Community Endurance: Importance of a Proactive Mindset
The truth of the matter is that the town of Lake Charles in Louisiana is experiencing what is now a common consequence of climate change: increased storm activity. The town has been impacted by both Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Delta and continues to see the after effects such as hard freeze due to oversaturated land from the hurricanes as well as intense rainfall setting off 1,000-year flood. This back-to-back phenomenon is not only becoming more of a way of life in coastal/lakefront communities, but it continuously raises the question of WHEN is it time to proactively implement measures to fortify communities against these hazards and how quickly this can be done. Often, it takes dire (and at times, life-threatening) impacts to a community's way of life, economic stability, and infrastructure durability for both awareness and action be set forth to decrease the vulnerabilities faced from these natural hazards.
This piece by Sara Gibbens highlights that there are a growing number of communities, like Lake Charles, that are facing the consequences from climate change including but not limited to:
Coastal communities confronting rising seas, repetitive storm activity, and surface erosion
Mountain communities facing and longer and more destructive fire seasons
Inland communities facing increase intensity of rainfall and flooding
In the example of Lake Charles, both Hurricane Laura and Delta caused $23 billion in damages that also disproportionately affected low-income communities that were predominantly black, single mom, and latinx (which is a whole other issue I will not go into here). Furthermore, the town has lost seven percent of its population with nearly a fifth of local businesses electing to not renew their occupational licenses. Also, nearly 60% of public housing has become uninhabitable due to the storms. These are just a few vulnerabilities that article highlights but ultimately, these statistics illustrate that the living in the town continues to be a high risk as returning to its normal, safe, and healthy operations continue to be slow as recovery continues. This brings up the question of how we can prevent communities from reaching this point and properly adapt them to face these continued hazards, which is the main challenge the article poses.
The main challenge posed is how can we adapt communities to better face the impacts of climate change, such as multiple storm phenomena, and most importantly, how will this adaptation be funded?
The successful implementation of adaptation measures comes from first a shift to a PROACTIVE mindset from a reactive one of not only municipal governments but also our state and federal government agencies. It is difficult to enter a proactive mindset when funding for natural disasters have been primarily reserved for response and recovery efforts only AFTER the hazard event has occurred. Funding or supplemental aid prior to the event is not a norm for our government and is often denied for most municipalities.
What will aid in developing a proactive mindset is simple: educational and public awareness. Widespread acknowledgement of how climate change is "rewriting" weather patterns, as Gibbons points out, is how we begin to pave a path for planning, brainstorming, and ultimately implementation of initiatives to better protect our communities. Programs such as The Weather It Together in Annapolis helps provide a framework to make communities more aware of the potential impacts natural hazards have on the tangible and intangible cultural resources within their communities. Unfortunately, we are not seeing a full life cycle in which adaptation measures have been successfully observed as many communities are either still in recovery or have yet to implement planning initiatives. Most planning initiatives such as the Resilient 305 strategy in Miami are still in their conceptual and preliminary design phases.
As FEMA and our governments continuously employ a response strategy that is focused on AFTER a hazard has occurred, it will continue to be difficult for municipalities to receive any supplemental federal funding that is to be allocated for the planning and preparation of communities prior to a hazard event has occurred. Unfortunately, without the funding streams to make this planning possible, decreasing the vulnerabilities associated with this new norm makes it very difficult for communities to adequately adapt to these weather extremes.
Reference How many 'natural' disasters can one city endure? by Sarah Gibbens