Category Archives: Disaster Preparedness

The New Reality of Weather Risk

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What do you do when you are responsible for the safety of town, county or state residents and forecasts call for drastic weather conditions? Risk professionals can come under criticism if they are overly cautious, yet under-reacting can mean lives are at stake.

Take the current situation here in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Predictions called for one- to three-feet of snow and blizzard conditions over a wide swath of the tri-state area and states of emergency were declared. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York yesterday called for a full travel ban in 13 counties, beginning at 11:00 p.m. Those breaking the ban were subject to fines of up to $300, he said.

“With forecasts showing a potentially historic blizzard for Long Island, New York City, and parts of the Hudson Valley, we are preparing for the worst and I urge all New Yorkers to do the same – take this storm seriously and put safety first,” Gov. Cuomo said.

In actuality, however, the storm moved east and north, driving the brunt of the heavy snow and blizzard conditions through Long Island, New York and north through Connecticut and towards Boston.

Today at 7:30 a.m. the travel ban was lifted in most areas of New York and it was announced that public transportation would resume on a weekend schedule. Travel is also permitted in New Jersey and parts of Connecticut. But with snowfall much less than anticipated in many areas, some are questioning the travel ban. Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy, however, credited the travel ban and people’s cooperation, for the low number of automobile accidents during the storm—only 15 in the entire state.

“I would rather lean towards safety, because I have seen the consequences the other way, and it gets very frightening very quickly,” Cuomo told the media this morning. He noted, “Recently in New York we weren’t prepared in Buffalo.” In November, more than six feet of snow was dumped on Buffalo, claiming four lives. He also pointed out that the impacts of Hurricane Irene were underestimated. The belief was that most damage would occur in coastal areas, when the reality was that most destruction happened upstate.

This dilemma is widespread, from hurricanes to thunderstorms to wildfires. How far does a state’s governor go when preparing for an emergency? As Cuomo and many others have said, the responsible action is to put safety first.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the decision to shut down the city in a press conference today. “We prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” he said, adding that the good news is that “the people of the city understood how serious this was.” The travel ban kept people safe and allowed the sanitation department—2,400 workers—to more easily clear the roads and deal with the storm’s aftermath, he said.

Asked if he is concerned that New Yorkers won’t take precautions next time, as was the case with Superstorm Sandy, de Blasio said he is not. “The world has changed a lot in the last few years. Point one: we are going to be very forceful in our messages to people when we sense danger. This is what you saw in the last 48 hours—there is no guarantee what you will get with the weather.”

In the future, he said, “I guarantee, if we ever get to the point in any crisis where we say the word ‘evacuate’ it’s going to be very forceful. It’s going to be constantly reiterated and we are going to put a lot of muscle into that.”

Another reality, he said, is that “Extreme weather is becoming much more common” as we have seen extreme weather events “over and over again, in a kind of progression that was unimaginable just a few years ago. People understand it. They understand that global warming is one of the causes and they understand the vulnerability and that we have to look at things differently. That is one of the reasons they took last night so seriously and acted accordingly.”

 

Are Critical Infrastructure Issues Finally Being Addressed?

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The recent collapse of an Interstate 75 overpass in Cincinnati, killing a worker and injuring a truck driver, is yet another reminder of the plight of America’s infrastructure, which is estimated to require billions of dollars to bring up to 2015 standards.

The bridge that collapsed had been replaced and was being torn down as part of an extended project to increase capacity on a congested, accident-prone section of the interstate, according to the Associated Press.

President Obama, speaking today in Saint Paul, Minnesota, outlined several proposals, including launching a competition for $600 million in competitive transportation funding and investing in America’s infrastructure with a $302 billion, four-year surface transportation reauthorization proposal, according to a press release from the White House. Obama also plans to “put more Americans back to work repairing and modernizing our roads, bridges, railways, and transit systems, and will also work with Congress to act to ensure critical transportation programs continue to be funded and do not expire later this year.”

More and more, states are finding ways to fund infrastructure repair. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for example, in his State of the State address, proposed $3 billion in loans and grants for infrastructure upgrades, including $1.3 billion for the Thruway and the new Tappan Zee Bridge, which is under construction. The money, he said, would come from a a $5.4 billion windfall from bank settlements.

A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), “Failure to Act: The Impact of Current Infrastructure Investment on American’s Economic Future,” found that the cascading impact of putting off repairs affects the entire economy. The report concluded that, between 2013 and 2020, there will be an investment gap of about $846 billion in surface transportation.

At risk are a number of bridges and overpasses. According to Risk Management magazine:

“Right now, 11% of our bridges across the country are rated structurally deficient and another 13% are considered functionally obsolete,” Andrew W. Herrmann, 2012 president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and principal with Hardesty & Hanover LLP, an infrastructure engineering firm. “This means they were designed to an older standard, so they may not have the same lane widths or turning radius or may have been designed to carry lesser loads.”

Deterioration of the nation’s infrastructure jeopardizes public safety, threatens quality of life, and drains the U.S. economy. “If they have to start closing down, restricting or putting mileage postings on bridges, the economy will be affected,” said Herrmann, who served on the advisory council for the 2003, 2005 and 2013 report cards and chaired the council for the 2009 edition.

“Bridges are the most pressing need in the infrastructure overall. You can have all the roads and highways you want, but if you don’t have the bridges to cross the rivers and intersections, it slows everything down.”

He observed that, from a bridge engineer’s perspective, investments need to be made to keep bridges in good repair. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that it needs $20.5 billion annually to eliminate the nation’s backlog of bridge repairs by 2028, but only $12.8 billion has been budgeted. The challenge, then, for federal, state and local governments is to increase investments in bridges by $8 billion annually.

Staying Safe During the Holidays

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Whether in the office or at home, everyone needs to be extra careful and alert during the holidays. Because people are trying to pack so much into their day, accidents can happen.

At home, Allstate cautions to be alert to fire hazards, which can lead to substantial losses.

The LiVe Well Intermountain Trauma Managers Group lists some steps that can be taken to promote a safe environment:

Avoid Falls

  1. Keep sidewalks, driveways and entrances free of snow and ice. Falling on icy sidewalks is the number one cause for visits to the emergency department. Use sand or ice melt to prevent slipping.
  2. Falls while putting up lights and decorations is another. Do not use stools or chairs for hard-to-reach areas. Rather, use a sturdy ladder and have additional help.
  3. Ensure that your office or home is free from items that may cause people to trip or stumble, especially around a Christmas tree or other decorations with extension cords and light strands.

Safety Checks

  1. Check your furnace. It should be cleaned and checked regularly by professionals.
  2. Inspect fireplaces for safe operations. Use a screen or glass front, never leave a fireplace unattended and don’t burn gift wrappings, tissue, or evergreens in the fireplace.
  3. Make sure circuits are not overloaded.
  4. Check cords and plugs for wear, frayed insulation, cracks, and loose connections.
  5. Place a tree away from heat sources and open flames. Check the lights before placing them on the tree. Look for loose sockets or broken and frayed wires.
  6. Turn lights off when you leave.
  7. Never use a regular string of lights on a metal tree. The danger of shock is great. Rather, use a spotlight to illuminate a metal tree.

Holiday Driving

  1. Allow extra time for heavy traffic and poor weather conditions.
  2. Be courteous and respect the rights of pedestrians and other drivers.
  3. Be on the look-out for inebriated drivers.
  4. Expect the unexpected from pedestrians carrying large holiday packages.

 

 

Analyzing the Real Costs of Climate Change

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Are companies prepared for skyrocketing energy costs to combat extreme heat? Can farmers handle average crop losses of up to 73%? Should businesses invest in oceanfront property that is virtually guaranteed to flood? Because of climate change, these are just some of the crucial questions the United States will face before the end of the century, according to “Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States,” a report co-chaired by business experts Michael R. Bloomberg, Henry Paulson and Tom Steyer. The report quantifies and publicizes the economic risks posed by a changing climate. While climate change can be a politicized topic, there is little controversy that the phenomenon presents a great deal of risk to everyone, from individuals to institutions.

Decision-makers already use risk analysis to address uncertain situations, routinely evaluating potential threats and challenges such as bad investments or schedule delays. The report adds climate change to the risks that all decision-makers should account for. Robert E. Rubin, co-chair of the Council on Foreign Relations and member of the report’s risk committee, said, “Companies should disclose both their potential exposure to climate risk, and the potential costs they may someday be required to absorb to address carbon emissions.”

The report uses risk analysis, Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) and models to illustrate how different regions are likely to be affected by climate change. The project’s simulation also analyzes efforts to mitigate climate change, showing a changed distribution of probabilities if those efforts are made in the coming years. “As there a very high number of permutations and combinations of weather events, it would be very difficult to analyze these meaningfully using an averaged or deterministic approach,” said Robert Kinghorn, associate director at the consulting firm KPMG Australia. “MCS overcomes this by allowing thousands of possible combinations of extreme weather events to be analyzed.”

MCS can illustrate the potential costs if no adaptation takes place, or if adaptation is employed. The “Risky Business” report demonstrates that ignoring climate change risks will lead to disaster, while taking steps now will have a big impact. Luckily we have tools to face these challenges.

Many forward-thinking business and communities have already applied MCS to climate change risk analysis. For example, AECOM, a professional technical and management support company, used MCS software and optimization techniques to evaluate the risk and costs of climate-change-related flooding of the Narrabeen Lagoon near Sydney, Australia.

AECOM was asked by the Australian Federal Government to conduct an economic analysis of climate change impacts on infrastructure. When the Narrabeen lagoon’s entrance is blocked, it can fill like a bathtub, flooding the surrounding land and houses.

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The community can tackle this problem in various ways—such as a lagoon entrance opening, levee construction, flood awareness and planning controls. Because climate change is expected to increase flooding in the Narrabeen catchment over the coming century, decision-makers needed a clearer understanding of the different possible adaptation measures.

“The objective of the study was to use an economic cost-benefit analysis to identify both what measures government should invest in to prevent the impacts from flood events and when they should invest,” said Kinghorn, who, along with his KPMG colleague Lisa Crowley, developed, designed and ran the project as previous employees of AECOM.

Kinghorn and Crowley estimated the social benefits of adaptation to climate change in terms of willingness to pay, rather than just costs avoided. Using MCS, they generated more realistic probabilities of overall costs and benefits, and modeling the expected future values of variables such as rainfall.

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As the report states, even modest global emission reductions can avoid up to 80% of projected economic costs resulting from increased heat-related mortality and energy demand. While many companies may be resistant to change, the report makes an undeniable case; we cannot afford to ignore the momentous climate risks that threaten our near- and long-term future. “Responding to climate change is no longer a problem without a solution, said Crowley.

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 “It is not a question of do I need to respond, but how do I respond. An effective response to climate change is possible. The complex set of climate change data can be processed through a cost benefit analysis using MCS, producing a set of economic indicators to inform a more meaningful decision-making process on how and when to respond.”