From Bloomberg Business: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else. “The Army Corps of Engineers sent water cascading into West Houston’s Energy Corridor to avoid a catastrophic reservoir failure during Hurricane Harvey. Now a web of lawsuits could change how the government handles extreme weather.”
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), recognized NFPA 1600 as our National Preparedness Standard. Widely used by public, not-for-profit, nongovernmental, and private entities on a local, regional, national, international and global basis, NFPA 1600 has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a voluntary consensus standard for emergency preparedness.
Clearly, the Houston area could have done more to be prepared for a major hurricane. And it seems that the science of climate change and meteorology indicate that Harvey was not a once in a lifetime event.
Harvey Hindsight: Local Mitigation, Sensible Zoning Would Make a Difference
Relying on the federal government to mitigate flooding is a recipe for disaster.
Global warming makes ‘biblical’ rain like that from Hurricane Harvey much more likely
From Governing magazine online: What Temporary Housing? Harvey Victims Are Still Waiting. Thanks to Eric Holdeman for sharing this article. See his commentary on this on his blog. Of note, the discussion of resilience in Houston.
Update: See Eric’s blog on the last mentioned article.
From the IBHS, an insurance association, IBHS’ Business Continuity Toolkit
UNISDR. Proceedings of the 2017 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction:
The Diva has been contemplating the concept of resilience, as described in the document Disaster Resilience; A National Imperative, published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. Reviewing it against the present setting of disaster recovery efforts in Houston, TX, the State of FL, and all of Puerto Rico has raised many questions.
Reading this powerful article in the N.Y. Times suggests to me that it is time to review current thinking about resilience and about emergency management in general. See: Lessons From Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Struggle Is America’s Tale. Some key excerpts:
For years, the local authorities turned a blind eye to runaway development. Thousands of homes have been built next to, and even inside, the boundaries of the two big reservoirs devised by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s after devastating floods. Back then, Houston was 20 miles downstream, its population 400,000. Today, these reservoirs are smack in the middle of an urban agglomeration of six million.
Unfortunately, nature always gets the last word. Houston’s growth contributed to the misery Harvey unleashed. The very forces that pushed the city forward are threatening its way of life.
Sprawl is only part of the story. Houston is also built on an upbeat, pro-business strategy of low taxes and little government. Many Texans regard this as the key to prosperity, an antidote to Washington. It encapsulates a potent vision of an unfettered America.
After every natural calamity, American politicians make big promises. They say: We will rebuild. We will not be defeated. Never again will we be caught unprepared.
But they rarely tackle the toughest obstacles. The hard truth, scientists say, is that climate change will increasingly require moving — not just rebuilding — entire neighborhoods, reshaping cities, even abandoning coastlines.We need a whole new structure of governance,” he insisted. “We’ve built in watersheds, paved roads and highways because we don’t have mass transit.
“Inevitably, it all catches up with us,” the judge said. “Mother Nature has a long memory.”
See also this posting dated Sept. 7th: What H. Harvey Says about Risk, Climate, and Resilience.
CERT Should be Mandatory. I have written about this topic before, when someone suggested a business version of the Community Emergency Response Team (a program sponsored by FEMA) would be useful. Here is a link to CERT Training Materials.
As a local CERT member, I highly recommend the program be adapted and extended to additional users.
Thanks for Alisha Harding for the citation.
From the NY Times: Trump Ignores Climate Change. That’s Very Bad for Disaster Planners.
In Washington, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is leading recovery efforts that could cost taxpayers more than $50 billion after devastating storms hit Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. At the same time, the agency is wrestling with an even harder problem: how to help communities prepare for future flooding disasters that could be far more severe than anything seen this year.
Complicating that task is the fact that the Trump administration has largely been hostile to discussions of global warming.
As a taxpayer, I hate to see $50B dollars of federal money spent while ignoring a major factor in the recovery planning. Climate change is the elephant in the room…..
Disaster Assistance: Opportunities to Enhance Implementation of the Redesigned Public Assistance Grant Program; Nov 8, 2017. Note that the website now gives you access to a one-page summary, the recommendations, and the full document.
Recovery Diva 