From Bloomberg News: The latest Climate Threat for Coastal Cities – More Rich People.
Around the country, the government’s response to extreme weather is pushing lower-income people like the Barons away from the coast, often in the name of safety. Housing experts, economists and activists have coined the term “climate gentrification.”
From Bloomberg News: Disasters Are Costing Us More. Why Aren’t We Insuring More? Climate change and our insistence on building in high-risk areas may force us to reconsider whether our losses are natural or man-made.
Last year was the second-costliest year for disasters since 1970, according to a new analysis from reinsurance firm Swiss Re AG. Global economic losses from these events reached $337 billion in 2017, behind only 2011’s total losses, and less than 40 percent were insured. A close look at Swiss Re’s data reveals several worrying trends. Losses from natural and man-made disasters are increasing, markets are not getting better at insuring them, and our own choices aren’t helping.
In February 2012, GAO identified coordination challenges among Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant programs that share similar goals and fund similar projects, which contribute to the risk of duplication among the programs. GAO recommended that FEMA take steps, as it develops its new grant management system, to collect project information with sufficient detail to identify potential duplication among the grant programs. FEMA has since addressed these recommendations. Specifically, in 2014, FEMA modified a legacy grants data system to capture more robust grant project-level data, and in fiscal year 2017, procured a software tool and developed a set of standard operating procedures to assist its staff in identifying potentially duplicative projects. These actions should help FEMA strengthen the administration and oversight of its grant programs. Furthermore, FEMA is also developing a new grants management modernization system to consolidate and better manage its grants. GAO is currently reviewing the system for this Committee and will report out next year.
From the Orlando Sentinel: FEMA Ignores Housing Option for Displaced Families. At issue is HUD’s Disaster Housing Assistance Program. Here are some details:
DHAP could provide temporary rental assistance and wrap-around case management to low-income families in need, helping them find permanent housing solutions, secure employment, and connect to public benefits as they rebuild their lives. The program was developed after hard-won lessons from Hurricane Katrina, and has been used successfully after Hurricanes Rita, Gustav and Ike and Superstorm Sandy. After previous storms, steps were taken to stand up DHAP as quickly as two weeks after a disaster. Both the Bush and Obama administrations recognized DHAP as a best practice after disasters.
The Trump administration, unfortunately, is instead either relying on failed responses from previous storms that led to the need to create DHAP in the first place or trying new ineffective pilot programs. Administrator Brock Long testified last week before Congress that he favored shifting responsibilities for disaster housing recovery from the federal government onto the states and Puerto Rico. But the state-run disaster housing programs put in place as an alternative to DHAP have been plagued by significant delays. Fewer than 320 households in Florida and 150 households in Texas are in the pipeline to receive state housing assistance. FEMA’s experiment has fallen woefully short.
USGS Maps Out Haywired Earthquake Scenario So Agencies Can Outsmart Disaster. Here is the direct link to the 6-page Earthquake Scenario.
Update on April 26: From Homeland Security Newswire: Next California’s Big One could kill hundreds, cause $100 billion in losses, trap 20,000 in elevators
Earlier this month, DHS announced that it would let a contract to track information sources that mentioned the Dept. Not everyone was thrilled at that prospect. An editorial in USAToday: Memo to DHS: Track terrorists, not journalists. “Hey Homeland Security Department, we’re not crazy. Remember when a Pentagon PR firm monitored journalists before embedding them with troops?”
The Diva thinks that even an innocuous blog like this one, would be on the DHS list.
From the NYTimes: San Francisco’s Big Seismic Gamble
San Francisco lives with the certainty that the Big One will come. But the city is also putting up taller and taller buildings clustered closer and closer together because of the state’s severe housing shortage. Now those competing pressures have prompted an anxious rethinking of building regulations. Experts are sending this message: The building code does not protect cities from earthquakes nearly as much as you might think.
From the Union of concerned Scientists: New FEMA Study Wisely Details Ways to Make Flood Insurance Affordable. Here is the direct link to the 111-page report titled An Affordability Framework for the NFIP.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released a report today detailing how Congress can modify the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) making insurance more affordable for low-income households and limiting their future risk. Some of the possible policy options include: sharing premium costs with FEMA, assisting those already spending significantly on other housing expenses, and providing grants or loans for mitigation actions that reduce flood risk.
From Politico: FEMA’s plan underestimated Puerto Rican hurricane. In preparing for the storm, the disaster agency failed to anticipate the level of damage or extent of federal involvement required.
The federal government significantly underestimated the potential damage to Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria and relied too heavily on local officials and private-sector entities to handle the cleanup, according to a POLITICO review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s plan for the disaster.
The plan, which was developed by a FEMA contractor in 2014 in anticipation of a catastrophic storm and utilized by FEMA when Maria hit last September, prepared for a Category 4 hurricane and projected that the island would shift from response to recovery mode after roughly 30 days. In fact, Hurricane Maria was a “high-end” Category 4 storm with different locations on the island experiencing Category 5 winds. More than six months after Maria made landfall, the island is just beginning to shift to recovery mode.
Puerto Rico’s blackout is now the second largest on record worldwide. Thousands are still without power across the island months after Hurricane Maria struck.
A new report from the Rhodium Group on Puerto Rico’s ongoing blackout has found that Hurricane Maria has spawned the second-largest power outage in the world on record. The only blackout that has lasted longer was caused by Typhoon Haiyan, one of the largest tropical storms ever to make landfall and the deadliest storm ever to hit the Philippines:
Recovery Diva 