Outlook for Disasters Globally

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From Forbes Magazine: The Next Global Refugee Crisis Will Be Caused By Environmental Disasters. Some rather alarming news about mostly man-made disasters:

The next big migration wave won’t be caused by war or hunger. It will be caused by environmental disasters. People will be fleeing cities and countries to escape environmental pollution that makes life short, sick, and unbearable.

The global consequences of environmental disasters are enormous for everyone, including for investors in global markets. For the countries most affected, this massive migration wave will undermine economic growth, property values, and financial asset valuations—a risk investors must factor into their calculations when they buy into financial and real estate assets in highly polluted countries.

Chemical Safety Board in Jeopardy

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Watchdog for Industrial Disasters to Be Purged in Trump’s Budget. The Chemical Safety Board was created to investigate fires, explosions; Agency’s $11 million budget watches over public, worker safety, Some excerpts from the Bloomberg News article:

When a Texas City refinery exploded in 2005, 15 people died. Months later, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board found that putting workers in temporary trailers near danger zones at the plant raised the death toll.

Since then, temporary trailers have been relocated industry wide.

The example is just one of dozens over the past decade involving the independent agency, which has been targeted for elimination in President Donald Trump’s preliminary budget. While the board, with a 2016 budget of $11 million, is viewed skeptically by some companies and their allies in Congress, it has also drawn its share of supporters.

“I don’t think anyone in the industry wants to see the Chemical Safety Board be abolished,” said Stephen Brown, a vice president with Tesoro Corp., an oil refiner that was the focus of a 2014 CSB report, in a telephone interview. “The goal is a fully functional, professional investigative body that approaches things in a professional manner with integrity.”

Funding for the agency is among the cuts outlined by Trump’s blueprint budget Thursday, a preliminary document that embodies the president’s spending priorities for the nation. The safety agency was created in 1990 to find the root causes of industrial accidents and recommend ways to keep them from happening again.

One of the programs targeted for extinction by the Trump Administration is the Chemical Safety Board. In the Diva’s opinion this is not a smart move; in fact it is too bad that we do not have the equivalent of this board in the natural disaster field.

Sea Level Rise in LA

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Louisiana wetlands threatened by with sea-level rise four times the global average
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20170315-louisiana-wetlands-threatened-by-with-sealevel-rise-four-times-the-global-average
Without major efforts to rebuild Louisiana’s wetlands, particularly in the westernmost part of the state, there is little chance that the coast will be able to withstand the accelerating rate of sea-level rise, a new study concludes. The study shows that the rate of sea-level rise in the region over the past six to ten years amounts to half an inch per year on average.

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Japan Disasters – 6 years later

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Two views:

 

Life remains far from back to normal for tens of thousands of people displaced by the March 11, 2011, disasters that hit the Pacific coastline of northeastern Honshu. That as many as 36,000 people in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures are still living in prefabricated temporary housing units six years later says a lot about the difficulties that are hindering the reconstruction of lives shattered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the massive tsunami that swept the Tohoku coastal areas, as well as the meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant that forced residents out of their hometowns. The government must keep extending the maximum support that these people need.

 

Another Take on Mitigation

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Staying safe from disasters pays, but will funders listen?  Excerpts:

The startup MyStrongHome, which works in the coastal areas of Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina, allows homeowners to pay for a new, reinforced roof out of savings from the lower insurance bills they get thanks to their dwelling being safer.

Green estimates that potential losses in a storm would be 30 to 60 percent lower in the strengthened homes. The work, carried out by the firm’s contractors, typically costs around $10,000. Participants make a down-payment of between $2,000 and $3,000, and pay back the rest over five to seven years.

Effects of Climate Change in Alaska

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From Bloomberg Business Week: Alaska’s Big Problem With Warmer Winters. Juneau has no plan, little money for erosion or thawing permafrost. An excerpt:

Alaska is an extreme example of a national failure to prepare for climate change. Across the U.S., state funding for environmental projects, such as beach erosion control or upgraded sewage systems, peaked in 2007, even as capital expenditures have since risen 25 percent. States along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts have resisted adopting the latest model building codes designed to protect residents against storms and other extreme weather. And when the Federal Emergency Management Agency suggested last year that states take more responsibility preparing for natural disasters, the National Governors Association balked.

New Technology for Disaster Response

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Disaster response goes digital – but not for all

At a conference on resilience in New Orleans this week, technology companies outlined the increasingly sophisticated tools they are offering – on an altruistic basis – to help people cope better when disasters strike.

They are also collaborating to advance the speed and efficacy with which those tools can be deployed, said Kellie Bentz, head of global disaster response and relief for online accommodation marketplace Airbnb.