana and Mississippi, New Jersey plans to release home repair and elevation grants in installments — not in upfront lump sums. And the Christie administration also plans to hire private contractors to manage the program and oversee an estimated 30,000 property inspections over the next two years, according to officials and state documents.

But in proposing safeguards to eliminate waste, the Christie administration risks slowing work on homes along the Jersey Shore and in devastated communities …. experts say.

NOTE: Please take a look at the comment below for some important details about a previous attempt in LA>

Here is an article with some pictures of the actual process of elevating a home. The look is quite unusual while the process is going on.

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News Clips re Hurricane Sandy Aftermath

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The new flood maps, if approved, would add more than 65,000 structures in New York and New Jersey to the 100-year-flood zones—areas that FEMA believes face a 1 percent-a-year change of flooding. Everyone in those zones is required to get flood insurance….

The solution we support would result in a better and more proactive approach and leverage a stronger public-private partnership. This approach would strengthen America’s financial infrastructure by building a privately funded national catastrophe fund.A national catastrophe fund that is part of a comprehensive, integrated program will help address insurance affordability and expand coverage options for all home­own­ers while protecting taxpayers from the seemingly endless need to provide emergency relief.

Differentiating the Response to H. Sandy from H. Katrina

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This week I have seen 3 sets of remarks from federal officials that try to make it clear that the response to H. Sandy did not repeat the problems from H.Sandy.

Senate Committee on Homeland Security, March 20. Hurricane Sandy: Getting the Recovery Right and the Value of Mitigation. See testimony by: (1) Sec. Donovan, HUD, and (2) Craig Fugate, FEMA

Also see (3) Sandy Shows How FEMA Has Changed, by Michael Byrne. Federal Coordinating Officer for New York.