Disasterology: February 2021
This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined).
There’s a little something for everyone!
Happy Saturday, Friends!
Say what you will about February but at least it’s only 28 days.
The State of Emergency Management
The state of emergency management is that FEMA is spending around $340 million a day. Big ‘This is Fine .gif’ energy.
This month the official US COVID death toll crossed half a million. I still find it impossible to wrap my mind around the turmoil and pain caused by the response to the pandemic. I did find this PBS News Hour clip to be a good attempt to explain where we are and where we are going.
The big news in the US this month was of course the cold weather across parts of the south. A few common questions I found myself answering this week:
Is what happened in Texas a disaster? Yes, absolutely.
Why were we not prepared for this? A really messy combination of policies that don’t accurately weigh risk or force utilities to mitigate risk.
Was this weather caused by climate change? Let me pass you along to a climate scientist.
No one could have predicted – Let me stop you there. Yes. People did. In fact, lots of people knew this was a possible scenario including Texas emergency management.
There was A LOT of coverage (especially about Texas) so here is a bullet-pointed list by theme.
The impacts of the disaster:
Shawn Mulcahy for The Texas Tribune: Many Texans have died because of the winter storm. Just how many won’t be known for weeks or months
Duncan Agnew & Julián Aguilar for The Texas Tribune: Texans running out of food as weather crisis disrupts supply chain
Allyson Waller for The New York Times: What a Texas Plumber Faces Now: A State Full of Burst Pipes
Amal Ahmed for The Texas Observer: Low-Income Texans Already Face Frigid Temperatures at Home. Then the Winter Storm Hit.
Mitchell Ferman for The Texas Tribune: Winter storm could cost Texas more money than any disaster in state history
Candice Bernd for Truthout: Texas Blackout Reveals Deep Impact of Environmental Racism, Aid Organizers Say
Questions about the effectiveness of the response:
Duncan Agnew for The Texas Tribune: As Texans endured days in the dark, the state failed to deliver vital emergency information
Andrew Freedman for The Washington Post: Meteorologist for Texas grid operator warned of the winter storm’s severity
Erin Douglas, Kate McGee, & Jolie McCullough for The Texas Tribune: Texas leaders failed to heed warnings that left the state’s power grid vulnerable to winter extremes, experts say
How we need to prepare differently:
Amal Ahmed for Texas Observer: Why Texas Wasn’t Prepared for Winter Storm Uri
Robinson Meyer for The Atlantic: Texas Failed Because It Did Not Plan
Sierra Juarez for Texas Monthly: El Paso Heeded the Warnings and Avoided a Winter Catastrophe
Naomi Klein for The New York Times: Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal
The Texas Disaster in the context of the pandemic:
Yessenia Funes for The Frontline: The Pandemic Made the Polar Vortex Over Texas That Much More Dangerous
Fortesa Latifi for Teen Vogue: Texas Storm and COVID are Dual Traumas for the State, Young People Say
The impact of freezing temperatures for Southwest Louisiana in the middle of hurricane recovery (and a pandemic):
Colleen Hagerty for Earther: The Louisiana City Struck by Two Hurricanes Last Year Is Suffering in This Week’s Deep Freeze
Carly Berlin for Southerly: How southwest Louisiana mobilized to shelter unhoused people during the winter storm
In case you needed another reminder, policy decisions made at the local and state level really, really, really matter for emergency management.
Here are some groups accepting donations.
Let’s end on a *laugh sob* from McSweeney’s.
In Memoriam
Dr. Dennis Mileti passed away due to complications from COVID-19 at the end of January. This is a devastating loss for the hazards and disasters community. Amanda Ripley wrote a phenomenal piece about Dr. Mileti and his work in the Washington Post that I would strongly encourage you to read. The Natural Hazards Center also has a page for tributes from friends and colleagues. If you’d like to learn more about his work Shawna Bruce highlighted some this month in a blogpost. This would also be a good time to read Disasters by Design.
The Book of the Month
“The Book of the Dead” by Muriel Rukeyser (Author) and Catherine Venable Moore (Introduction)
This is a book of poems about the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster. I’m embarrassed to say I only recently learned about this disaster despite it being considered one of the worst industrial disasters in U.S. history. In the early 1930s, a tunnel was dug in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia for the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. Thousands of mostly Black workers were paid a pitiful wage to work in the tunnel. They were not given the appropriate equipment and after inhaling silica many developed irreparable lung damage. The exact number is unknown but upwards of 750 people died.
In 1936 poet and political activist Muriel Rukeyser traveled to Gauley Bridge with photographer Nancy Naumburg to investigate the disasters. There seem to be only two surviving photographs (included in the book) but Rukeyser’s poems printed here are vivid enough. The introduction to the book of poetry, written by Catherine Venable Moore, is itself phenomenal.
The Disasterology Monthly Newsletter gives this 10/10 stars.
You can read more here and buy it here.
~MEME~ Break
After saving Los Angeles from a volcano, emergency management aficionados, Tommy Lee Jones and Don Cheadle, take on America’s next big disaster – Ted Cruz’s vacation to Mars.
On a more serious, though related note, “Paradise Strong” was emblazoned on the Mars Rover.
I WROTE A BOOK, Y’ALL
In case you did not hear me screaming from the rooftops (i.e., Twitter) let me announce to you that I WROTE A BOOK. It comes out August 3rd and I am SO EXCITED for y’all to finally get to read it.
I’ll talk more about the book in future newsletters but for now, I just wanted to show you the cover and tell you what it’s about!
The first time I saw New Orleans after Katrina I was horrified. It wasn’t necessarily the extent of the damage, it was the persistence of need. Everyone needed something and very often there were not enough resources to meet all of those needs. This book is the story of how I learned about recovery in New Orleans. It is about how during the BP Oil Disaster I learned climate change was not just a problem for the future. It is about how I went to graduate school and learned the way we approach preparedness isn’t right. It’s about how I learned about response among one of Houston’s many floods. It’s about how I’ve watched one little neighborhood along the coast of Maine fight desperately for flood mitigation. It’s about how the government failed Puerto Ricans during Maria and failed us all during the pandemic. It’s about what I’ve learned from participating in, and witnessing, disaster activism in places like coastal Louisiana and Standing Rock. It’s about what I’ve learned from reading the disaster research.
I wrote this book because I have seen the pain that disasters bring people and places across the country and I do not want people to have to keep experiencing this suffering. I wrote this because I am deeply angry that a country with our resources allows this to happen. I wrote this book because I am fearful of what our future looks like in the absence of a major change in how we approach emergency management. I wrote this book because I believe that we can make those changes – and that we have to.
Mine is far from the only journey that people go on to understand the complexities of emergency management, but I hope that sharing it inspires others to action.
It would be totally cool if you pre-ordered it (and thank you to those of you who already have). All the links are on my website.
Disaster Media Coverage This Month
There was some exceptional disaster coverage this month across a lot of emergency management-related issues. For example, here’s a great article on the need for science to better influence our hazard and emergency management policy. There were “big concept” articles like this one in Slate on why there’s no such thing as a natural disaster and more niche articles like this one from E&E News about the FHA and flood risk.
Response
Atul Gawande has an extensive article in The New Yorker that explores the pandemic in Minot, North Dakota. It is a painful read that touches on many of the failures among the North Dakotan government throughout the response.
Meteorologists (justifiably) got really mad about a Southern Living article that implied warnings were not issued in the January tornado in Alabama. Slate wrote all about it.
A blistering but truthful op-ed in The Washington Post: ‘Welcome to Iowa, a state that doesn’t care if you live or die.
DeSantis got in trouble again. This time it was about prioritizing vaccines to affluent white communities. More in The Washington Post. (While we’re on the subject of Florida it’s worth noting that the head of Florida emergency management is resigning to spend time with his family.)
I really have to agree with this New Yorker article about eating in restaurants.
Mitigation
The barriers for local communities to access federal mitigation dollars have gotten some much-needed attention this month from E&E News. This article in particular is particularly spot-on in explaining why just throwing more money at mitigation isn’t enough – we have to build capacity at the local level and meet communities where they are.
The New York Times has a new map that looks at global climate risks (i.e., key climate-related hazards).
Biden has a new Climate Task Force which is great but also FEMA’s not on it and I’m mad about it.
Recovery
Many months ago we talked about how the federal government was not utilizing the funeral assistance fund via FEMA to help families pay for funeral expenses related to COVID deaths (read more from ProPublica). I am still mystified and furious with this decision. However, there has been some movement on this issue in the form of funding via a December COVID-19 relief bill from Congress. You can read more from The Sacramento Bee.
The New York Times has a video on the difficult decision folks along the Nicaraguan coast are being forced to make as they try to recover from recent hurricanes.
The Biden administration took initial steps that suggest getting recovery assistance to Puerto Rico post-Maria is a priority. You can read more from The New York Times.
This excellent piece from Southerly is an important look at the housing situation in Lake Charles, Louisiana post-hurricanes.
It’s really quite shocking how little attention national media gave the Nashville Christmas bombing. The Tennessean reports that a special commission has been created to investigate.
There was an important article in Earther this month that looks at the mental toll of hurricanes on children. Speaking of mental health, disaster researchers will want to read this one from The New Republic on how historians can be traumatized by history. Seems relevant.
This month was the 10 year anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake. The New York Times took a look at the recovery.
I really enjoyed this story in The Atlantic about what urban collapse looks like using Angkor as a historical example. Read it in the context of claims of post-disaster city abandonment.
I will read any and all profiles of scientists in Vogue. More, please!
There are some good ideas about how the federal government can address racial inequality during recovery in the Houston Chronicle.
Preparedness
Brace yourselves for April 1st. We’re doing Risk Rating 2.0 and I’m already fired up. More here from The New York Times. Was FEMA’s statement warning people not to assume that premiums are going to skyrocket a sub-tweet to me personally? Maybe.
This op-ed in The Hill takes a stab at arguing for public health policy changes in the wake of COVID. Presumably, we’ll be having major conversations about these issues over the next months (and years?) as we sort through all that went wrong.
The Intercept looked into “the brutal power struggle at Homeland Security”. *Stares in pre-2003 FEMA*
There were a series of articles this month that can be summarized as “We should plan for disasters better” and like, YES PLEASE. I liked this one from Mother Jones.
Wired says the Amateur Radio Geeks are going to save your life.
Weird Disaster Thing
Mrs. O’Leary’s mansion is for sale. Yes, that Mrs. O’Leary.
One day we’re going to talk about society (read: men) blaming women for disasters that they definitely didn’t cause but for now, let’s just dream about living in a mansion with its own fire hydrant.
The End Bits
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Finally, this newsletter is ~FREE~. I plan on keeping it that way because eliminating barriers to disaster knowledge is important. However, several people expressed an interest in financially supporting this work. I’ve created a “paid subscriber” option for $5 a month or whatever you’d like to give. The only difference between a free sign-up and a paid subscriber option is that you’ll be able to see the full archives of the newsletters. Really, this is just a way for those who want (and can) to support the newsletter. I’ll use the money to cover administrative expenses, do things like buy books to review, and maybe one day hire a research assistant to help. Thank you to everyone who has already supported financially!