Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities 2020-2021 Impacts, Findings, and Lessons Learned (2024) / Chapter Skim
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4 Interdependent Systems in the Context of Compounding Disasters
4 Interdependent Systems in the Context of Compounding Disasters
Pages 149-168
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From page 149... ...
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.
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, supply chains, and services. This chapter examines interdependencies among systems, service providers, and services vital to community functions, including disaster response and recovery.
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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.
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. 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.
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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.
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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. In addition to the paid workforce, unpaid volunteers represent a substantial portion of the workforce in both the civil society and public-service sectors.
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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 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.
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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 in Figure 4-1)
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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The C oronavirus 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 panel ists noted)
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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. IMPACT OF REGIONALITY ON DISASTER RECOVERY The GOM region has a high level of interconnectedness.
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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. 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.
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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
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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.
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