Disaster Experience – if you do not have it, learn from those who do

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This candid, public assessment of a N.J. mayor and his actions during the response to H. Sandy reinforces what many of us have been saying for many years, even decades: putting out a major effort and really caring are not enough. Learning about disasters can be achieved from the experiences of others. Those of us in the research community have been trying to get this message across for a long time.

This is one of the first comparative assessments I have seen in the media so far. Hurricane Sandy response: Some towns handled the crisis well, others did not; NJ.com, November 11, 2012. The article begins as follows:

When Mayor Bill Akers reviews the way tiny Seaside Heights responded to Hurricane Sandy he is unsparing in his criticism. Of Bill Akers.

“I could have done a lot better,” he said. “I was overwhelmed. I know I have my shortcomings, but it’s not for lack of effort and not for lack of caring.”

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Bravo and Thanks

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It is early in the month for thanksgiving, but I want to get a jump start.  Regarding Hurricane Sandy, the extraordinary efforts of many people to get the electricity and lights back on, work through the gas and housing outages, and provide humanitarian assistance are worth noting.

I spend a lot of time talking about what is not going well, so I wanted to take the time to acknowledge a few of the many things that have gone well with the preparedness and response efforts for H. Sandy. BRAVO and sincere thanks to: FEMA, the Mayor and many city officials in New York, the Governors of NY and NJ, and countless emergency management staffers, utility workers, and Red Cross volunteers.  I am sure there are many other individuals who have done helpful things too.

Nov. 13th update. Here is an example of the hard work and dedication of some of the disaster workers: For federal Sandy workers, floating NY home is no cruise ship. Reuters, Nov. 12.

 

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Gender Issues in Disasters

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Thanks to Dr. Elaine Enarson, noted researcher on gender issues, for a list of useful resources.

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Pressing FEMA to Consider Climate Change in Mitigation Plans – update

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About one month ago, I posted the article at the bottom of this posting. As you might expect, as a result of  Hurricane Sandy, the environmental groups are pumped up to have the federal government take some actions on climate change. In  CQ, November 5, their article is titled:  FEMA to Weigh Climate Change in Disaster Planning . The full article is copyrighted, so I cannot include it here. Some excerpts:

Environmentalists are stepping up pressure on the Obama administration to consider the effects of climate change in disaster planning, as the recovery from Hurricane Sandy continues one week after the storm hit the
East Coast.

Dozens of environmental groups are calling on the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) to grant a petition filed last month seeking to
require states to consider climate change risks in hazard mitigation
plans they must submit in order to qualify for federal non-emergency
disaster funds.

“States that exclude climate change considerations from their plans will
be unprepared for the volatility of future hazard events,” wrote 42
groups from around the country in a Nov. 2 letter released Monday.
“FEMA’s failure to require states to consider all of their
vulnerabilities leads to insufficient planning and puts people and
property at risk.”

One more take on the topic: Andrew Revkin’s blog, November 6.

Why Climate Disasters Might Not Boost Public Engagement on Climate Change

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October 9: Some environmental groups are pressing FEMA to take into consideration climate change as a future threat when preparing mitigation plans. See “Disaster Planning: An Opportunity to Prepare for the Impacts of Climate Change.”

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“How Gov’t Can Help the Economy Recovery from Sandy”

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This article, How Government Can Help the Economy Recover From Sandy, raises some good points.  Even before FEMA was created (1979), some people have argued for a greater role for the Commerce Dept. and economic developement, but it never has happened.  Here is a new try, from Bloomberg News, Nov. 5.

If natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy are becoming more frequent, and their aftermaths more expensive, then the federal response needs to become more dynamic. Especially in fostering economic recovery, there’s more the U.S. government can do.

Some steps are small and obvious, yet still valuable. Barack Obama’s administration, to its credit, has made progress in cutting disaster-relief red tape, for example. Still, the patchwork of application requirements and eligibility criteria businesses must sort through to receive aid can be further streamlined and made more consistent across agencies.

It may also make sense to designate one federal agency as responsible for economic disaster relief. Whatever agency takes the lead (a report from the International Economic Development Council recommends the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration) should have a consistent, dedicated level of money on hand to respond to disasters. The IEDC suggests $100 million. This would free up cash quickly and help insulate economic disaster relief from political manipulation.

VERY USEFUL REPORT: The direct line to the IEDC report is here; it’s titled ” An Improved Federal Resonse to Post-Disaster Economic Recovery”   ,(Jan. 2010)

Recovery Planning for NY and NJ – some ideas

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Given the magnitude of the impacts, the population density, and the national economic importance of many of the areas impacted by H. Sandy, I think it is essential to get the best and the brightest talent in the U.S. involved in planning the recovery.  We need more imagination and capability in recovery efforts in the U.S., and now is the time to go for it.

To start this off, I offer some ideas below, and invite readers to make suggestions. This is an open-ended endeavor, which I hope to continue.

I. Involve national organizations to form advisory committees; for example,

  • National Academy of Sciences
  • National Academy of Public Administration
  • National Planning Organizations – such as Am. Planning Assoc., Urban Land Institute

II. Involve Think Tanks, such as

  • Brookings
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • Heritage Foundation
  • American Enterprise Institute

III. Organize for Strategic Planning and also Organize by topic, such as

  • Infrastructure
  • Residential rebuilding
  • Small Business Redevelopment

IV Get Advice and Assistance ( loan of personnel) from national  professional and trade associations

  • International Assoc. of Emergency Managers
  • National Emergency Management Assoc.
  • National Fire Protection administration
  • American Public Works Assoc.

V. Get the academic community involved – faculty from the Higher Education in Emergency Management programs that exist in more than 200 academic institutions throughout the U.S.

And several university-based disaster research centers have highly experienced faculty and staff – eg. Hazards Center at Univ. of CO/Boulder and the Disaster Research Center at Univ. of DE.

VI. Get advice from experienced personnel ( all sectors) who have assisted other cities recover, such as

  • New Orleans
  • Sendai, Japan

A note on process: I suggest some expert panels to sift the best ideas and the best science and work with the public officials at all levels to get some policies, regulations, programs implemented while the window of opportunity is open. Usually politicians do not consider enough alternatives and the researchers/consultants cannot get ideas synthesized quickly enough for the consideration of harried politicians.  We need a new process.

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Hurricane Sandy in Perspective – updates

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HURRICANE HISTORY:

Council on Foreign Relations, How Likely Was Hurricane Sandy.  Some really chilling scientific research and dire warnings about the likely frequency of future hurricanes with the same path.

“[Scientists are] telling us we shouldn’t be surprised that this 900-mile-wide monster marched up the East Coast this week paralyzing cities and claiming scores of lives…. In a paper published by Nature in February, [Oppenheimer] and three colleagues concluded that the ‘storm of the century’ would become the storm of ‘every twenty years or less.’

Hurricane Sandy in perspective, in HSWired, November 2,2012. Excellent article that provides a wealth of historic and scientific knowledge useful to our current efforts on determining H. Sandy’s place in context of  U.S. disaster experience. Comments from Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. (Univ. of CO).

Hurricane Sandy has left death and destruction in its path, and it broke a few records, but there were worse hurricanes; since 1900, 242 hurricanes have hit the United States; if Sandy causes $20 billion in damage, in 2012 dollars, it would rank as the seventeenth most damaging hurricane or tropical storm out of these 242; the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list; Hurricane Katrina ranks fourth; from August 1954 through August 1955, the East Coast saw three different storms make landfall — Carol, Hazel, and Diane; each, in 2012, would have caused about twice as much damage as Sandy

FEDERALISM:

Some sensible advice from an experienced disaster researcher at Brookings, Nov. 2.:  Feds, States, Cities — The All of the Above Disaster Response

INFRASTRUCTURE:

Insightful article from a Columbia profession in CNN today. New York’s Neglected Infrastruture Fails.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that New York’s infrastructure wasn’t up to Hurricane Sandy.  What happened in New York was not all that different than what’s

happened in other places hit by freakish weather events — the infrastructure wasn’t robust enough to withstand nature. It is not the first time it’s happened here, and it won’t be the last.

The problems in New York stem from many factors. For a start, infrastructure investment here is no more a priority than it is in other places across the country:

It’s simply not something that voters want badly. When given a choice between investing in schools, health and housing or investing in sewers, tunnels or roads, the

latter will always lose out. And that’s not just the view of the politicians, but also of the constituents who keep them in office.

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