Why Disasters Are Getting Worse

Why Disasters Are Getting Worse

In the space of two weeks, Hurricane Gustav has caused an estimated $3 billion in losses in the U.S. and killed about 110 people in the U.S. and the Caribbean, catastrophic floods in northern India have left a million people homeless, and a 6.2-magnitude earthquake has rocked China's southwest, smashing more than 400,000 homes.

If it seems like disasters are getting more common, it's because they are. But some disasters seem to be affecting us in worse ways — and not for the reasons you may think. Floods and storms have led to most of the excess damage. The number of flood and storm disasters has gone up 7.4% every year in recent decades, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. (Between 2000 and 2007, the growth was even faster, with an average annual rate of increase of 8.4%.) Of the total 197 million people affected by disasters in 2007, 164 million were affected by floods.

It is tempting to look at the lineup of storms in the Atlantic Ocean (Hanna, Ike, Josephine) and, in the name of everything green, blame climate change for this state of affairs. But there is another inconvenient truth out there: We are getting more vulnerable to weather mostly because of where we live, not just how we live.

In recent decades, people around the world have moved en masse to big cities near water. The population of Miami-Dade County in Florida was about 150,000 in the 1930s, a decade fraught with severe hurricanes. Since then, the population of Miami-Dade County has rocketed 1,600%, to 2,400,000.

So the same-intensity hurricane today wreaks all sorts of havoc that wouldn't have occurred had human beings not migrated. (To see how your own coastal county has changed in population, check out this cool graphing tool from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

If climate change is having an effect on the intensities of storms, it's not obvious in the historical weather data. And whatever effect it is having is much, much smaller than the effect of development along coastlines. In fact, if you look at all storms from 1900 to 2005 and imagine today's populations on the coasts, as Roger Pielke Jr., and his colleagues did in a 2008 [ITALIC "Natural Hazards Review"] paper, you would see that the worst hurricane would have actually happened in 1926.

If it happened today, the Great Miami storm would have caused from $140 billion to $157 billion in damages. (Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, caused $100 billion in losses.) "There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900," says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed."

What's changed is what we've put in storms' way. Crowding together in coastal cities puts us at risk on a few levels. First, it is harder for us to evacuate before a storm because of gridlock. And in much of the developing world, people don't get the kinds of early warnings that Americans get. So large migrant populations — usually living in flimsy housing — get flooded out year after year. That helps explain why Asia has repeatedly been the hardest hit area by disasters in recent years.

Secondly, even if we get everyone to safety, we still have more stuff in harm's way than ever before. So each big hurricane costs more than the big one before it, even controlling for inflation.

But the most insidious effect of building condos and industry along water is that we are systematically stripping coasts of the protection that used to cushion the blow of extreme weather. Three years after Katrina, southern Louisiana is still losing a football field's worth of wetlands every 38 minutes.

Human beings have been clearing away our best protections all over the world, says Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The natural protections are diminishing — whether you're talking about mangrove forests in areas affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami, wetlands in the Gulf Coast or forests, which offer protection against landslides and mudslides."

Before we become hopelessly lost in despair, however, there is good news: we can do something about this problem. We can enact meaningful building codes and stop keeping insurance premiums artificially low in flood zones.

But first we need to understand that disasters aren't just caused by FEMA and greenhouse gases. Says Tierney: "I don't think that people have an understanding of questions they should be asking — about where they live, about design and construction, about building inspection, fire protection. These just aren't things that are on people's minds."

Increasingly, climate change is on people's minds, and that is for the better. Even if climate change has not been the primary driver of disaster losses, it is likely to cause far deadlier disasters in the future if left unchecked.

But even if greenhouse gas emissions miraculously plummet next year, we would not expect to see a big change in disaster losses. So it's important to stay focused on the real cause of the problem, says Pielke. "Talking about land-use policies in coastal Mississippi may not be the sexiest topic, but that's what's going to make the most difference on this issue," he says.

WEATHER NOTE

After Hurricane Ike, Finding the Coastline Rearranged, Again

By CORNELIA DEAN

From the plane flying over the Gulf Islands National Seashore, scientists from the United States Geological Survey were scanning the ocean, trying to find Ship Island. Their maps and G.P.S. system told them they were over its eastern end, but there was no sign of it.

“I don’t see Ship anywhere,” said Asbury H. Sallenger, a oceanographer at the Geological Survey who was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and had the best view. "On the map we see it, but all I see is breakers. There is just zip left of this thing."

Eventually, the scientists spotted the western part of Ship, but its eastern half had all but disappeared. A small patch of land and whitecaps breaking on underwater shoals were all that remained.

The damage was considerable, but it was the kind of land loss they would see often on their flight, which they made about 48 hours after Hurricane Ike struck the Gulf Coast, as part of the survey’s long-standing effort to track storm damage on the coast.

The geologists should not have been surprised. Scientists studying the way stormy weather erodes the coast have long been able to identify regions at risk for inundation if sea-level rise continues, an inevitability in a warming world.

For example, researchers have estimated that large stretches of another barrier chain, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, will vanish if seas rise more than two feet, which many scientists consider quite likely by 2100.

But on the Gulf Coast, “we are not talking 100 years,” Dr. Sallenger said, “we are talking three years,” the time since Hurricane Katrina and a parade of other storms, including Hurricanes Gustav and Ike this year, virtually destroyed several islands running west into Louisiana. Among them are the Chandeleur Islands, a barrier chain formed thousands of years ago in a now-defunct delta of the Mississippi River, and other islands in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge.

Storms and climate change are partly to blame. But the region as a whole is subsiding. And in some areas, some critics contend, federal dredging projects are robbing islands of sand.

The result is a chain of feeble island remnants. In many places, as Dr. Sallenger observed at one point, “there ain’t nothing here but white water.”

So Karen Morgan, a geologist at the Geological Survey making still photos of the landscape, at times found herself instructing the pilot, Rob Kent, to navigate not by a shoreline but by a line of white water breaking over the submerged shoals that are the islands’ remains. In some places, there were not even breakers to show where dry land had been.

These islands are uninhabited, but they are valuable nonetheless, and not just for storm protection. With their extensive dunes and vegetation, the islands were once an important nesting place for brown pelicans and a variety of other birds. In the last few years, Dr. Sallenger said, the Chandeleurs have lost about 85 percent of their land mass, and with this loss “the habitat for birds on the flyway has decreased by an enormous percentage.”

Of course, the islands have not vanished altogether. And the scientists, who fly this coast regularly, have many times seen islands in these chains erode in storms and then recover — at least somewhat. But that can happen only as long as their underlying platforms of marsh remain intact, providing a place for sand to collect. In many places today, those platforms are “frail and really beaten down,” Dr. Sallenger said.

Dr. Sallenger said the Geological Survey scientists would try to advise officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the refuge, what they could expect in the next 5 to 10 years. The outlook is grim.

Storms have already lopped miles off each end of the largest island in the Chandeleur chain. Will the islands bounce back? “We are going to look at the data again,” Dr. Sallenger said. “It looks very tenuous.”

The outlook for Ship Island is similarly daunting, in large part because of the difficulty of finding the necessary sand. “This is a very big operation to put this back together,” Dr. Sallenger said. “It’s not a small deal.”

MARITIME NOTE

New Edition of International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code Available From Labelmaster

Publication is a must for anyone handling packaged dangerous goods and maritime pollutants by sea

Chicago, Illinois (Vocus/PRWEB ) October 2, 2008 -- Many maritime countries have taken steps to regulate the carriage of marine pollutants in packaged form. Shippers can turn to the International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code as the authoritative text on all aspects of handling packaged dangerous goods and marine pollutants by sea. The new edition of the IMDG Code will be available from Labelmaster®, a U.S.-based manufacturer of hazardous materials and regulatory compliance products, on October 27. You can start using the publication from January 1st 2009, but usage is mandatory as of January 1st 2010.

Included in the IMDG Code are detailed requirements for labeling, marking, and documentation, and training provisions for articles defined as dangerous. The Code also includes packaging requirements for each article, as well as testing procedures for large and small packages.

First published in 1965, the 34th edition of the IMDG Code includes the following new features:

• EmS numbers are added to Column 15 of the Dangerous Goods List
• Substantial changes to the Dangerous Goods List
• Revisions to the construction and testing of packages and IBCs
• New recommendations for the training needs of shore side personnel

The IMDG Code is available at $219.00 for a two-volume, perfect-bound set, or on a USB drive or CD at $495. The IMDG Code Supplement is also available for $109.00 each. Special pricing is available for five copies or more. To order, please call 1-800-621-5808 or email sales@labelmaster.com.

For additional information on IMDG Code products visit:

IMDG Code: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGCode

IMDG Code Supplement: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGCodeSupplement

IMDG Code USB Drive: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGRegstick

IMDG Code Software: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGCodeCD

Labelmaster, established in 1967, is a developer, manufacturer, distributor, and marketer of hazardous materials compliance products, including labels, forms, packaging, software, and publications. The company's 40 years of experience in providing regulatory information and products for all transportation modes make it especially qualified as a total compliance resource. For additional information visit www.labelmaster.com.

RS