From the Wash Post: We can build homes to survive tornadoes like Kentucky suffered. We just haven’t. The housing industry and politicians have resisted changes that could save lives

From Axious: Study:10 biggest climate disasters of 2021 cost $170 billion in damages

From the WashPost: In rural Kentucky, small towns were already on the margins. Then came the tornadoes.

From the WashPost: In Amsterdam, floating homes show the world how to live alongside nature

(1) From the Wash Post: Devastated by a tornado 10 years ago, Joplin, Mo., offers lessons in what comes next

(2) Note from the Diva: A full chapter is devoted to the details of the Joplin recovery in our recent book, U.S. Emergency Management in the 21st Century, by Rubin and Cutter. That book was reviewed on this site in 2020 at this location.

(3)The ASCE has opened its archive: https://ascelibrary.org/tornado?utm_campaign=PUB-20211221-SEI+Alert&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&. In response to recent tornados in the Midwest, ASCE Library has opened the SEI-sponsored book on the Joplin, Missouri tornado in 2011, as well as assembled the following papers, to help structural engineers understand the vulnerabilites of buildings, and better mitigate damage. This collection is freely available through February 28, 2022.

E-book: Joplin, Missouri, Tornado of May 22, 2011: Structural Damage Survey and Case for Tornado-Resilient Building Codes. Authors: By David O. Prevatt, Ph.D., P.E.; William Coulbourne, P.E.; Andrew J. Graettinger, Ph.D.; Shiling Pei, Ph.D., P.E.; Rakesh Gupta, Ph.D.; and David Grau, Ph.D.

(Thanks to Chris Jones for this source.)

From the HSDL: GAO Investigates Disaster Recovery Barriers.

This article focuses on federal actions.

Surviving the Storm Is Just the Beginning. This is the case with most American disasters. Recovery is an uphill battle that takes years and sometimes decades.

Be sure to see the reply posted by Prof. Rob Olshansky, a noted recovery researcher.

New CRS Report (31pp): FEMA Hazard Mitigation: A First Step
Towards Climate Adaptation

State Pandemic Scorecard. For the past year, POLITICO’s Recovery Lab project has been chronicling how the pandemic is playing out around the country with a special eye to the innovations and policies enacted by officials at the state and local levels. We’ve noticed differences in how the pandemic has affected states, but it’s been hard to figure out just how large, and how meaningful, those differences have been. Some of the differences were the result of inherent factors, like the makeup of a state’s economy, including how dependent
it is on tourism. But some differences were also the result of decisions made by public officials.

More than 18 months into the pandemic, the impacts of those decisions are showing up in data that can be tracked and evaluated. This scorecard pulls that data together in an accessible format that readers can use to see how policy trade-offs have played out so far in each state, and help inform state responses going forward.

So far the worst tornado on record happened in 1925. See: Deadliest tornado in U.S. history hit the Midwest nearly a century ago