Houston Passes First Post-Harvey Rules to Reduce Flood Damage

Starting this fall, all new homes built in Houston’s floodplains must be elevated higher off the ground after a contentious debate and narrow vote by City Council on Wednesday to adopt the Bayou City’s first major regulatory response to the widespread flooding Hurricane Harvey unleashed last August.

The vote marks a shift away from Houston’s longtime aversion to constraining development, and means all new construction in the city’s floodplains will have to be built two feet above the projected water level in a 500-year storm.

One of the readers of this blog is a staffer at the Red Cross. She asked that I share this information about home preparedness.

Every day, seven people die in home fires, most in homes that lack working smoke alarms. But new research from the American Red Cross shows that Americans underestimate the chance that a home fire could happen to them and are unaware of simple steps that can help keep them safe.

• In fact…Only 1 in 4 people believe they are likely to experience a home fire in their lifetime
• About 40% of people have forgotten to turn off a stove or oven, even though cooking is the leading cause of home fires.

• 80% of people believe everyone in their household knows what to do when a smoke alarm goes off. But the fact is that less than half have a plan in place, and only about half have practiced that plan.
• 1 out of 10 have had to sacrifice buying other essentials for their families to purchase a smoke alarm.

The Red Cross is combating these statistics and misinformation by installing smoke alarms and discussing fire safety nationwide. To continue to save lives, the Red Cross will Sound the Alarm about fire safety through a series of smoke alarm installation events in more than 100 high-risk communities in the United States. In just 16 days – from April 28 to May 13 – volunteers and partners will install 100,000 free smoke alarms. So far, the Red Cross and partners have installed 1.1 million smoke alarms that have saved 381 lives.

For more information, visit the site www.soundthealarm.org to find opportunities in their area.

See also stories from Families Saved by Smoke Alarms: https://vimeo.com/262437348/722af2a8f9

Journal article from Science Direct: Communicating contested geoscience to the public: Moving from ‘matters of fact’ to ‘matters of concern.”

Geological issues are increasingly intruding on the everyday lives of ordinary people. Whether it is the onshore extraction of oil and gas, the subsurface injection of waters for geothermal power or the deep storage of waste products, communities across the world are being confronted with controversial geological interventions beneath their backyards. Communicating these complex scientific and technical issues is made more challenging by the general public’s unfamiliarity with the geological realm

Thanks to Chris Jones for the citation.

This is why we must pay attention to climate science:  High Tide flooding to Become Routine by 2100, NOAA Report Says. The direct link to the NOAA report is here.

The Diva knew Margaret Davidson, who was a bright and funny lady.

From the University of NV: Understanding University emergency preparedness
Is the University prepared? What are the resources available? What can everyone do to help?

Here is a DHS resource also: Campus Resilience Program Resource Library.