Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities 2020-2021 Impacts, Findings, and Lessons Learned (2024) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 17-42
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 17... ...
Between 2020 and 2021, seven major hurricanes and a severe winter storm (later named Uri) severely affected communities across the GOM region, with each of these events ultimately being designated a billion-dollar disaster.2 These storms, some arriving in the same region within weeks of one another, occurred while communities were coping with the illness, death, uncertainty, and disruption brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
|
From page 18... ...
sponsored this consensus study to explore factors that enable -- or could enable -- Gulf Coast communities to prepare for, respond to, mitigate, and recover from disasters more effectively. With the events and lived experiences of the 2-year period 2020–2021 to guide the study, the GRP appointed an ad hoc committee of experts in community resilience; disaster management; public health; and behavioral, social, and atmospheric sciences (Committee on Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities, 2020–2021)
|
From page 19... ...
. In an era of rapidly increasing climate-amplified hazards and extreme weather-climate events, it is crucial for policymakers, decision-makers, and communities to understand how impacts associated with disruptive events and chronic stressors interact, exacerbate health disparities and socioeconomic stressors, and inhibit effective or complete disaster recovery.
|
From page 20... ...
It should be noted that, although this study focuses on a particular geographic region, it is the committee's hope and intention that its findings and conclusions will inform national and international dialogues on disaster risk reduction, with an emphasis on the imperative to improve daily living conditions in at-risk communities, particularly those with high exposure and vulnerability and low adaptive capacity. STUDY APPROACH The topic of compounding disaster impacts and recovery is complex, and many applied research questions regarding strategies, solutions, and governance remain outstanding (NASEM, 2022a)
|
From page 21... ...
Regional, In-Person Information-Gathering Sessions The committee's choice of regional locations in which to hold information-gathering sessions was based on the states where multiple disruptive events significantly affected community functioning during the 2020–2021 time frame. While recognizing that disruptive events and disasters occurred in many communities throughout the GOM region, the committee ultimately selected for its analysis of compounding disaster experiences three representative GOM areas to conduct information gather ing.6 Together, these selections reflect the committee's priorities in seeking a range of compounding disaster experiences across GOM states with varying demographics, capacities, and experiences contending with disasters.
|
From page 22... ...
In-person sessions included representatives from state and local government; federal agencies; and faith-based, community-based, and nongovernmental organizations involved in various aspects of disaster risk management. These experts were invited to share their personal and professional experiences and perspectives on the impacts of and interconnections among disasters and on lessons learned, forgotten, and applied, as well as policy and practice considerations related to compounding disasters in GOM states between January 2020 and December 2021.
|
From page 23... ...
. The first paper, "Compound ing Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities 2020–2021: Impacts, Findings, and Lessons Learned in Jefferson Davis and Marion Counties, Mississippi," produced by Dr.
|
From page 24... ...
Jefferson Davis and Marion Counties, Mississippi, were also included in the analysis. CONCEPTUALIZING COMPOUNDING DISASTERS Drawing on existing frameworks derived from disaster scholarship, the committee began its inquiry by examining the conventional Venn diagram that contemplates disaster risk as the product of intersecting hazards, exposure, and vulnerability, as illustrated by Figure 1-1.
|
From page 25... ...
• Disaster risk is expressed as a product of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability variables and understood as the potential for loss of life, injury, physical damage or destruction resulting from the occurrence of one or more disruptive events in a given period. Accordingly, realized disaster impacts are products of not only the severity or intensity of the hazard itself but also the combination of vulnerability and exposure -- or sensitivity -- of the community and its under pinning systems and functions to suffer loss and damage.
|
From page 26... ...
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. Some communities are at disproportionate risk of suffering the effects of compounding disasters as a result of the interplay of persistent physical and social vulnerability factors and increased exposure to climatic and non-climatic hazards.
|
From page 27... ...
Shared Compounding Disaster Experiences in the Gulf of Mexico Region At the committee's information-gathering sessions, participants from the GOM region expressed views aligned with findings from numerous
|
From page 28... ...
render individuals and communities more vulnerable to acute disaster impacts and compounded losses, and disadvantaged for long-term recovery. The committee's engagement across the GOM region pointed to one overarching dynamic that transformed the lived experience of compounding disasters and living conditions within the communities -- enhanced adaptive capacity.
|
From page 29... ...
. The compounding disasters of 2020–2021 in the GOM region created conditions that modified, via a compounding process, the impacts of the disasters that followed.
|
From page 30... ...
During 2020–2021, two phenomena -- the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change -- were shaping disaster risk worldwide, with particularly severe consequences in the GOM region. The emergence and spread of COVID-19 transformed the public health risk of all other extreme weather-climate events by amplifying health-compromising exposures and underlying vulnerabilities in the region.
|
From page 31... ...
The combination of climate-intensified hazards, a low-lying coast with major population centers, poor health outcomes, and degraded infrastructure result in high exposure and vulnerability within the GOM region, and are just several factors that make residents particularly susceptible or sensitive to disasters and even more so to compounding disasters (Burton, 2010; O'Keefe et al., 1976; Steinberg, 2000)
|
From page 32... ...
. The experiences of many GOM residents in 2020–2021 echoed many of the complexities described in the literature, confirming the evolution of the increasingly entangled nature of compounding disasters and the inade quacy of current disaster response and recovery approaches within the disaster management enterprise.
|
From page 33... ...
, the recovery period associated with the aftermath is far more challenging to encapsulate when interrupted by another disruptive event. It is through this lens that the committee sought to understand the factors that position communities, some more than others, to experience the compounding effects of multiple disruptive events and overlapping and interrupting disaster recoveries.
|
From page 34... ...
state and territory is susceptible to costly weather-climate disasters, but three states in the GOM region -- Florida, Louisiana, and Texas -- currently rank highest in terms of disaster-related costs. Each state incurred more than $200 billion in damages between 1980 and 2023.
|
From page 35... ...
weather-climate disasters occurred in the United States (NCEI, n.d.-c) ; 17 of these took place in the GOM region (NCEI, n.d.-b)
|
From page 36... ...
. Geographically limited and lower-magnitude events such as lowscale tornadoes, flooding, and even tropical systems experienced in the GOM region do not meet the threshold of a billion dollars, nor do they receive the attention as major disasters tagged with such superlatives as "deadliest," "largest," and "earliest." Yet, they are disruptive events that can stress communities and their undergirding systems and further prolong recovery periods from previous disruptive events and disasters.
|
From page 37... ...
, the authoring committee contends that, as the fre quency and severity of environmental hazards increase with climate change, the nation will likely begin to see "clusters of apparently unrelated climate events occurring closely in time" and "events in which a climate event precipitates a series of other physical or bio logical consequences" (p.
|
From page 38... ...
building public and accessible housing suited to low-income, elderly, and disabled community members in order to create equitable disaster recovery. In Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Cli mate Change (NASEM, 2016)
|
From page 39... ...
. The committee acknowledges that climate change makes the occurrence of compounding disasters increasingly continued
|
From page 40... ...
, the authoring committee writes that socially vulnerable populations are especially vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather-climate events: It is important to recognize that information and communication are asymmetrical, and vulnerable groups -- including pregnant people, children, older adults, immigrant groups, Indigenous peoples, low- income communities, communities of color, people with disabilities, vulnerable occupational groups (e.g., workers who are exposed to extreme weather) , and people with preexisting or chronic medical conditions, among others -- often suffer from a comparative lack of authoritative information (American Public Health Association [APHA]
|
From page 41... ...
Gulf Coast Region and Beyond (NASEM, 2024) , the authoring committee chronicles the history and contends with the present reality of communities affected by acute and chronic impacts of climate change, particularly sea level rise and flooding.
|
From page 42... ...
Chapter 3 provides an account of the 2020–2021 compounding disasters and summarizes some of what the committee heard in the public information-gathering sessions in Harris and Galveston Counties, Texas; Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes, Louisiana; and Mobile and Baldwin Counties, Alabama, as it relates to participants' experiences of compounding disasters. Chapter 4 uses a systems approach to analyze how the effects of compounding disasters interacted with the interconnected and interdependent systems critical to societal functioning, as well as connective factors that may have amplified those impacts.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.