Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities 2020-2021 Impacts, Findings, and Lessons Learned (2024) / Chapter Skim
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's application of this conventional approach designated each of the seven major hurricanes and winter storm in the GOM in 2020 and 2021 as a billion-dollar disaster, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by some as a trillion-dollar disaster. These monikers, however accurate, do not reflect the human toll and disparate effects caused by multiple events that increase underlying physical and social vulnerabilities, strain adaptive capacities, and ultimately make communities 1
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STUDY CHARGE AND SCOPE In 2022, the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine commissioned this study and tasked a seven-member ad hoc Committee on Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities, 2020–2021 with examining the unique characteristics and effects of the 2020–2021 compounding disasters in the GOM region, and examining how to manage and minimize the effects of these disasters on those who live and work in the region. Committee members were invited to serve because of their extensive academic and professional expertise in community resilience; disaster management; public health; and behavioral, social, and atmospheric sciences.
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CONCEPTUALIZING COMPOUNDING DISASTERS Drawing on existing frameworks derived from disaster scholarship, the committee began its inquiry by examining a conventional Venn diagram that contemplates disaster risk as the product of intersecting hazards, exposure, and vulnerability, as illustrated by Figure S-1. Within each lens of this framework lie numerous layered and inter related drivers of risk.
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Examples of hazards reflected in this study include severe and extreme weather events and the global COVID-19 pandemic. • Exposure describes the presence of people, infrastructure, hous ing, production capacities, and other tangible human assets in hazard-prone geographies or situations.
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To guide its exploration of this topic, and for the purposes of this study, the committee characterizes a compounding disaster as the result of overlapping, concurrent, or successive disruptive events that affect the societal, governmental, and/or environmental functions of a com munity or region and diminish the community's capacity to recover and resume essential activities. The weakening of these interrelated functions inhibits and prolongs the disaster recovery period, making communities more likely to experience amplified negative effects of future disruptive events.
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These choices affect the adaptive capacity of a community to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptive events and disasters. As described throughout the report, increasing adaptive capacity is an intentional and effective way to pull down risk by reducing variables associated with exposure and vulnerability within and across societal systems.
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Risk profiles include compo nents of physical, health, and social vulnerability, and exposure to extreme weather-climate events and hazards familiar to the region. When Disaster Risk Becomes Realized Impact The time frame for this study provides insight into outcomes that result when disaster risk becomes repeated realized impacts.
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Overlapping, Interrupted, and Prolonged Recovery In many cases, the rapidity of event occurrence, coupled with overlapping, interrupted, and prolonged recovery periods, made it difficult if not impossible for residents, municipalities, claims adjusters, and responding federal agencies to differentiate among or ascribe realized impacts to specific disruptive events. Chapters 3 and 4 provide examples, including how in both Alabama and Louisiana, two hurricanes made landfall in such rapid succession that residents, building officials, and claims adjusters had difficulty accurately assigning damage to the causal event.
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Grounded in the profound experiences relayed to the committee by the affected communities during the course of this study and reinforced with the scientific evidence base, the conclusions presented here and in Chapter 6 underscore the need to reimagine efforts that support disaster preparedness, mitigation, and recovery in an era of intensifying extreme weather-climate events and increased risk of compounding disasters. Conclusions 1–3 address the expanding realities of compounding disaster risk; conclusions 4–6 identify the need for improving and expanding our understanding of the new scale and temporal scope of compounding disasters; conclusions 7–9 refer to the need to bolster public health, mental health, and community-based organizations and their adaptive capacity; and conclusions 10–14 identify new approaches to contending with compounding disasters.
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Conclusion 2: Increased compounding disaster risk requires communities to plan and prepare for the co-occurrence of multiple and varied disruptive events that interact with societal exposure and vulnerabilities to amplify overall disaster impact. Two phenomena of global scope and scale -- the sudden emergence and ongoing evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change -- fundamentally influenced concurrent disaster events more circumscribed in time and place.
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The literature on social capital discussed in Chapter 2 and the comments made by information-gathering session panelists both emphasize the critical role of social capital and cohesion in building resilience and catalyzing recovery from disaster events. Investments into build ing physical capacity to withstand hazards are essential, but the strengthening of adaptive capacity, including formal and informal relationships among community stakeholders is equally foundational to disaster resilience.
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Bolstering Adaptive Capacity Conclusion 7: Health care and public health systems will require increased adaptive capacity and staffing to respond to diverse challenges posed by compounding disasters.
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Conclusion 8: Pervasive mental health impacts of compounding disasters undermine the adaptive capacity of communities to withstand and effec tively recover from disruptive events. Information-gathering session panelists spoke extensively about the negative mental health impacts of compounding disasters on survi vors, especially for specific subpopulations, such as first responders and volunteers.
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COVID-19 restrictions forced rapid innovations, creating more effi cient ways to share critical data digitally and greater agility in deliver ing services virtually -- adaptive shifts that were invaluable to service continuity when storms disrupted physical operations. However, as discussed in Chapter 4, processing federal disaster recovery assistance requests and insurance claims virtually caused errors and inefficien cies for survivors.
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Local-level participatory planning processes that routinely engage and collaborate with socially vulnerable communities that are marginalized by lack of representation in policy, governance, and recovery planning; income; education; age; ethnicity/race; gender; sexual identity; and/or medical risk and that are disproportionately affected by compounding disasters will more effectively guide and prioritize efforts to reduce potential impacts and concurrently build adaptive capacity. Conclusion 13: Stronger mechanisms are essential to translate lessons recog nized from prior experience into lessons learned and implemented.
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Information-gathering session participants highlighted the need to incorporate equity into the disaster recovery process to better assist marginalized, socially vulnera ble community members. The climate-intensified stress on people, communities, and the systems and functions that support them; disruptive events; and disaster risk will likely continue to increase, along with the likelihood that more communities will experience the debilitating effects of compounding disasters.
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