Category Archives: Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy in Perspective – updates

Posted on by
Reply

HURRICANE HISTORY:

Council on Foreign Relations, How Likely Was Hurricane Sandy.  Some really chilling scientific research and dire warnings about the likely frequency of future hurricanes with the same path.

“[Scientists are] telling us we shouldn’t be surprised that this 900-mile-wide monster marched up the East Coast this week paralyzing cities and claiming scores of lives…. In a paper published by Nature in February, [Oppenheimer] and three colleagues concluded that the ‘storm of the century’ would become the storm of ‘every twenty years or less.’

Hurricane Sandy in perspective, in HSWired, November 2,2012. Excellent article that provides a wealth of historic and scientific knowledge useful to our current efforts on determining H. Sandy’s place in context of  U.S. disaster experience. Comments from Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. (Univ. of CO).

Hurricane Sandy has left death and destruction in its path, and it broke a few records, but there were worse hurricanes; since 1900, 242 hurricanes have hit the United States; if Sandy causes $20 billion in damage, in 2012 dollars, it would rank as the seventeenth most damaging hurricane or tropical storm out of these 242; the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list; Hurricane Katrina ranks fourth; from August 1954 through August 1955, the East Coast saw three different storms make landfall — Carol, Hazel, and Diane; each, in 2012, would have caused about twice as much damage as Sandy

FEDERALISM:

Some sensible advice from an experienced disaster researcher at Brookings, Nov. 2.:  Feds, States, Cities — The All of the Above Disaster Response

INFRASTRUCTURE:

Insightful article from a Columbia profession in CNN today. New York’s Neglected Infrastruture Fails.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that New York’s infrastructure wasn’t up to Hurricane Sandy.  What happened in New York was not all that different than what’s

happened in other places hit by freakish weather events — the infrastructure wasn’t robust enough to withstand nature. It is not the first time it’s happened here, and it won’t be the last.

The problems in New York stem from many factors. For a start, infrastructure investment here is no more a priority than it is in other places across the country:

It’s simply not something that voters want badly. When given a choice between investing in schools, health and housing or investing in sewers, tunnels or roads, the

latter will always lose out. And that’s not just the view of the politicians, but also of the constituents who keep them in office.

___________________________________

PLEASE PATRONIZE OUR SPONSOR – THE DISASTER BOOKSTORE

Related articles

Guide to Federal Disaster Assistance and Relief Funding

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to my friend in NYC, David Pollock, for a link to this useful  document.  It was smart of Senator Gillibrand to get this information together in a timely way. See:

A Guide to Disaster Assistance and Relief Funding; How to Navigate the Disaster Assistance Process. (20 pp.)

The references to agencies and contacts are NY state and city specific, but the general federal information should be useful to many people in other states.

FEMA and H. Sandy- updates

Posted on by
1
Nov. 1, USNews&World Report. FEMA Can Deal With Disasters in a Way States Can’t. [Author is with Brookings.]

Kathleen Tierney’s comments on the NY Time blog re Do We Really Need FEMA?
October 31. Her concluding sentence:

The bottom line is that the U.S. currently has an emergency management system that is second to none in the world. It is by no means perfect, and it needs to continually evolve in response to new threats and disaster experiences. But it is clearly not in need of a radical overhaul.

[Tierney is the Director of the Hazards Center, Univ. of CO/Boulder]

Sandy Shows Why We Need FEMA; Oct. 31.

An excerpt:I hope the storm is a good reminder that when we hear candidates’ soothing words about shedding federal government functions, whether it’s FEMA, Medicaid, or safety nets in recession, we must think about what that actually means in practice. Disasters happen, recessions happen — like it or not, there are market failures and natural disasters in our future. If anything, it seems as though these 100-year storms come about every six months these days. (Which reminds me — here’s a great idea for a big, national infrastructure project that will create millions of jobs for white- and blue-collar workers and save billions in lost output: Bury the power lines!)

At the end of the day, we don’t need “big” government or “small” government. What we need is an amply funded federal government to meet challenges like those we’re facing today, ….

How to Tell if FEMA is Doing a Good Job or a Lousy One; the New Republic, Oct. 31

Superstorm Sandy has pushed on northward, leaving some of the most densely populated areas of the country a mess in its wake.  Now, rescue agencies will get in full gear—none moreso than the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). What can the storm’s victims expect from FEMA? And how can we evaluate whether the agency, which so famously bungled its response to Hurricane Katrina, is doing a competent job? To answer these questions, I called on Mark Merritt, a FEMA official under Clinton who spent years coordinating its disaster relief efforts with state and local governments, and who is now the president of a crisis management consulting firm. Merritt and I spoke by phone just after his plane touched down in D.C.—“a ghost town”—on what to watch for as FEMA’s efforts get underway.

The Conservative View:  See the article titled: How a Smart Conservative Would Reform FEMA, by Matt Mayer of the Heritiage Foundation, as interviewed in the Atlantic , October 31. In my view, he is the best informed conservative commentator. [I just took issue with a writer in Forbes online.]

Related articles

More Dimensions of the H. Sandy Disaster

Posted on by
Reply

Insurance Industry – could it do more to prevent disasters?

You might think Wired magazine is an unlikely place to deal with disaster mitigation, but they did offer this article: How Insurers Can Foil the Next Hurricane Sandy, on October 31. 

Weather Forecasting: – why is the U.S. falling behind the Europeans?

Why American Has Fallen Behind the World in Storm Forecasting; October 31.

Americans should take great pride in the fact that computer weather modeling was invented here, along with weather satellites and other scientific and technological marvels. Sadly, the skill of our computer models fell substantially behind that of other nations some decades ago, and by many measures we are in third or even fourth place today. The overall star performer is a computer model operated by a consortium of European nations; that model accurately predicted Sandy’s track and evolution well before U.S. models caught up later last week.

Why have we fallen so far behind? While there are many nuances to this answer, the basic reason is a failure of political will. The Europeans spend somewhat more on numerical weather prediction and run their models on larger and faster computers; they have also been more effective that we have in involving academic researchers in the development and improvement of their models. They appear to recognize that the monetary savings of skillful weather forecasts far outstrip what governments spend on the weather enterprise.

Related articles

Disasters and Big Government – political philosophy

Posted on by
3

This topic keeps growing, so I will add articles that bring out additional dimensions.

As a continuation of the topics I write about yesterday, I want to share an editorial in NYT today: A Big Storm Requires Big Government. Here is the concluding paragraph:

Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.

Another take on the topic of the disaster policies of Romney and Obama, from the Wash. Post on October 28. This one includes quotes from nationally known researchers, such as Kathleen Tierney.

One more perspective, from NBC News.

Rebuttals to the NY Times editorial:

(1) The Heritage Foundation’s response to the NYT article. Matt Mayer commented on October 30 as noted here.

(2) The Wall St. Journal’s article was titled: A Big Storm Requires Big Bird? Necessary government doesn’t justify         extravagant government.

(3) A neutral commentary from the Christian Science Monitor.

___________________________________________________

An example of bad consequences for failure to use federal money for flood mitigation. Romney is now taking the heat for a 2004 decision in Massachusetts.

The view that politicizing a disaster is normal, is the theme of this article in NY magazine, October 30.

Related articles

Emergency/Disaster Management – the politics

Posted on by
Reply

Given the intensity of the pre-election political debate as well as the near-term arrival of Hurricane Sandy in the nation’s capital this is the time, several critical political issues probably will get some visibility (if not solutions) in the near term. Once the storm clears, there will be intense scrutiny of FEMA and the availability of federal funds and assistance to state and local governments for response and recovery activities.  More specifically,

(1) We can expect some debate about supplemental appropriations by Congress to pay for the expected tens of billions of dollars of damage likely from the catastrophic storm events.

(2) A review and discussion of the form and functions of FEMA.

(3) Effects of sequestration on FEMA.

Re (1) above, here are some details from Roll Call today; essentially saying that funds are available at FEMA presently to assist states with disaster response. Same topic as explained in the Wall St. Journal today.

Re (2) quite a bit a discussion ensued today:

In a  recent ( but pre-Sandy) interview, Romney indicated he wants to abolish FEMA and make the states assume responsibility for disaster relief and assistance.  There might also be a  privatizing effort in there too.

Today, CNN picked up this topic and the Romney spokesperson quoted this morning is sticking to the story.

By afternoon today, Romney is quote as saying he would not abolish FEMA, but gave no details about the agency would do if the states had the main role and functions.

Also this afternoon, a writer with Salon.com weighed in, saying abolishing FEMA was a terrible idea.

My opinion:  I fully expect that his position will change when his Republican colleagues who hold congressional offices in some of the 10 or more states affected by  H. Sandy want their share of federal money for response and recovery, under the current national emergency management system.

Oct.30- hate to say I told you so, but Romney has a”clarified” his stance on FEMA and federal aid about 24 hours after I wrote this posting.  See this report. It would be political suicide to do otherwise.

Re (3) Here is what Ezra Klein has to say in his blog re how costly cuts to FEMA will result from sequestration in 2013.

________________________________________

Hurricane Sandy – October 29

Posted on by
Reply

From the CNN report this morning, here is a great quote:

“The last time we saw anything like this was never,” Connecticut Gov. Dannell Malloy said Sunday. “I don’t know how to say it any clear than that is the largest threat to human life our state has experienced in anyone’s lifetime.”

Thus far, I am very impressed with the weather science that is being used and shared.  I have been checking on several websites and the details are amazing. Great job on the part of the meteorologists.

In the ” deja vu” department. Here is a quote from the President.  We all know that the Stafford Act has a lot of rules and regulations, regardless of what presidents say.

He promised the government would “respond big and respond fast” after the storm hits. “My message to the governors as well as to the mayors is anything they need, we will be there, and we will cut through red tape,” Obama said. “We are not going to get bogged down with a lot of rules.”

 

_____________________________________________________________

Related articles

Hurricane Sandy- October 28

Posted on by
Reply

As a resident of the metro Washington, DC area, the Diva is in the direct path of this unusual and scary hurricane. If we lose power, I will not be able to post new material in the next few days.

On October 27, Reuters reported on some of the rare factors that make H. Sandy so unusual and probably historic.

Social media usage is getting underway. See Kim Stephen’s latest posting in her iDisaster blog. And I have just downloaded two new apps for my smartphone – the Red Cross Hurricane app and the FEMA app.  I have not yet had the chance to check out all of their features, but a quick look shows some good advice, including some items that do not readily come to mind that are worth noting

Politics: This is always a factor, but one week prior to a national election, politics is a big factor.  Here are a few articles:  (1) the politics of emergency management, as noted on October 28 in the LA Times: (2)  NY Magazine., and Fox News, all on October 28.

From those of us who take the long view, and think about the historic significance of these large-to-catastrophic disaster events, it looks like H. Sandy will be included in any future  editions of Emergency Management; The American Experience.

Related articles