Disasterology: September 2020
Hello, my little disaster nerds!
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!
In case you signed up for this newsletter without knowing who I am (a bold choice!) you can read more about me on my blog, listen to this episode of Ologies, or follow me on Twitter and Instagram where I impulsively narrate my every thought.
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The State of Emergency Management
The state of emergency management is… tired.
Truly, just strong Jake Tapper “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck” vibes.
It’s all the same hazards as last month– pandemic, wildfire, storms— just to slightly different severities and in slightly different places.
A Deep Dive on Hurricane Laura
Last month, as I hit send on the newsletter, Hurricane Laura was working its way through the Gulf of Mexico. Laura looked bound for Texas and Louisiana so there were immediate concerns about how the storm would interact with the petrochemical plants that line the coast. I’ve spent time in Port Arthur, Texas, and worried about their particular vulnerabilities as they have fought their way through the recovery from Harvey. I held my breath as I read this article about the “behind the scenes” decision making regarding evacuation orders in Houston. Even though I knew how the story ended, the prospect of needing to evacuate Houston is one of the scenarios that keeps me up at night.
Laura ended up going further east, sparing Port Arthur and the rest of Southeast Texas from extensive damage. It was, however, an unnecessary reminder for SE Texas of their vulnerability and the future inevitability in the absence of extensive mitigation efforts.
Laura brought destruction to the Louisiana coast. Cameron was hit especially hard as was Lake Charles. There were extensive power outages. As feared, immediately after the storm passed shelter in place orders were issued as a chemical fire began at one of the plants, adding to a long history of these plants harming nearby communities and especially Black neighborhoods which are most likely to be located nearby. Inexcusably, dozens of older adults with disabilities were left without assistance for days despite a variety of federal, state, and local agencies aware of their need.
The mark of the pandemic is visible on how the response unfolded. Laura did as hurricanes do and exacerbated the problems people were already dealing with – poverty, COVID, racism, and their intersection. People have been protesting the death of Trayford Pellerin who was killed by police in August. Lafayette's leadership used the protests as an excuse to not open shelters for Hurricane Laura evacuees. Fortunately, other communities did answer their neighbor’s calls for help. New Orleans took in thousands. Notably, there was an unusual call for volunteers to come help in New Orleans (and they did come help!). I say unusual because research shows that most often there are too many people wanting to help during a response to disaster like this. I wrote about the concerns related to disaster volunteerism because of the pandemic in June.
The recovery has been off to a particularly difficult start and survivors have been vocal about their worry over how much help they will actually receive. The Mayor of Lake Charles did not hold back saying, “I am begging, I am pleading for Americans not to forget about Lake Charles”. Already there are legal battles over attempted evictions.
There are a number of organizations you can donate to who are actively working on disaster relief efforts around the country. My usual advice is to find a local organization working on longer-term recovery efforts. Those are the groups that are in the community the longest and tend to get the fewest donations as they do not have national name recognition.
St. Bernard Project is working on both Hurricane Laura and Sally's recovery (I realize what I just said about national groups but SPB is local to Louisiana). DSA SWLA has a mutual aid fund. Imagine Water Works has a relief fund. If you would like to donate directly to survivors here’s the verified GoFundMe page for Laura survivors. Just pick someone and donate what you can.
The Book of the Month:
“All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis”: edited by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson.
This book is filled with essays from dozens of women who do climate work in all different fields and sectors. Some of my all-time favorite climate heroes are included: Kate Marvel, Adrienne Maree Brown, Naomi Klein, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Katharine Hayhoe, Emily Atkin, Kendra Pierre-Louis, Varshini Prakash, Amy Westervelt, Mary Annaïse Heglar, and also a whole bunch of women who I do not yet know but am excited to learn more about.
I would not usually recommend a book before fully reading it but I’m going to make an exception this month. I saw a Rachel Carson quote in the “Editor’s Note”, read the first few pages, and then stopped. This is the book that is going to get me through what is sure to be a rough winter. So, instead of rushing through it, I am going to save it and savor it. I suggest you do the same.
I have no idea how extensively disasters are featured in these essays, but it is important for those of us in emergency management to have one foot firmly in the climate world. The “climate space” involves much more than disasters, of course, but emergency management is a critical part of our understanding/ work on climate change.
The Disasterology Monthly Newsletter gives this 10/10 stars.
You can read more about the book here. I have seen the book is sold out in some places so here’s a link to my local bookstore. They seem to have a few copies left.
Emergency Management Policy
I had the opportunity to testify before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on the Environment yesterday on issues related to emergency management. Specifically, I spoke about how research can inform our response to compound crises. I was honored to be able to represent emergency management in this important hearing and hopefully was able to communicate some of the needs that we have particularly as it pertains to the funding of emergency management research. You can watch the entire hearing here and read my full written testimony here.
I mention this all because during the hearing I was asked about the idea of restoring FEMA to be an independent, cabinet-level agency. I had not anticipated this issue coming up because it seemed to be outside the scope of this committee but… Oh Boy! was I excited when it did!!
If you are unfamiliar with the argument that FEMA should be removed from the Department of Homeland Security, then let me fill you in.
Prior to 9/11, FEMA was a cabinet-level independent agency. In the wake of 9/11 US emergency management was turned upside down and backward. One of the major changes was the creation of DHS under which 22 agencies from across the federal government were subsumed– including FEMA. Emergency management experts and disaster researchers were pretty unanimous in their concern about this decision in particular. Former FEMA director, James Lee Witt, testified in Congress saying that he would not have been successful in his tenure if there had been “layers of federal bureaucracy between myself and the White House”.
Just months later Hurricane Katrina and the Levee Failure occurred and all the warnings of emergency management experts came to fruition. Disaster researchers and emergency management experts again went to Congress and told them how these changes had contributed to the failed response in New Orleans. Dr. Kathleen Tierney testified in Congress citing “FEMA’s loss of autonomy, authority, and resources after its merger with DHS” and infamously wrote “The Red Pill”.
Despite the fanfare around the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act it still left the majority of post 9/11 changes in place, including the location of FEMA within DHS. In 2008 the International Association of Emergency Managers again called for the restoration of FEMA to an independent agency and in 2009 a bill was introduced in the house: “An Independent FEMA: Restoring the Nations Capabilities for Effective Emergency Management and Disaster Response”. Despite bipartisan support in Congress, it was not passed.
That’s fine. We will persist! Last year James Lee Witt again testified in Congress. In his testimony, he again called for the reform of our federal emergency management system and included, “establishing FEMA as an independent agency and not part of the Department of Homeland Security”.
So, I was happy to add my name to the list of people who have advocated for Congress to make this change. Is it going to happen anytime soon… probably not!! However, as I said in my testimony, there will likely be policy changes post-COVID that affect not only public health but also emergency management. This could be one of those changes.
~MEME~ Break:
In honor of National Preparedness Month please praise our preparedness queen, Sophia.
Important Disaster-Related Media Coverage This Month:
Response
There seems to be shockingly minimal ~national~ reporting on Hurricane Sally and the local coverage is pretty nitty-gritty response/ recovery issues (which is good but not necessarily appropriate for this newsletter). Here’s a quick overview from Grist. A look from the New York Times at how both COVID and Hurricane Sally have impacted high school students in Alabama.
Dr. Malka Older wrote a great reminder for Foreign Policy that people rarely panic during disasters and that elected officials should not be lying to the public during times of crisis.
“Antifa Arsonists” are not starting wildfires but a lot of people thought they were and just… wtf. Yikes.
There have been a lot of articles written about how California uses prisoners to fight wildfires but it’s not just California. 30 out of 47 states included in one study were found to be using prisoners for disaster-related work. You can read more from Dr. J Carlee Purdum in The Conversation.
Temporary shelter issues continue in these COVID-19 times. The Press Democrat has this story from Sonoma County.
Must-read story in the New York Times about how heat, smoke, and COVID are affecting farmworkers.
Somehow, we still do not have an effective comprehensive national strategy for the COVID response. Once again, public health experts are calling for doing this… very obvious thing that should have been done many months ago. As Ed Yong wrote in The Atlantic, “America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral”.
Preparedness
There’s been some good reporting from the Statesman Journal on issues with people receiving warnings/ evacuation orders during this latest round of wildfires. Also, the New York Times had some coverage. Hopefully, this inspires future changes.
Leslie Kaufman wrote a piece for Bloomberg on the disproportionate federal funding for terrorism preparedness efforts compared to natural hazards. There are certainly some questions here about FEMA’s blurring of lines between mitigation and preparedness and also the extent to which terrorism preparedness also contributes to overall preparedness but the conclusions stands, IMO.
Mitigation
This story on “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America” in the New York Times made quite an impression on a lot of people. It was also featured on The Daily if you’d rather listen. The New York Times also published this map of how every place has climate risk. We love an interactive map.
In… um… extremely related news: Another month, another story of a community struggling through a buyout program. This time it’s Horry County, South Carolina.
This story in The New Republic is representative of what is becoming a more common story. People who did not believe in climate change or thought it was a problem of the future survive climate-related disasters themselves and then understand the depth of our problems.
We generally know what to do to prevent disasters, the issue is that policymakers won’t do it. This ProPublica article gets at the heart of that frustration with this article on wildfires.
Meteorologist Chris Gloninger has put together a climate special for NBC Boston that explores the intersection of social justice and the climate crisis with really important climate leaders including Dr. Adrienne Hollis, Dr. Marshall Shepherd, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
Recovery
This is a long read but well worth it. The Center for Public Integrity dug into the Crisis Counseling Program funded by FEMA.
Dr. Jennifer Trivedi wrote about the Katrina recovery in Biloxi, Mississippi for The Conversation.
PM Press has an article looking at the 15-year history of Common Ground, a group that has been fundamental to recovery efforts post-Katrina.
Mary Annaïse Heglar wrote a moving piece for Earther on how Katrina has impacted how she views the climate crisis.
Also in Earther was this really fantastic piece from Dharna Noor on how Bounce music helped rebuild New Orleans.
Southerly has an extensive Q&A with General Honoré reflecting back on Katrina and what still needs to change.
Artist of the Month:
I have had Madeleine Jubilee Saito on my list of artists to share with you all and figured this was the perfect month to do so because she illustrated “All We Can Save”! I bought some of her climate prints a few months ago and am deeply obsessed with them. You can see her work on Instagram and buy her work here.
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!