DISASTERS & RECOVERYHow Back-to-Back Hurricanes Set Off a Year of Compounding Disasters for One City − and Alarm Bells About Risks in a Warming World
Climate change will bring new weather patterns that are beyond emergency managers’ current playbooks, which are filled with protocols honed by past experience. The capacity to adapt will be essential when those playbooks can’t handle compounding disasters that few had imagined.
Most Americans will remember 2020 as the year when the pandemic changed everything. But for Lake Charles, Louisiana, and its neighbors along the Gulf Coast, it was also the year of record-setting disasters, when “once-in-a-lifetime” storms hit in such rapid succession that their impacts blurred together.
A recent National Academies consensus study I worked on looked into the compounding disasters that the region faced – both physical and socioeconomic – as storm after storm arrived during the pandemic with little time for recovery.
It concludes that Lake Charles’ experiences could be a harbinger of what’s to come in a warming world unless the nation fundamentally rethinks its disaster preparedness, response and recovery strategies.
Lake Charles’ Compounding Disasters
Hurricane Laura made landfall near Lake Charles on Aug. 27, 2020, as a powerful Category 4 storm, with wind speeds exceeding those that local building codes were designed to protect against. The ongoing pandemic made filing FEMA assistance requests and insurance claims more difficult. Assessors could view properties only from afar, and on-site application assistance was suspended, forcing residents into untested online systems.
As the community struggled to self-document its losses, Lake Charles was struck again five weeks later by Hurricane Delta. The storm lashed already crippled buildings and sent debris flying, causing further damage and creating complex claims scenarios.
It was nearly impossible to differentiate new damage from existing damage worsened by the latest storm. Delayed recovery assistance left municipalities with no funds to pay for more debris removal.
Then, February 2021 brought a deep freeze to still-unrepaired homes, bursting pipes and adding more water damage from within. Tarps protecting damaged roofs frayed, allowing even more water in from above. Debris continued to mount along the streets.
When record rainfall arrived in May 2021, debris-clogged stormwater systems were overwhelmed. Floodwaters inundated properties, pushing yet another round of losses into an already overwhelmed claims and assistance system. Uninsured losses mounted as flooding reached areas not expected to flood under “normal” circumstances and thus not required to carry flood insurance.
This is what a compounding disaster looks like. The growing economic toll left many homes unrepaired. Damaged rental properties were quickly absorbed by buyout programs or flipped in suddenly lucrative housing markets. Housing recovery in Lake Charles lags to this day.
What happened in Lake Charles in 2020-21 illustrates an important truth: Compounding disasters are avoided only by reducing the recovery time after each storm.
