Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities 2020-2021: Impacts, Findings, and Lessons Learned (2024)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

4 Interdependent Systems in the Context of Compounding Disasters Compounding disasters have widespread adverse and unintended effects on both communities and the interconnected human–natural systems on which they rely to function. Compounding disasters “co-occur such that they concurrently affect interdependent critical infrastructure systems, thereby presenting multiplicative risks to the interconnected systems and population” (Wells et al., 2022, p. 2). 1 When a community experiences a disaster amid ongoing disaster recovery processes, there can be a “greater burden on individual and interconnected networks when compared to a singular threat occurring in isolation” (Wells et al., 2022, p. 2). A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING COMPOUNDING DISASTERS There are multiple approaches to examining disasters and their compounding impacts. For this chapter, the Committee on Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities, 2020– 2021, adopted a systems approach to account for the contemporary drivers and realized impacts of risk (UNDRR, 2022); the complex and interconnected dynamics that underpin society; interdependencies of critical physical, virtual, and social infrastructures; and the disaster-induced amplification of underlying vulnerabilities. As climate change heightens the potential for extreme weather-climate events to occur contemporaneously (NASEM, 2016), a holistic approach is needed to unpack the interdependencies among various services (and service providers) vital to community 1 In this chapter, the term system can be likened to a “sector” of society critical to its functioning, and the two terms are used interchangeably throughout. The former term does not imply mechanistic social decisions or actions. 152 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

functioning. Using a systems approach to synthesize primary and secondary information sources—the committee’s information-gathering sessions, and the commissioned papers and relevant literature—this chapter focuses on ways in which compounding disasters in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) region during 2020–2021 affected critical social, physical, and virtual systems whose networks, assets, and services are interconnected and nested within larger systems. The systems that serve both the routine and the acute needs of a community provide services through core functions and elements that may rely on other systems to function. Thus, service delivery depends not only on the functionality and capacity of these elements but also on the built infrastructure and social assets on which they rely. These assets may be natural (e.g., waterways, protective dune systems), constructed (e.g., bridges, electrical grids, schools), or social (e.g., institutional or lived experience, knowledge, social networks and cohesion). 2 These systems have one or more connections that (1) link their various components; (2) interconnect different services; and/or (3) connect them to larger regional, national, and even international networks. These connections include information channels (mechanisms for sharing data and directives, as well as social networks and media), supply chains, and services. This chapter examines interdependencies among systems, service providers, and services vital to community functions, including disaster response and recovery. These sectors must collaborate to deliver vital services in support of a community’s success in planning for, responding to, recovering from, and mitigating the impacts of compounding disasters. Their capacities and underlying infrastructure have been honed over generations of disaster experience in response to the most common hazards in the GOM—hurricanes and floods. That historical experience shapes the policies, practices, and regulations that guide how GOM communities are built, how they prepare for and respond to these threats, how they direct their limited resources to build social and infrastructure resilience, and how some populations see greater disaster recovery assistance and have shorter recovery times than others. Highlighting the key dynamics of these interacting systems and services will help shed light on some of the experiences of affected populations during the compounding disasters of 2020–2021. Analysis of cross-cutting themes from the committee’s information-gathering sessions in Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama (see Chapter 3) illustrates the connections and 2 Social networks reflect social capital and build community cohesion and do not operate as mechanistic systems. They are included here to acknowledge their function as social assets. 153 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

interdependencies among these systems and services in the context of compounding disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the characteristics of the vicious and virtuous cycles 3 that form within and across systems. Vicious cycles are one way to show how the effects of disasters can compound. THE PANDEMIC, VULNERABILITIES, AND SYSTEM INTERDEPENDENCIES The duration and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic, a hazard that combined a biological threat with underlying vulnerabilities, extended the time line over which disasters could compound (Tozier de la Poterie et al., 2022) and created unique constraints by encouraging isolation, which impeded disaster risk management actions that traditionally require a collective approach. This section examines these tensions and the system-level effects of the compounding disasters across the GOM region, as reported by participants in the information-gathering sessions. Notably, those narratives offered limited commentary on the effects of the observed climate- and weather-related events on COVID-19 infection rates and associated health outcomes during the recovery period, likely for two reasons. First, the methodology adopted for the information-gathering sessions was event based, focusing participants on specific weather-climate events. The COVID-19 pandemic was framed as the backdrop against which these events occurred, and the sessions were structured to reference specific hurricanes, winter storms, and floods chronologically, triggering a focus on the details of the impacts of and recovery from these events. As one Alabama nongovernmental organization (NGO) leader noted when explaining their hyperfocus on these events, despite the ongoing pandemic, “It’s like you have a chronic illness and you have a cold. I deal with the cold, but I still have a chronic illness.” Second, because of the acute nature of each weather-climate event, session participants admitted that their attention was focused on meeting immediate human needs for water, food, and shelter, as well as socioemotional support. In addition to physical disruption of testing 3 Vicious and virtuous cycles refer to complex chains of events that reinforce feedback loops, in which a change builds up over time. A vicious cycle is a negative reinforcing feedback loop, while a virtuous cycle is a positive reinforcing feedback loop. 154 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

centers and reduced public health capacity in the aftermath of these events, participants focused on meeting those basic needs admitted to deprioritizing social distancing, testing, and even acting on the symptoms of COVID-19. Their experiences demonstrated how the pandemic, which previously had demanded their vigilance, was neglected or deprioritized when hurricanes hit, even as cases were surging, given the urgency of other basic needs such as food, water, and shelter. In the words of one Louisiana respondent, “COVID did not exist in Cameron Parish [in] August, September, October, [and] November, because people were too busy and too poor to worry about COVID.” These realities could not only explain the limited emphasis on COVID-19 in the information-gathering sessions but also may suggest that COVID-19 cases were underreported during the early stages of recovery despite the potential for hurricane-related surges (Naqvi et al., 2023). Local Economy, Civil Society, and Public Services The pandemic spurred a nationwide economic downturn before the Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1, 2020, with the U.S. gross domestic product falling 8.9 percent in the second quarter of that year—the largest single-quarter contraction in more than 70 years (White House Council of Economic Advisers, 2022). Session panelists remarked on the economic downturn’s multifaceted effects on their communities’ ability to plan for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the impacts of the sequence of disruptive events they faced. The pandemic led to unemployment, resulting in job losses and difficulty paying bills in advance of the 2020 hurricane season, reducing certain households’ adaptive capacity, and increasing sensitivity to the approaching storms. One panelist working for an NGO in Baldwin County, Alabama, described it thus: “Many working families that always were able to provide are now not able to provide. And they don’t know how to ask for help because they’ve never had to ask for help. And our resources were slim . . . it was every area of life, every work field . . . it was everything. The calls were nonstop, 24 hours a day.” Panelists noted the vital role of community-based organizations (CBOs) and faith-based organizations (FBOs) in delivering aid. CBOs and FBOs across the GOM region play an especially prominent role. From local churches to national groups with emergency response 155 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

teams, these organizations are on the ground quickly and attend to local needs—from food to basic household items to rebuilding of houses to counseling—with compassion. Even so, church membership has been declining in the region (as nationally), particularly during the pandemic. This decline translates into fewer donations and fewer volunteers to assist with aid programs. In the future, CBOs and FBOs may no longer be able to provide vital services as they have in the past as sequential and compounding events strain volunteer staffing even more than singular events. The economic and social instabilities’ effect on public and civil society services was twofold: the economic downturn tempered donations to nonprofits, FBOs, and other entities in the civil society sector and reduced tax revenues for local governments, which in turn reduced overall revenue streams. At the same time, community members’ needs for food, mental health counseling, and emergency rental and utility assistance were expanding. Those in need increasingly looked to CBOs and FBOs as trusted sources of information and resources and key pillars of disaster risk management. Their calls for assistance increased at a time when many CBOs and FBOs were forced to reduce the scale of their operations or close because of pandemic restrictions. In some cases, charitable services were disrupted. Many of those that remained open struggled to adapt their operations to virtual or hybrid mode or limited in-person staffing. Essential services were forced to remain operational, often in staggered shifts, but one COVID- 19 infection among staff could shutter offices critical to recovery, such as those responsible for building permits. As a result, the capacity to deliver critical services in response to rising demand inevitably suffered. Mounting demands due to the subsequent sequence of disruptive events in each community only accelerated burnout among limited staff members, who were often also contending with the same shocks in their personal lives. Staff turnover ensued, further reducing efficiency, as onboarding taxed these providers’ already limited capacity. Organizations struggled to absorb the staff shortages, in part prompted by the pandemic’s “great resignation” 4 (see Table 4-1 for 2019–2021 unemployment statistics). Voluntary withdrawal from the workforce due to burnout, illness, better/safer opportunities, or the demands of homeschooling/childcare/caregiving drew staff away from critical sectors such as health care, 4 The “great resignation” refers to the trend of large numbers of employees voluntarily quitting their jobs. The term was initially coined by Texas A&M professor Anthony Klotz to describe the mass resignation that occurred at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (Phipps, 2022). 156 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

education, and public service, as well as debris removal and construction—all essential for disaster preparation, response, and recovery. Workforce shortages in turn drove up competitive wages and the demand for benefits in many sectors, which, while advantageous for workers, further strained the limited revenue available to public and civil society service providers. TABLE 4-1 Unemployment in Selected Counties/Parishes, 2019–2021 Unemployment in Selected Counties/Parishes, 2019–2021 County/Parish % of Population % of Population % of Population Unemployed, 2019a Unemployed, 2020b Unemployed, 2021c Galveston County, 4.1 8.8 6.6 TX Harris County, TX 3.9 9.0 6.4 Texas Average 3.5 7.7 5.6 Calcasieu Parish, 3.9 9.5 5.7 LA Cameron Parish, LA 3.6 6.1 3.6 Louisiana Average 4.6 8.6 5.6 Jefferson Davis 7.0 9.5 7.5 County, MS Marion County, MS 5.6 7.0 5.2 Mississippi 5.5 8.0 5.5 Average Baldwin County, AL 2.9 6.1 2.9 Mobile County, AL 3.9 8.6 4.6 157 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

Alabama Average 3.2 6.4 3.4 United States 3.7 8.1 5.4 Averaged NOTE: Percentages are annual unemployment rate averages. a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023a. b U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023b. c U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023c. d U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023d. In addition to the paid workforce, unpaid volunteers represent a substantial portion of the workforce in both the civil society and public-service sectors. They staff human and animal shelters, vaccine clinics, and polling places, as well as volunteer fire departments, vital to the pandemic response in such areas as rural Mississippi (WJTV, 2020). Volunteers are often older retirees, whose age puts them at higher risk of death or severe illness from COVID-19. Thus, the depletion of the volunteer workforce, many of whom were elderly, further reduced the capacity of public and civil society service providers. Many panelists reported that the volunteer force had not yet fully returned. The global economic downturn and workforce shortages also spurred supply chain shortages that, beyond an inability to access key commodities such as medical supplies, impaired the ability to deliver services effectively. Pandemic-induced strains on supply chains were exacerbated by subsequent disasters, inflation, and rising regional demands for critical commodities during relief efforts (e.g., prices on food and home rebuilding and repair skyrocketed). Residents were then faced with going “to a local hardware store to buy a sheet of sheetrock, and it was twice the price in Lake Charles than in Moab or Houston, which made economic recovery very challenging because prices were so inflated.” Another session panelist in Lake Charles explained that “we were not just dealing with trying to recover from the two storms back-to-back, which is a battle of its own. COVID-19 fundamentally altered the world economy, and all that was happening at the same time.” Whether because of the added cost of operations due to physical distancing, testing, quarantining, and sanitation protocols and/or the overall rising costs of other necessary operational commodities, public and civic society service providers were forced to further scale back the volume of services that could be delivered under 158 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

revenue streams already reduced by the pandemic and further impaired by subsequent disruptive events. Panelists noted that the effects were particularly pronounced for building materials after the sequence of hurricanes in 2020–2021. Housing Housing plays a central role in disaster risk management and public safety, as well as overall well-being. At the same time, disasters have a long-term negative effect on housing perhaps more than on any other aspect of the built environment. The disasters of 2020–2021 underscored how housing collectively functions as vital infrastructure to sustain education, social cohesion, and economic activity in times where the physical facilities originally designed for these functions cannot be occupied. Thus, the unaddressed vulnerabilities of housing influence the sensitivity of a community or individual to compounding disasters. Substantive impacts to the housing sector also cascade into other sectors vital to recovery and societal function. Impacts of Inadequate Disaster Recovery Processes Inadequate and event-based disaster recovery processes at the federal, state, and municipal levels magnify the impacts on housing in compounding disasters. Because of pandemic restrictions, federal disaster recovery assistance requests and insurance claims to repair damaged homes were processed virtually. Inefficiencies abounded, and residents had to navigate these new systems without the customary on-site, in-person support. Mail service challenges delayed the distribution of assistance and benefits, in turn delaying debris removal and restoration of critical municipal infrastructure while halting housing repairs and reconstruction. Individual households and municipalities experienced a similar vicious cycle driven by the sudden adaptation of existing systems for managing assistance requests and insurance claims during a pandemic (see ① in Figure 4-1). Moreover, those municipalities and households that 159 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

most need recovery funds are often those least well equipped to navigate complex and continually evolving online recovery assistance systems. Session participants in Alabama and Louisiana criticized the remote interactions that replaced the customary face-to-face encounters of disaster recovery, which added to the stress, anxiety, and confusion among storm survivors. This was particularly evident among the elderly, who generally were less proficient in some of the newer technologies and were unable to complete forms to request postdisaster assistance. Residents experiencing homelessness similarly faced substantial challenges in obtaining access to technologies. In short, unable to directly interact with trusted local partners who are critical in helping navigate the bureaucracy of the federal system (Trivedi, 2020), the most vulnerable populations were particularly affected in the virtualized world of the pandemic. During a time of protracted recovery, affected households and their communities are increasingly vulnerable to future disruptive events, creating the conditions necessary for a second vicious cycle to form (see ② in Figure 4-1). Disaster recovery systems that traditionally associated losses with discrete events were unable to process losses that were now due to the cumulative damages incurred during sequential hazard events. This led to delayed recovery processes, leaving damaged buildings and infrastructure unrepaired and eventually further damaged in subsequent events, creating a vicious reinforcing loop between household and community recovery processes. 160 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

FIGURE 4-1 Systems map of the interdependencies between housing and public services in recovery. Homeowners confronting these compounding cycles of housing losses also had to bear the accumulated burden of repeated attempts to engage with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials, insurance adjusters, plumbers, electricians, roofers, and contractors for home and building repairs. Panelists noted that many of the individuals working in these capacities were also helping to repair their own homes or those of neighbors or loved ones and felt the strain of the higher demand for their services in this 2-year period. For homeowners with more than one insurance policy, attempts to recoup losses could be multiplied by the number and type of insurance they carried, from flood to windstorm to homeowners’ insurance for their homes, in addition to insurance for vehicles, boats, and businesses that were also affected by these events. With deductibles enforced by each policy for each event, many households quickly exhausted whatever financial reserves were available to them. As Underhill (2009, p. 62) notes, such “mounting disaster expenses may exacerbate people’s already vulnerable economic 161 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

situation, making it difficult for some to keep up with pre-existing bills and newly emergent expenses.” As one panelist noted, “Being resilient also means . . . folks just keep taking the hits over and over again . . . it becomes exhausting after a while.” The virtualization of damage assessments by insurers and FEMA often required self- reporting by individuals with no formal training or expertise, leading to omission of necessary data that could not be retrieved if clarifications or additional information were requested. One workaround was FEMA’s use of drone imagery and windshield assessments for damaged homes. However, the inability to conduct up-close assessments led to errors. For instance, the overspecification of substantially damaged properties in Lake Charles left repairable houses slated for demolition. Beyond the inconvenience of a complete rebuild was the loss of grandfathered base flood elevations, forcing new construction to meet elevation requirements that were more than 50 percent higher, at considerable cost. In Southwest Louisiana, the reliance on these perfunctory posthurricane inspections instead of in-person inspections received harsh criticism. A Lake Charles city official explained that, eventually, city officials organized their own reassessment effort using local engineers to reverse the windshield assessments, though this further extended the time damaged homes were vulnerable to subsequent shocks. The sequence of events as described by session participants working and residing in the Lake Charles region demonstrates some of the inadequacies of the nation’s current disaster recovery process, which can result in prolonged exposure in a state of increased vulnerability. In some cases, the property assessments were not completed before a subsequent disruptive event occurred. The current event-based disaster recovery system assumes that losses are associated with discrete events. But when damages from one event have not yet been assessed or repaired before the next event creates new, compounding losses, complications ensue. Panelists from the Lake Charles region described the ways in which such event-based disaster recovery processes compounded the 2020 disaster impacts. Uncleared debris from Hurricane Laura was mobilized by Hurricane Delta’s wind and water, worsening the damaging effects of both storms. Homes with damaged roofs from Hurricane Laura were reexposed as their tarps were blown off by Hurricane Delta. Interior water damage from this second storm, enabled by the unaddressed wind damages from Hurricane Laura, created more complex claims scenarios that event-based reporting systems were ill-equipped to handle. The damages from the now- 162 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

compounding disasters added to the volume of debris to be managed, both physically and with respect to assistance requests, further delaying the flow of resources to municipalities and households alike (see Figure 4-1 for an illustration of this vicious cycle). As one panelist noted, “That’s one of the problems with the way the [FEMA] system is designed . . . there are these . . . mass processes . . . [and] they expect every disaster to fit . . . in this mold.” Municipalities struggled to navigate FEMA’s event-based reporting structures and its implicit expectation that debris from sequential events could somehow be distinguished. In the May 2021 floods in the Lake Charles region, debris not yet removed from the 2020 storm sequence clogged stormwater systems in the affected areas, limiting the capacity available to manage the record rainfall. Areas flooded that had never flooded before, bringing losses to families not required, or who could not afford, to carry flood insurance. Hurricane-damaged houses awaiting repair were tarped with materials not rated for drastic changes in temperature or long-term use, making these water barriers porous and vulnerable to ongoing water penetration when the heavy rains arrived. The floods generated even more debris and added yet another round of losses and claims to an already overwhelmed claims and assistance system that was unable to quickly mobilize funds into Lake Charles. The arrival of Winter Storm Uri in the GOM region presented a challenge that affected both unoccupied homes and houses with unrepaired damage from previous disasters. Some panelists highlighted that slow-to-recover properties in Texas, still stripped to their studs after Harvey (in 2017), met Uri without insulation. A similar risk was posed in Galveston County, which, like other tourist destinations on the Gulf Coast, has a high number of unoccupied rental properties in the winter months. Whether these properties were stripped bare or unoccupied, the end result was the same: they were not heated during the deep freeze; pipes ruptured tapping municipal water supplies, even more water damage was incurred by yet-unrepaired homes, and an inventory of rental properties vital to residents and the local economy was damaged. Despite a general “all hazards” approach in the United States, Gissing and colleagues (2022) report that traditional risk management almost always focuses on discrete events. Compounding disasters present challenges of greater scale and complexity relative to individual events, and the repository of lessons learned is just being studied (see Chapter 5). Failure to adequately consider the effects of compounding events can slow recovery, increase reconstruction costs, and accentuate economic and psychological stress (Gissing et al., 2022). 163 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

While all-hazards planning enables preparations for either natural or technological hazards, it usually misses the compounding impacts and the impacts that linger during the long recovery period. Impacts on Affordable Housing In the housing sector, as in so many aspects of disaster planning, preparation, and recovery, marginalized populations bear the brunt of disaster impacts. This is particularly evident in the effects of these events on the supply of affordable housing. Louisiana’s Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes saw significant damage and loss of housing supply following the 2020 hurricane season. Hurricanes Laura and Delta damaged approximately 50,000 housing units in Calcasieu Parish (McKinsey and Company, 2020). As the supply of habitable homes was reduced, rental prices increased, and the unhoused population ballooned. Meanwhile, the overall socioeconomic decline in Alabama’s Baldwin and Mobile Counties, well before 2020, had resulted in a corresponding decline in the condition of the physical housing inventory, leading to more deferred-maintenance structures, as well as shortages of affordable housing. These were early indicators of not only the physical vulnerabilities of the housing inventory but also the dysfunction of the housing market system across all three states visited by the committee. Many hurricane-damaged rental properties were deprioritized for repair, absorbed by buyout programs, or flipped and sold by their landlords, while others were deemed unrepairable by the homeowner because of insufficient insurance coverage and available savings. Tenants in rental properties subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could be displaced for repairs, but many property owners soon realized a restored house’s value in the inflated housing market, withdrawing it from HUD-supported programs to permanently displace the tenants. All these pathways resulted in the same outcome: the stock of affordable housing dropped after each weather-climate event, often permanently displacing low-income households in most need of housing (Brennan et al., 2021 see Figure 4-2). Affordable and/or government-subsidized rentals are slow to return (if ever) to the market after a weather-climate event. This has wide-ranging and longstanding impacts, especially if more than one event occurs adjacent in time and/or region (Van Zandt and Sloan, 2017; Rumbach and Makarewicz, 2017). 164 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

FIGURE 4-2 Systems map of vicious cycles spurring an even higher demand for affordable housing and more displaced households. These system dynamics had wide-ranging consequences, as much of the critical workforce needed to rebuild, restore, and maintain the local economy could not afford to rent, much less purchase, a home in the area. These disruptions further depleted the workforce vital to the recovery of the local economy. As one session participant stated, “Housing and [specifically] affordable housing is what is going to keep that workforce away.” Moreover, since mental and physical health can be compromised by unsafe living spaces, loss of housing stock can also increase impacts on the health care sector. Calcasieu Parish’s program director for disaster housing recovery and chair of the Lake Charles Housing Authority Board of Commissioners noted further that “we are very slow to come back with units that are truly affordable. . . . Even a schoolteacher is going to have a hard time finding a unit that’s affordable” (Maschke, 2023). 165 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

Participants in the panel on housing and displacement emphasized that these dynamics are well known, and even if communities lack the funds to address the affordable housing crisis proactively, they can maximize the effectiveness of their postdisaster resources by planning their housing recovery programs to deal with the problem before a disaster occurs. Awareness of the highest-risk areas/households can allow the identification of locations where temporary and, ideally, permanent affordable housing should be mobilized after a disaster to maintain proximity to jobs and schools. Panelists emphasized that having agreements in place ahead of time ensures that communities can take swift action to stabilize the most vulnerable populations once recovery funds arrive. Panelists from Southwest Louisiana mentioned that state agencies and FEMA have continued to offer support, and some panelists found themselves pleasantly surprised that the support did not disappear with Hurricane Ida’s arrival in that area in August 2021. One panelist suggested that the amount of disaster housing assistance offered for lower-income neighborhoods has the potential to be “transformational” over time, sparking hopes that the recent infusion of disaster recovery funds will prompt not only a long-awaited reset on the affordable housing crisis in the GOM region, but a reset that strengthens the resilience of the affordable housing inventory to future hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. (See Box 4-1 for more information on flexible funding related to affordable housing and Table 4-2 for county/parish appropriations.) One panelist from Mobile County similarly remarked that “from an affordable housing perspective there is a shift that is coming; it has definitely started in Louisiana, where the HUD money that has been coming in post-Laura and [post-]Ida is truly building affordable housing that can take a hit and still be secure housing, and it is slowly moving its way [to Alabama].” Panelists noted further that one way to expedite this process is to shift from compensating the market value of a physically vulnerable structure and to financing the cost of its replacement with an improved property, such as one with an IBHS (Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety) FORTIFIED roof, hurricane-grade windows, and elevated foundations above the requisite base flood elevation, or incentivizing relocation outside of the Special Flood Hazard Area. 166 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

BOX 4-1 Federal COVID-19 Relief Funding: An Unexpected Recovery Accelerator Several session panelists noted that it would be difficult to project what their community’s recovery experiences might have been like without the infusion of funds authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA; P.L. 117-2). Most session panelists referred to federal COVID-19 Relief Funding simply as “COVID money,” without distinguishing between funding streams. The Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, or SLFRF, program provided funding to state, territorial, local, and tribal governments across the country to support their response to and recovery from the COVID-19 public health emergency. With disaster recovery funds delayed, the flexibility and “pre-positioning” of ARPA funds led some (not all, as several panelists noted) local governments to unexpectedly fill acute gaps in the housing sector through emergency rental and utility assistance. This flexibility prompted panelists to note a renewed focus on adapting policies quickly and critically, looking at ways in which federal and other funds are utilized by local and state governments. ARPA funds were eventually used to harden infrastructure and improve flood management capacity, addressing preexisting infrastructure deficits in areas that contributed to disaster risk reduction. Panelists in both Mobile County and Calcasieu Parish noted the critical importance of COVID-19 relief funding in providing rental and utility assistance to housing-insecure residents. However, in many cases, these funds were a stopgap that masked unmet needs for vulnerable populations following the compounding disasters. TABLE 4-2 Total Appropriations from the ARPA, by County, as of May 2021 Funds Authorized by the ARPA, Appropriations by County/Parish County/Parish Allocation ($) Galveston County, TX 66,456,490.00 Harris County, TX 915,508,128.00 Calcasieu Parish, LA 39,515,058.00 167 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

Cameron Parish, LA 1,354,424.00 Jefferson Davis County, MS 2,161,484.00 Marion County, MS 4,773,017.00 Baldwin County, AL 43,360,588.00 Mobile County, AL $80,261,198.00 SOURCE: U.S. Treasury Department, 2021. Health Care and Education New modes of virtual service delivery, including major developments such as telehealth, virtual counseling, and e-learning, became staples of routine service delivery during the pandemic and proved vital as the later sequence of weather-climate events further disrupted in- person services. Yet, while these digital modes had broad reach in most states outside the GOM region during the pandemic, panelists noted that residential broadband access of their counties and parishes was below national averages, limiting households’ ability to support e-learning and telework during the extended closures resulting from the pandemic and damaging weather- climate events. Many schoolchildren lacked or had inadequate internet access; those who did have access often faced other challenges, such as an insufficient number of computers given the number of remote workers and learners in their homes. The end result was the same: children struggled to follow their lessons remotely. The loss of power and the resulting disruption to broadband services that occurred during the winter storms or subsequent hurricanes ultimately exposed the growing social dependence on these critical communication technologies and their fragility. 168 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

IMPACT OF REGIONALITY ON DISASTER RECOVERY The GOM region has a high level of interconnectedness. While all regions have some degree of interdependence due to their reliance on common supply chains or federal services, reciprocal agreements and evacuation practices across the GOM region draw on the shared capacity of state and local governments and NGOs to help communities in neighboring regions absorb and recover from large-scale disasters, particularly hurricanes. Resource sharing can provide a robust response to a single geographically focused event such as a hurricane. But when major events occur in succession, which happened during 2020’s hurricane season, this interconnectedness can instead cascade the adverse effects across the region and stall ongoing recovery processes. Diversion of recovery resources to other affected areas reinforces the “regionalism” of disaster effects. Regionality and the Pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic was global in scope and, unlike a hurricane, had wider regional impacts that made drawing on resources from neighboring jurisdictions impossible in some cases, especially for essential supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE). Shortages of such supplies were nationwide, as the pandemic impeded international and national supply chains for many resources. Sanitation and building supplies, medical equipment, and other tools vital to recovery were in short supply, and localities either had to wait to get to the head of the queue or bid competitively with other localities for the same supplies. Beyond supply chains, the pandemic compounded the inability of regional assistance networks to function as normal. It depleted the number of emergency and medical personnel available to respond outside their normal bases of operation, and the loss of those individuals facing quarantine because of COVID-19 infection and those unable to leave an already strained situation at home further reduced the capacity for regional cooperation. 169 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

Supply Chains and Essential Supplies and Workers The disasters and recovery sequences described by session panelists emphasized how physical damage resulted in disruption of service delivery. However, panelists in each session emphasized the regional effects of hurricanes on neighboring communities. These effects included the need to host and support evacuees, which can tax already strained services and sectors. According to one NGO panelist, “When they evacuate here . . . we’re trying to find housing for them, we’re trying to help them with all their myriad of life issues that they bring with them when they flee the storm. And it puts an already stressed nonprofit community into further stress.” Given that populations who move across county/parish and even state lines may never return, their migration has lasting (and potentially adverse) ramifications on the systems serving both their new and former communities. Governments (federal, state, and local) and nonprofits have reciprocal agreements or mandates to support responses across the GOM region, drawing personnel and resources away from ongoing recovery in one locality to support acute situations in others. The sequence of storms in the region prompted shifts in priority toward places suffering from the most-recent events (e.g., from Lake Charles after Hurricane Laura/Delta to Houma after Hurricane Ida). These shifts prompted both perceived and real shortages in the places with less-recent damage. Other critical commodities and services related to reconstruction, including the supply of line workers and construction materials, also had to be shared across the region, with spikes in demand raising prices to further delay the ongoing recovery process. While other GOM counties and parishes were in various stages of disaster response and recovery, Mobile and Baldwin Counties saw their building supplies reduced “for probably the next 3 years just because of Cat 4 Ida in LA,” explained one participant. Relatedly, when insurance companies in neighboring Louisiana began collapsing, pulling out of the state market, canceling policies, and generally causing market chaos, Alabama started to see similar effects, explained panelists. Winter Storm Uri also made seeking aid from neighboring communities nearly impossible as subfreezing temperatures made roads impassable, with many areas encountering ice, and the advance shutdown of many public transportation options (Castellanos et al., 2023). Winter Storm Uri thus illustrated what hurricanes historically had not: a single event whose 170 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

geographic reach was sufficient to impair this shared capacity across the region, delaying recovery processes at all levels. Beyond building supplies, the committee heard how strain brought about by ongoing regional disasters negatively affected disparate county resources such as staffing for NGOs and other organizations; donations; or the availability of volunteers, PPE, power restoration, construction workers, and more. SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS The duration and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic, a hazard that combined a biological threat with underlying vulnerabilities, extended the time line over which disruptive events and disasters could compound. Disasters occurring in 2020–2021 inhibited the ability of regional supply chains and federal, state, and local support networks to function as normal. Generally, cooperative resource sharing can provide a robust response to a single geographically focused event such as a hurricane. However, when disruptive events occur in succession, which happened in 2020–2021, this interconnectedness can instead cascade the adverse effects across the region and further stall ongoing recovery processes. The pandemic led to extensive unemployment and economic hardship in advance of the 2020 hurricane season, increasing the vulnerability and sensitivity of communities throughout the region to the effects of the approaching storms. Storms caused widespread damage throughout the region, resulting in significant uninsured losses and supply chain disruptions that significantly increased the cost of rebuilding materials. As economic hardship increased and persisted, communities began to destabilize in the aftermath. Faith- and community-based volunteer relief and recovery organizations were particularly hard-hit due to declines in financial donations and workforce loss as a result of personal and mental health concerns. The pandemic also created unique constraints by encouraging isolation, which impeded disaster management actions that traditionally require a collective and interpersonal approach. New modes of virtual service delivery, including major technological developments such as telehealth, virtual counseling, and e-learning, became staples of routine service delivery during the pandemic. However, the sequence of weather-climate events displaced large portions of the population and disrupted the effective delivery of services that had come to rely on broadband technology. Limitations of broadband availability and the complex and continually evolving 171 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

online disaster recovery assistance systems presented major challenges to households and municipalities, which created inefficiencies and vicious feedback cycles that further delayed recovery. During a time of protracted recovery, affected households and their communities are at greater risk to the adverse effects of future disruptive events. Disaster recovery systems that traditionally associate losses from individual events were unable to process losses resulting from cumulative damages incurred during sequential disruptive events, leading to a profound effect on housing availability and scale of community recovery. Buildings and infrastructure remained in disrepair and were then further damaged in subsequent events, creating a vicious reinforcing feedback loop between household and community recovery processes. With disaster recovery funds delayed, the flexibility and “pre-positioning” of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act, P.L. 117-2) funds allowed some local governments to innovate and address critical gaps in public assistance programming, bringing greater stability to communities that otherwise may not have been possible. Generally, the disasters of 2020–2021 underscored how resilient, safe, and affordable housing functions as vital infrastructure to sustain education, social cohesion, and economic activity in communities and throughout the region. 172 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS