Wildfires as a Natural Disaster

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From the Denver Post, an article titled Treating wildfires like other natural disasters.  The issue is described as follows:

Earlier this year, the president asked Congress to allow Federal Emergency Management (FEMA) disaster fund money to be used to fight the biggest fires. That request has not been approved, and last week the president again asked that wildfires be treated like other catastrophic events.

In his letter to Congress, the president asked for authority “to respond to severe, complex and threatening fires or a severe fire season in the same way we as we fund other natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes.” The request would put this Western problem on par with other calamities. And it would enable the Forest Service to use more of its resources for forest-thinning and other fire-reduction activities. Congress should see the wisdom and parity in this approach.

Update:  Please see the comment from someone who really knows the legal underpinnings of this issue.  [Note: the Diva sent this exchange to the Denver Post.]

News from NIH

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Here is a new item provided by NIH. You can subscribe to this news service via Twitter:

OnTheMap for Emergency Management is a public data tool from the U.S. Census Bureau that provides an intuitive web-based interface for accessing U.S. population and workforce statistics, in real time, for areas being affected by natural disasters. The tool allows users to retrieve reports containing detailed workforce, population, and housing characteristics for hurricanes, floods, wildfires, winter storms, and federal disaster declaration areas.

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For those of you who share my dislike of Twitter (too short and too fleeting to be of much use), the author of the news items was gracious enough to share with me the site she uses to store and maintain them.

 

Two New Reports on Social Media and EM

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Two significant new reports on the topic of social media and EM came to my attention this week. See:

New FEMA document (48 pp) : Using Social Media for Enhanced Situation Awareness and Decision Support.

New Canadian document (62 pp): Social Media in Emergency Management, Capability Assessment. Saved here as Canadian-Project

Update:  For more details on the FEMA report, see this article in Emergency Management magazine.

More Comments on the WMO report

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From the Guardian ( U.K.)  Eight ways climate change is making the world more dangerous. Disasters including storms, floods and heatwaves have increased fivefold since the 1970s, UN finds

Forget the future. The world already is nearly five times as dangerous and disaster prone as it was in the 1970s, because of the increasing risks brought by climate change, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organisation.

The first decade of the 21st century saw 3,496 natural disasters from floods, storms, droughts and heat waves. That was nearly five times as many disasters as the 743 catastrophes reported during the 1970s – and all of those weather events are influenced by climate change.

The bottom line: natural disasters are occurring nearly five times as often as they were in the 1970s. But some disasters – such as floods and storms – pose a bigger threat than others. Flooding and storms are also taking a bigger bite out of the economy. But heat waves are an emerging killer.

One more article from Climate Central.

Atlas of Meteorological Disasters

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The World Meteorological Organization has released a new Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes.  The Atlas is a 48 page document, available at this direct link.

One of the news articles about the report is: Sandy is rated world’s second costliest weather-related disaster since 1970. Some excerpts:

 The $50 billion path of destruction Hurricane Sandy carved along the East Coast in 2012 ranks the storm as the second-costliest weather-related disaster in the world over the last four decades, according to a new report.

Only Hurricane Katrina wreaked more economic havoc during that period, the report said, with nearly $147 billion in economic losses caused by the 2005 storm.

Another article notes that heat waves are overtaking drought as the most deadly disaster event globally.

Some Communites that Relocated After Disasters

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This is just a short article from Thomas Reuters foundation, titled
Communities that uprooted and relocated after disasters

The examples are short and recent, but none are in the U.S.  I wish someone would do an in-depth study of this topic. I know there are several examples of U.S. communities that have relocated in their entirety — e.g, Valdez AK and Soldier’s Grove, WI.  But I do not know of any significant analyses and studies.

Update:  Please see the Comment section for some very useful examples and citations provided by readers.

“Environment and Humanitarian Action”

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New report Environment and Humanitarian Action: increasing effectiveness, sustainability, and accountability – published by the UNEP/OCHA Joint Environment Unit.

 “There is a need to make humanitarian action fit for
the future, anticipating risks and challenges such
as increased vulnerability due to climate change.
This requires a fundamental shift towards a model
of humanitarian action that not only strengthens the
response to crisis, but also learns and adapts in order
to anticipate crises, act before they become disasters
and prevent their recurrence. Better attention to
environmental stewardship, with its multiple and
inextricable linkages with human livelihoods, is central
to this.”

Thanks to Charles Kelly for the citation.