Category Archives: Disaster Preparedness

Wildfire Lessons from Waldo Canyon

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Last summer marked an especially destructive wildfire season in Colorado with insurance claims exceeding $450 million. One fire in particular – the  Waldo Canyon blaze that raged through the Colorado Springs area in June and July – burned more than 18,000 acres, destroyed almost 350 homes and caused the evacuation of more than 32,000 residents.  Reportedly, it was the most expensive fire in state history, causing more than $350 million worth of insurance claims.

Obviously, a fire of this magnitude can teach some valuable lessons for future mitigation efforts and earlier this week the Fire Adapted Communities Coalition (FAC), a national partnership dedicated to promoting best practices to reduce wildfire-related damage, released “Lessons from Waldo Canyon,” an investigative report that examined what happened. The report determined that the fire could have been much worse if it wasn’t for the mitigation efforts of the Colorado Springs Fire Marshal. In one neighborhood alone, mitigation efforts saved millions:

According to estimates provided by the Colorado Springs Mitigation Section and FEMA, the cost benefit ratio for the mitigation efforts for the Cedar Heights neighborhood was 1/257; $300,000 was spent on mitigation work and $77,248,301 in losses were avoided. Combined cost benefit ratio was 1/ 517 for the three neighborhoods with the highest impacts.

The report presented a variety of findings that could help other communities mitigate their own wildfire risk and outlined the importance of proper building construction and maintenance, reduction of fuels for fire, and partnerships with other organizations to spread the preparedness message.

The FAC also developed a companion video entitled, “Creating Fire Adapted Communities: A Case Study from Colorado Springs and the Waldo Canyon Fire” that includes dramatic footage of the fire and interviews with emergency personnel and residents to further drive home these mitigation lessons and hopefully prevent future disasters.

Flood Safety Awareness Week

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have teamed up to highlight flood risk with their Flood Safety Awareness Week. In many ways, flooding is the most-damaging natural disaster facing the United States, noted Dr. Louis W. Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service (a branch of NOAA).

“Flooding is dangerous and costly, killing nearly 100 people and causing an average of eight billion dollars in property damage in the United States each year,” said Dr. Uccellini.  “A weather-ready nation is a prepared nation; one that will reduce flood losses by planning ahead, staying abreast of weather forecasts and heeding the warnings.”

The agencies’ goal for the week is obvious: improving awareness of the risk and how citizens can stay safe.

FEMA’s Ready.gov site has several more tips to preparing for times before, during and after a flood, as does NOAA’s website, which offers information on its “Turn Around Don’t Drown” campaign. This campaign is something NOAA has been been highlighting for years, pushing those who encounter flood conditions on the road to head the other way rather than get stuck in water — or worse, if the road beneath is washed away.

According to NOAA, more than half of flooding-related deaths occur when people are driving.

It remains mystifying how many people don’t understand that the foundation of the Industrial Revolution, the combustion engine, relies on, ya know, combustion to work. And combustion — a fancy word for fire — requires oxygen. Which, I’ve heard, is not plentiful underwater.

In short, don’t try to drive through a lake.

One other interesting facet of this year’s advocacy is the focus on the 100-year anniversary of The Great Flood of 1913, something local survivor Bishop Milton Wright called a flood “second only to Noah’s.”

In late March of 1913 rain fell in such an excess over the Ohio Valley that no river in Ohio and most of Indiana remained in its banks. Bridges, roads, railways, dams, and property were washed away.

In its wake, at least 600 lost their lives, a quarter million people were left homeless, and damages were estimated in the hundreds of millions, making it at that time one of the worst natural disasters the United States had witnessed.

When disaster struck this part of the U.S. starting Easter Sunday, 1913 and lasting for weeks, it had a ripple effect across the entire nation. The damage to roads, railways, telephone and electrical lines paralyzed commerce in and out of the region.

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This affected people across the country, unlike previous disasters where impacts were primarily localized.

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As a result, there was national outcry for state and federal governments to reevaluate their role in flood control.

Through it has been a century since the disaster, it remains one of the largest tragedies in U.

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S. history.

Still, those who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods may be able to take solace in the fact that they helped prompt a larger discussion of the risk. This nation’s history is spotted with catastrophes that helped spark change and this was one of the first in terms of increasing disaster preparedness.

Now, if only more people will heed those lessons.

Insuring Pacific Island Nations Against Catastrophes

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Due to recent extreme weather events in the Pacific Islands, the World Bank, Japan and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community have come together to devise a two-year pilot to see whether catastrophe insurance might work such islands as Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands. Known as the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Pilot, it aims to reduce the vulnerability of Pacific Island States to natural disasters by improving their financial response to such events. According to Japan’s Ministry of Finance, the  program “offers immediate emergency funding in the aftermath of a major disaster and will help stabilize Pacific Island economies so their efforts to respond to an emergency situation can be maximized.”

Best Practices for Business Storm Prep

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Winter storm Nemo is approaching the Northeast as, what some are calling, a blizzard for the record books. To prepare, businesses must take into consideration those aspects that will keep their organization up and running — including communication to customers and employees.

To ensure your company is successful at critical communications, Everbridge, an interactive communication and mass notification company, suggests companies:

  • Plan to manage the entire lifecycle of any critical event. Dr. Robert C. Chandler, crisis communication expert, suggests creating a crisis plan that addresses each of the six stages of a crisis: warning, risk assessment, response, management, resolution and recovery.
  • Confirm that you have multiple contact paths for each individual to decrease reliance on any one device.
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    Set delivery options to attempt email and SMS paths first, as cellular and landline infrastructures could be damaged by the storm.

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  • Focus on message construction. Dr. Chandler recommends that message maps consist of three short sentences that convey three key messages in 30 words. SMS messages should be no longer than 120 characters and audio/video needs to convey its message in the first nine seconds.
  • Don’t forget social media. Use social media as an additional communications channel and be sure to monitor social media sites like Twitter to gain situational intelligence that can help emergency response teams.
  • Ensure that regular system and staff testing and preparation procedures are followed including system testing for effectiveness and data accuracy. Staff should be trained to operate the critical communications system from both computer and mobile devices.