ResilienceHow Disasters Can Spur Resilience in the Gulf
Communities in the Gulf of Mexico are all too familiar with the whims of nature and power of the sea. This year’s hurricane season brought power outages, heavy rain, downed trees, property damage, and death and injury. As disasters cascade and compound, progress toward resiliency is made by people working together and using science to decide next steps.
Communities in the Gulf of Mexico are all too familiar with the whims of nature and power of the sea. This year’s hurricane season brought power outages, heavy rain, downed trees, property damage, and death and injury.
Thousands of miles away, Californians have been suffering from the worst wildfire season in history. In interviews with the New York Times and on CNN, Roy Wright, a member of the Gulf Research Program’s Division Committee, and CEO of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), talked about the unprecedented season. A hot and dry summer created the conditions that produced six of the 20 biggest wildfires in recent history, which have left many people homeless and millions more subjected to poor quality air and drinking water — all amid a pandemic. Wright said the events were like “toppling dominoes in ways that Americans haven’t imagined.”
While this year’s California wildfires are an example of a “cascading” disaster, they also are an example of a “compounding” disaster — defined as being so profound as to affect the psyche and memory of people. Compounding disasters are often what motivates change, notes Wright, who is also a former resilience director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Wright has worked extensively in coastal Alabama, specifically Mobile and Baldwin counties, and the panhandle of Florida. He has seen firsthand how cascading and compounding disasters spur action. For example, the compounding disasters of 2004 and 2005 with hurricanes Ivan, Wilma, and Katrina brought leaders, market forces, and regulatory agencies together to create lasting change in the region.
In coastal Alabama, for example, building codes were enacted to strengthen homes and buildings. The FORTIFIED Roof standard developed by IBHS, an assurance that structures can withstand high winds, was widely adopted. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, man-made structures needed to withstand mid-intensity, long-duration events. Wright believes this year’s Hurricane Sally will be understood in a similar fashion.
“Over 36 hours, people just got beat, beat, beat down. The winds were only sitting in between 80 and 100 miles an hour, but over that length of time, it really begins to fatigue the built environment.”
The threat of losing one’s home is especially worrisome in the time of the pandemic. “Particularly in COVID time, your home can be your refuge,” says Wright. “[After Hurricane Sally] clearly there’s devastation and I don’t want to minimize that, and your home has always been important. During COVID, it’s even more important.”
As disasters cascade and compound, progress toward resiliency is made by people working together and using science to decide next steps. Wright warns that decisions shouldn’t be made year to year, but that a time period of 15-20 years best shows trends and impacts. As complex disasters are sure to reoccur, Wright asks: “Are we ready to deploy the resources during recovery so that the negative impacts don’t happen again?”
