Simone Goes to the Market: A Children's Book of Colors Connecting Face and Food

It’s difficult to imagine a more colorful book, celebrating locally-grown and –marketed foods, than David Westerlund’s Simone Goes to the Market: A Children’s Book of Colors Connecting Face and Food. This book is aimed at families and the foods they eat. Who doesn’t want to know where their food is coming from – the terroir, the kind of microclimate it’s produced in, as well as who’s selling it? Gretchen sells her pole beans (purple), Maria her Serrano peppers (green), Dana and Matt sell their freshly-roasted coffee (black), Katie her carrots (orange), a blue poem from Matthew, brown potatoes from Roslyn, yellow patty pan squash from Jed, red tomatoes (soft and ripe) from Diana, and golden honey from Bill (and his bees). This is a book perfect for children of any age who want to connect to and with the food systems that sustain community. Order from faceandfood@gmail.com.

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Food and farm security, farmland preservation, and resilience

Reflections on agriculture and food security, farm living and livelihoods, and urban-rural encroachment -- Whatcom County agriculture’s biggest challenge
Can be found at the IGCR website (http://igcr.blogspot.com/) shortly.

The following are some excerpts from those reflections, as they relate to Whatcom County farming, resilience and vulnerability, and decision-making in times of uncertainty.


Over the past 350 years, the North American landscape has been rapidly “tamed” from wildlands to agricultural fields, with settlers claiming, often brutally, traditional homelands of American Indians. Once appropriated, settlers cleared land by cutting forests and burning woods to cultivate plants and raise livestock for human consumption (and some export). In the last 150 years, though, another force has been claiming the land base – urban-rural development. Such development seeks the same kind of land used for much of agriculture – level, well-drained soils; it is a kind of development that is the subject of study in academic planning departments as well as in state agencies. The reader is referred to the excellent work of faculty members in the Planning and Environmental Policy degree program at Huxley College of the Environment for examples of land use planning cases and planning tools and vehicles for preserving farm land and promoting wise land use. This paper, however, highlights the implications of such development pressures as well as trends in the industrialization of agriculture.

One consequence of such industrialization is increases in certain efficiencies, for example, related to land productivity – the production of more food on less land. Implications for the structure of agriculture also are considered, in light of the geography of place, and, lastly, the implications for food security, a term which we use to mean, quite simply, knowing with some certainty how much food one is likely to have and from where it is coming from. We also include a few case studies of farm diversification in Whatcom County. This paper is put forth for purposes of discussion only, and continued development and improvement.

……..

U.S. farm policy has typically emphasized intensification of cultivation and production for export, ultimately increasing agriculture’s share of U.S. exports and favorably impacting our national balance of payments. Global trade in cheaper food products sourced elsewhere to “free” American soil for other uses besides agriculture for domestic use, has made possible the expansion of the land base for residential development. The phenomenon of residential development encroaching on or consuming farmland has been known as urban encroachment, but perhaps is better described as urban-rural encroachment, as development occurs further and further outside a metropolitan core. (see Encroachment and historically agricultural areas
http://japr.fass.org/cgi/reprint/14/2/378).

………
It is understandable that consumers want low-priced food, but such “cheap” food may come at a high price – for example, compromised environmental health. Further, across all stakeholder groups, there is increasing concern about farmers’ resilience to extreme events. We are grouping such concerns, under the umbrella of “food security” – which includes considerations of vulnerabilities to food shortages, i.e., to extreme events, as well as environmental and personal health concerns, and economic robustness of economies. For more on this, please see the excellent 2008 work titled, “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution for Whatcom County,WA.” written by Abby Vincent, Chris Phillips, Matt Hoss, and Casey Diamond (with revisions by Rebekah Green and Jon Lowes-Ditch; Dr. Green is currently working on a 3-5 page policy brief based on the longer work, which will appear on the Institute for Global and Community Resilience (IGCR) website (http://www.wwu.edu/resilience/); she can be contacted at Rebekah.Green@wwu.edu).

A critical question here is “Can industrial farms feed us in an emergency where access to imports is denied?” and is discussed some in the Vincent et al “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution” report. This key question will be further explored in subsequent IGCR work.
…….
…..

In our Backyards: Whatcom County?
………..
Clearly, Whatcom County acreage is being used for the production of a select number of products (other specialty crops include, for example, potatoes and nursery stock) geared primarily for exports. This is due to some combination of comparative advantage, economies of scale, history and markets, and production and reproduction of knowledge systems. However, what would happen in the county if, for any reason, we were cut off from our customary food supply? Would we be surprised to find ourselves with a food shortage, in such a highly productive agricultural area

Hunger amidst plenty is ironic in such an agricultural county. Whatcom County, alone, is the largest producer of powdered milk in the United States, producing enough dairy to meet as much as 75% of the demand for dairy products in Washington state (http://www.whatcomcounts.org/whatcom/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1811). Yet, production is threatened due to looming poor market prices; in such an economic climate only the most resilient farms, able to adjust production practices and product mix may be able to survive (http://www.bellinghamherald.com/602/story/714074.html).

Through Whatcom County’s farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) or subscription buying, and “Eat Local” campaigns, Whatcom County is proud of its agricultural identity

…..What is clear, however, is that land “lost to development” is very difficult to later develop for food production. It would be exceptionally difficult in Whatcom County, for example, to recapitalize a dairy farm after the real loss of “dairy infrastructure,” upon development.

…….
An important hypothesis to consider in the discussion of land productivity and development pressures in light of food security questions, is whether or not it is in the economic interest of a particular region to prioritize agriculture by preserving its farm land and diversifying crop/livestock production. But is the diversification of crops essential to a community’s food security? If so, then policymakers need to consider boosting support for small- and medium-sized farms. According to the 2002 National Agricultural Statistics Service and other sources mentioned in this paper, of the 1,485 farms in Whatcom County, 1,061 had less than $50,000 in value of sales; the value of sales category that represented the most number of farms was ‘less than $1,000,’ with 396 farms in this category. These figures reveal that the majority of Whatcom farms are small and medium sized operations. In 2002, 923 farms -- 62% of all county farms –- were less than 50 acres in size (http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2002/Volume_1,_Chapter_2_County_Level/Washington/st53_2_001_001.pdf http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/assessor/taxguides/openspace/openspace.jsp).

An interesting consideration here also is that such small- and medium-sized farms seem to figure prominently in conservation programs. For example, such farms accounted for 82% of the land enrolled by farmers in the Conservation Reserve and Wetlands Reserve Programs (see http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB12/EIB12_reportsummary.pdf). These farms also accounted for considerable crop diversification. It’s a trend spreading throughout Whatcom County. In the past decade, for example, roughly 100 Whatcom mid-sized raspberry growers have supplemented their revenue streams by adding blueberries and some strawberries (http://www.thebellinghambusinessjournal.com/september2007/cultivation.php) in order to mitigate unpredictable weather and the low prices offered by central distributors.

…..
What can be concluded from this discussion? For one, scale matters. And policymakers need to consider an all-inclusive structure of agriculture that values place and locale, production that is environmentally sound and economically robust – i.e., able to withstand uncertainties in weather, production costs, and markets.

What can be done? Consumers need to be interested in food and farm systems that use sustainable connections between growers and producers. As discussed in the Vincent et al “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution” work mentioned earlier, Whatcom County is no different than the other counties in the U.S. – all are vulnerable to consumer food shortfalls due to extreme events (subduction-zone earthquake to seasonal flooding, uncertain energy prices to seed shortfalls) or endemic poverty. It is ironic that Whatcom County is rich with agricultural land, but produces little food for people to eat. The dependence on one or two crops “make it vulnerable to a disease outbreak or even climate variations” (Vincent et al, “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution”). How best, then, to decrease such vulnerability? Many approaches are possible, but one thing is certain – none are likely unless farmland can be protected.

As Whatcom County’s population grows, development pressures in farmland areas will continue to increase, especially since farmland is prime for building given its generally flat and well drained soil characteristics. Nevertheless, there are a number of tools available to protect farmland. For example, the county’s ‘preferential agricultural open space taxation’ program designates various zoning to protect agricultural lands. Further efforts to preserve farmland in Whatcom County reside with the State of Washington and its Open Space Taxation Act, enacted decades ago, which allows for differential property valuation of open space lands for the production of food, fiber, and forest crops.

Beyond state legislation to protect agricultural land from development, there are over a dozen nonprofit organizations working on behalf of Whatcom County agriculture -- Whatcom Farm Friends, Sustainable Connections, the Whatcom County Farm Bureau, Small Potatoes Gleaning Project are notable examples. The number of small farms in the county has actually increased in the past decade, indicating a growing interest from young and new farmers to establish farming businesses. Clearly, prioritizing food security, knowing with some certainty how much food one is likely to have and from where it is coming from is one way forward – and warrants further consideration by policymakers and politicians and the constituencies they represent.

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America's "death map" - heat is the big problem

I have been remiss about blogging these days, but this just out on Reuters. It comes from Susan Cutter's work on mapping disaster vulnerability. The work is a first take on creating an American death map. As such, it focuses on threats to human life, showing that heat and severe winter weather are major concerns, even as these culprits often go unnoticed on the national and global scale. A map of American "disaster-caused economic damage" showing what disasters caused the most dollar losses would likely prove to be much different. Together, the two would show what many already know - in the US, changes in codes and emergency response have lowered the loss of life from earthquakes, fires, and to a lesser extent, hurricanes. This has made it possible to put more of our stuff, houses and people, in harms way. Thus, we've lowered the death tolls, but raised the costs of earthquakes, hurricanes, fire and floods. What is left is the silent kills of extreme heat and cold where the lack of economic loss has meant little resources aimed at reducing loss of life.

I'm sure more nuanced work will likely follow this initial death map.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Heat is more likely to kill an American than an earthquake, and thunderstorms kill more than hurricanes do, according to a "death map" published on Tuesday.
Researchers who compiled the county-by-county look at what natural disasters kill Americans said they hope their study will help emergency preparedness officials plan better.
Heat and drought caused 19.6 percent of total deaths from natural hazards, with summer thunderstorms causing 18.8 percent and winter weather causing 18.1 percent, the team at the University of South Carolina found.
Earthquakes, wildfires and hurricanes combined were responsible for fewer than 5 percent of all hazard deaths.
Writing in BioMed Central's International Journal of Health Geographics, they said they hoped to dispel some myths about what the biggest threats to life and limb are.
"According to our results, the answer is heat," Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina wrote in their report, which gathered data from 1970 to 2004.
"I think what most people would think, if you say what is the major cause of death and destruction, they would say hurricanes and earthquakes and flooding," Cutter said in a telephone interview. "They wouldn't say heat."
"What is noteworthy here is that over time, highly destructive, highly publicized, often-catastrophic singular events such as hurricanes and earthquakes are responsible for relatively few deaths when compared to the more frequent, less catastrophic such as heat waves and severe weather," they wrote.
The most dangerous places to live are much of the South, because of the heat risk, the hurricane coasts and the Great Plains states with their severe weather, Cutter said.
The south central United States is also a dangerous area, with floods and tornadoes.
California is relatively safe, they found.
"It illustrates the impact of better building codes in seismically prone areas because the fatalities in earthquakes have gone down from 1900 because things don't collapse on people any more," Cutter said.
"It shows that simple improvements in building codes in high-wind environments like hurricane coasts, and the effectiveness of evacuation in advance of hurricanes, has reduced the mortality from hurricanes and tropical storms," she added.
"So there are some things we are pretty good at in getting people out of harm's way and reducing fatalities."
Cutter said there is no national database on such deaths and this was a first try at getting one together.
(Editing by Will Dunham)

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Everyday Farming is Food Security

So many books, so little time. Having just returned from a visit at UC Santa Cruz and the 8th annual Wise Traditions conference in San Francisco, and lunched with raw milk activist, Michael Schmidt (see the Harper’s story, http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/0081992), I am even more enthused about our Everyday Farming project.

This includes works entitled:

Making Piece with Local.
Building Resilient Food Systems: Culture, Choice Change, Context.
A Food Sabbatical: One year. One summer. One month. One week. One day. One life.

Our Everyday Farming project is similarly titled to work in South Australia (see Gendered Bodies, Gendered Knowledge: Information Technology in Everyday Farming by Lia Bryant, which looks at gendered interactions, understandings, and communications in everyday work practices), but includes study of the production and consumption of all aspects of sustenance – food, clothing, housing, arts. Food, however, figures most prominently in the mix.

A top priority in the research is to look at entry points into everyday farming and the common barriers: land acquisition, start up costs, seed affordability and procurement, knowledge barriers in practices, markets and marketing, sustainable incomes. Some of the work relates to our newest grant at the Institute for Global and Community Resilience, which I’m hoping will take the form of a Food and Farm project: Everyday Farming for Resilient Community Living. One meal at a time.

We’re certainly fortunate to be living in a community and region that has such favorable resources (energy and water issue notwithstanding), know-how, and interest in supporting agriculture and fishing. From Sustainable Connections to the Food Bank Farm, Uprising Organics to Twin Brook Creamery, Boxx Berry Farm to Edaleen Dairy, Ciao Thyme to the Whatcom County-Bellingham City Peak Oil Task Force, growers, farm suppliers, and community members are united on the need to protect farmland. The question is how. Fortunately, Whatcom farm friends weighs in heavily here; advisory boards to various non profits counsel as well. Protecting the land base is a first step in achieving system resiliency in food production (see “urban-rural encroachment” working paper from the IGCR website, forthcoming).

Our new grant, hopefully, will help us tease out/identify factors of resilience that reduce social vulnerability. A goal of the work is to focus on what policies can reduce vulnerabilities and what economic accounting systems can validate the worth of resilient practices and systems. We also are working on case studies, and invite community members to offer stories related to how everyday farming – focused on what and where food is coming from as a part of increased community resilience – should be promoted.

Dedicated to the Tuba
Guy…
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/386267_robert04xx.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/387025_Robertweb.html

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Here's a video that will make you chuckle, but also illustrates the importance of robust, creative, and prepared communities when it comes to disaster response. We should all be looking for ways to build internal community resilience, and moving away from assumptions that rely upon external support and aid.

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The forgotten disaster

Its been a week since Hurricane Ike slammed into Galvaston and Houston, Texas. The devestation is reminiscent of the worst disaster ever in the United States, the 1900 Galvaston Hurricane that, a mere hundred years ago, leveled the island of all inhabitants.

I've been struck by the almost complete lack of coverage of this event. Is it that after Katrina, our sense of risk has been recalibrated? A hurricane with *only several dozen deaths is great? Is it the lack of residents screaming for rescue from rooftops with its titillating specter of a modern-day, horrific replay of Swiss Family Robinson? Is it that in this looming slow-motion economic crisis? With the threat of loosing retirement savings and homes, do losses from a Hurricane seem more trivial? Do people subconsciously quip that at least the Texans impacted will get aid from FEMA? Or is it that at the end of a presidential cycle that has so blatantly mismanaged Katrina, people don't want to think about disasters until someone new is in the White House? Or is the destruction of Galvaston once a century simply an acceptable level of risk? I really don't know.

What I do know is that we are loosing an opportunity to continue the national conversation about how our Gulf Coast will relate to it natural environment.

Here is a slide show of images from Texas, sent to me by Diane Knutson, head of the Environmental Studies office here at Western Washington University. Unfortunately, I don't know the original source, but thanks to whomever took the photos and compiled the images.

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Farming and floods

The local Seattle public radio station KUOW has been doing a series on farming and the eat local movement Sweet Earth: Lessons from the Land. The series covers a range of challenges to farming, including the relationship with government, urban encroachment, and interactions with environmentalists.

One particularly interesting segment, Winter Flood's Silver Lining, looks at Thurston County farmers recovering from the devastating 2007 Winter floods. The farmer interviewed speaks eloquently about the advantages but occasional shock of farming in fertile floodplains.

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Earthquake scenario and planning

This week I participated in EERI's very engaging Earthquake Scenario Planning Workshop. It was a fascinating mix of seismologist, engineers, planners, and a smattering of social scientists and public officials. While we were all bent on using developing earthquake scenarios, there was considerable fuzziness over what these scenarios could and should do.

Many scenarios have been developed as emergency response planning tools for massive planning exercises. The Great Southern California ShakeOut - a hybrid response exercise and public awareness campaign - is an upcoming example. For these purposes, the scenario development process seems rather straight forward, though often very labor intensive. Develop your hazard model, add in your infrastructure inventory and census data, develop fragility curves, etc. The results are typically presented as maps of shaking intensity, building damage, and calculations of death, injuries, and people displaced from their homes.

But what if the scenario is not for response planning, but for mitigation and planning? Are these outputs useful for people like city council members, majors,urban planners, and community service providers? The general assumption at the workshop was yes, but I have strong doubts. I'm not convinced that these decision makers would necessarily know what to do given maps of shaking, damage, deaths, injuries and displacement. These aren't exactly the indicators they work with on a daily basis. Nor are they, I suspect, the indicators that they consider when campaigning for re-election.

What is probably much more salient for this crowd is indicators such as poverty rate, unemployment, housing vacancy rates, and school overcrowding. If this is the case, perhaps we should challenge ourselves to further push our scenarios and models forward into the often fuzzy areas of social consequence. While it may be much more difficult, such enhanced scenarios may catch the imagination and raise concerns among planners, policy makers and service providers. These are the very groups needed to successfully develop and implement the mitigation and community resilience policies necessary to make a massive emergency response unnecessary.

It behooves us to think about the users of our scenarios. We should ask them early on what indicators they need...and what will jolt them into taking earthquake risk seriously.

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Disaster as Process

Residents of New Orleans are returning after the recent evacuations in front of Hurricane Gustav. The hurricane passed to the south and west of the city, only causing storm surge waves that occasionally splashed over the city's weakest Industrial Canal levees.

Many people view disasters as events and will see Gustav as the disaster near-miss, the disaster that didn't happen. Other disaster researchers have come to understand disasters as a process:

Quarantelli: "we should conceive of disasters for sociological purposes only"

Beck: "threats are produced industrially, externalized economically, individualized juridically, legitimized scientifically, and minimized politically."

Disaster as process means we should move away from an intense focus on disaster events. Instead we should look at the ongoing social process, power disparities, resource disparities, and cultural understandings of the environment and environmental risk that may exacerbate the consequences of a natural hazard event. With this view, disasters are no more than clarifying moments when these social processes are often most apparent.

For New Orleans, this is certainly apparent in both Katrina and Gustav. Katrina, more than any other recent event, exposed a significant disregard for the needs and resources of the urban poor (e.g. in the planning of evacuation protocol and the development of recovery grants based upon pre-storm housing values). Both Katrina and Gustav continue to highlight a hurricane-exposed city that relies almost exclusively on levees and pumps for disaster risk reduction. Gustav’s surge again highlighted that the Lower and Upper Ninth Ward – low and moderate income African American neighborhoods – continue to be the most vulnerable. Both events continue to point to major issues of coastal erosion and the ever increasing risks of un-fettered storm surge straight in from the Gulf.

The idea of disaster as an event may help response and emergency preparedness, but it certainly does us all a disservice when we can then ignore the everyday and ongoing social and ecological issues that are the real disaster.

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Post-Disaster Housing Woes

Its been three years since Hurricane Katrina and the FEMA has finally issued a much-awaited draft of a new disaster housing strategy, commissioned by the Bush administration. This proposed strategy is much overdue, and so I read it eagerly when it came out.

What an utter disappointment.

I was hoping for some innovative ideas to address the significant problems we've all seen in relation to post-disaster housing. Research on housing-related policies and outcomes after numerous U.S. natural disasters documents consistent disparities based on race, class, and gender. Peacock and Girard (1997) found that racial and ethnic minorities tended to receive insufficient insurance settlements because they are less often insured by major national carriers. Blanchard-Boehm (1997) reported that financial constraints reduce the likelihood that African-Americans made structural improvements so their houses could withstand natural disasters, resulting in more serious damage to the homes of African-Americans. Enarson (2008) pinpoints elderly women as more vulnerable during disasters. Similarly, temporary housing put in place after a disaster is often not designed with the needs of women and children in mind.

More recently, we've all heard a long string of exposes on the significant social and health costs associated with FEMA travel trailers issued to Hurricane Katrina and Rita survivors. Formaldehyde levels in the trailers caused respiratory problems and made many inhabitants sick. Trailer camps were often far away from commercial and residential centers making it nearly impossible for inhabitants to find employment or other housing. Cramped conditions, isolation, and post-disaster depression created a toxic mix. Domestic violence, mental illness and suicide skyrocketed. As a nation, our approach to post-disaster housing seems to be on-par or worse than the primitive tents and survivor camps in mega-disasters overseas.

So, with all of these problems, what did the 2008 Disaster Housing Plan recommend? Almost nothing new. The plan is basically a description of a mixed-plan approach based on the rental voucher and trailer solutions used in the past. While they have now put a 6-month limit on travel trailer occupancy, they have pushed the ethical and legal issues to the states. Now it is the states who have to determine acceptable levels of formaldehyde and bear legal responsibility if anything goes wrong. More significantly, the plan leaves many of the big challenges to a currently unformed housing task force. They have left the important equity and recovery questions posed by Congress to an even later set of annexes. I'm unimpressed.

If you want to read and comment on the proposal, you can to FEMA's press release here.

On a brighter note, four students in our Practical Applications of Emergency Management class and over two dozen students in a complementary design class tackled the issue of post-disaster housing this Spring semester. A draft policy brief based upon their work is available on the IGCR website, here, including a few innovative conceptual alternatives to travel trailers and FEMA camps.

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The solar system is ending

Taking off on Scott's post below, the Atlantic Monthly's July issue takes an even more extreme view of the world is ending. This month features a very interesting and informative look at space rock risk. The author discusses evidence of quite frequent meteors slamming into the earth or burning up right above the earth's surface, causing mass extinctions, dismal growing seasons, and the like. Some aren't even that long ago. The basic thesis of the article is an argument against NASA's current mission of Moon and Mars races, and a more pragmatic disaster-prevention mission. Someone needs to chart and preventative strike any space rocks that may get a bit too close to good ol' earth. The issue is out on newsstands, but should be up on the website soon.

And just on a side note, if you've ever wondered how it feels to work in disaster risk reduction in many developing countries, read the Atlantic article. The incomprehensibility of dealing with a continent-wide evacuation and major, multi-year diminishing of sunlight is the same sort of overwhelm many of our colleagues feel with more earthly disasters. When faced with massive urban migration, rampant illegal construction, rapid mangrove destruction and the loom of cyclones or sea-level rise or a host of other natural hazards, mitigation and risk reduction seems just as daunting.

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The World Has Ended

According to this cheery article by the AP.

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No More CERT At University of Washington

Story broken by The Stranger.

According to UW Spokesman Norm Arkans, CERT, the loss of federal funding—along with CERT’s director—led to the termination of the program. “The grant expired and we don’t have the resources to pick up the funding,” Arkans says. “It’s a great thing to have if you’ve got the funding for it. It has people out who can be of assistance on the ground when you have emergencies.”

Next?

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End of Katrina Trailer Parks; New FEMA Expectations?

Here's a poignant and pointed story by the NYT on the shuttering of the last FEMA trailer parks and the still-vulnerable people who are struggling to leave. The tone that reporter Shaila Dewan takes in this story with respect to FEMA is an appropriate one -- painting them as an highly imperfect agency (who isn't?) that has had egregiously unfair expectations put on them.

FEMA, which ultimately is a disaster-response agency, not a social service department, endured years of blistering criticism for its failure to understand that many New Orleans residents needed more than just a roof over their heads after the hurricane. The agency now is quick to admit that other agencies are better equipped to handle persistent social ills. Its job in cases like that of Ms. August, FEMA officials say, is limited to getting her housed.

Now I'm the first to criticize our country's (over-)emphasis on emergency preparedness and emergency management, rather than social vulnerability reduction and sustainable development. However, I think a lot of the specific criticisms of post-Katrina/Rita FEMA were unwarranted. First, it wasn't FEMA that made cuts to itself and made it a small fish in a ginormous Department of Homeland Security pond. Second, as the above quote hints at, FEMA is an *emergency management* agency. It should be supported in this role and not overstretched to meet public demands that can be met better by other agencies and perhaps even the private sector. The point ultimately is that we as a government and society need to mainstream disaster risk reduction and sustainable development (two sides of the same coin).

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California's unsafe schools

Scott Mile's earlier post on school earthquake safety is interesting, especially in light of the many collapsed school structures in China's recent earthquake. I certainly agree with Yumei Wang that Oregon and Washington schools are in serious need of attention. However, the implicit argument that California has passed laws and has safe schools, is a fallacy. We need to look to California to see and hopefully emulate the successes, but we also need to be painfully aware that even California still has serious school safety issues to consider.

Here are just a few of the issues:

A. The Field Act, requiring higher design standards, dedicated plan reviews and continuous inspection for public school buildings does increase building resistance to shaking. However, the higher standards only bring these structures up to somewhere between "life-safe" and ready for immediate occupancy.

Many of the Field Act school buildings will still sustain moderate structural damage and perhaps, significant non-structural damage. Many will not be able to be used for emergency community centers or even as schools until repairs are made. This is certainly better than buildings in danger of collapse, but remains far below ideal.

B. Private schools are and school out buildings used for after-school care are not covered by the act.

C. Portable classrooms used throughout school districts in California and other states are a significant hazard. These account for a whopping 30% of public classrooms in California. I was not able to really visualize the threat of these portable classrooms and was emailing colleagues in California about this issue. Here was the explanation of Fred Turner, a consulting structure engineer in Sacramento:
1) If unattached classrooms move relative to their stair systems(which can be structurally separated from the classroom) doors that open outward can be prevented from opening by creation of an offset, gap or obstruction that forms between the classrooms and the stairs during the earthquake, potentially obstructing egress. Obstructed egress coupled with a post-earthquake fire threat can create casualty risks.

2) Some improperly attached classrooms are on steel or concrete supports that include steel bearing plates and height adjusters. When classroom supports dislodge from the chassis during earthquakes, the steel bearing plates and height adjusters can penetrate through the floor of the classroom unit and protrude into the floor space where occupants may be dropping, covering and holding on under furniture. Occupants may come in contact with the protruding support height adjusters and bearing plates. To date, post-earthquake images document supports protruding through floors, and no records of injuries.

D. Additionally, there are legal catch 22 situations where schools desiring to tie down portable classrooms to make them more earthquake resistant wind up having to suddenly count these portables as "permanent" structures. The school then looses capital funds needed for constructing truly permanent classrooms.

The issue of school safety is immense in China, in the Pacific Northwest and, unfortunately, even in California.

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the cavalry

I have spent the week at the FEMA Higher Education Conference at the National Emergency Management Institute. While emergency management and the four phases of disaster (mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery) are a part of what we teach and research at the IGCR, it is not everything. It was clear that the emergency management field is focus on management, tactics, and coordination. All are important aspects of disaster reduction. Yet, aspects of sustainable planning, strategizing, and integrated vulnerability reduction are not top agenda items.....especially within Department of Homeland Security's dictates of a heavy focus on terrorism.

Being somewhat on the margins of the conference focus is always a fascinating position. This time I was struck (again) with the underlying oxymoron present in the FEMA mandate. On the one hand, the average resident understands FEMA's role as the knight on a white stallion, the cavalry, the agency that is going to sweep in and save them from a catastrophic event. Of course, Katrina greatly tarnished this image, but the expectation remains. On the other hand, one of FEMA's missions is to promote disaster preparedness. This promoting of preparedness requires a host of risk education and risk communication activities, many of which require FEMA to say that there is risk, that people are unsafe, and that people need to DO SOMETHING to prepared themselves. The implicit and unintended message underneath it all is, "We're the cavalry, but we can't really do our job, so you need to prepare yourself."

Its a challenging position for emergency managers to work within.

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Homeless in New Orleans

Disasters are most disastrous for those on the "margins," whether it be a business struggling with debt or an individual struggling with chronic illness and poverty. That seems obvious. But the thing that folks don't often think about is how the "margins" expand with each disaster if we don't work to reduce their everyday vulnerability.

Here we see that the homeless population has nearly doubled in New Orleans post-Katrina while the efforts to deal with homelessness have not.

By one very rough estimate, the number of homeless people in New Orleans has doubled since Katrina struck in 2005. ...

New Orleans had 2,800 beds for the homeless before the storm; now it has 2,000...

So what happens after the next hurricane or heat wave in New Orleans?

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NYT's Andrew Revkin Keeps Asking Good Questions

In this blog post:

While California, thanks to wakeup calls in 1906 and 1933, has pushed to bolster schools and other vital structures, there, too, experts say, there are gaps, particularly in poorer school districts. In Oregon, the gaps are truly scary, according to Yumei Wang, the head of the state’s geohazards team. When the anticipated earthquake there comes, it could well be an 9.0-magnitude event.

If hundreds of the 1,300 Oregon schools estimated to be inadequately reinforced fall, will that be seen as a cruel twist of fate or somebody’s fault?

And if it’s somebody’s fault, who is the somebody? The person in office? The voters who don’t clamor for safe schools before a disaster strikes? State agencies that perhaps didn’t catch a contractor’s shortcut? Engineers or scientists who haven’t tried hard enough to explain what this kind of threat means? The media for focusing on politicians’ gaffes and celebrities’ stunts?

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FlypMedia on Future Earthquake Disasters in the US

Definitely check this out. Not only is yours truly quoted a couple times, flypmedia.com is a rich online magazine experience with some great writers.

(Full disclosure: The author of the piece is my USGS mentor's son.)

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School Vulnerability in OR & WA

Been a bit too busy to catch lots of the good stuff in the NYT. I was reading along today and read the name of a friend, Yumei Wang, who wrote the NYT about seismic safety of school in the US and in particular Oregon. She answered this question for us:

I hope that the problem with seismically unsafe schools in the U.S. does not get overlooked. Although California has had school safety laws since 1933, other states have not. As you know, I work in Oregon. Last year, we conducted “screenings” on 3,300 public schools and emergency buildings. Our results, which are available online, indicate that 1,300 have high to very high probability of collapse. We will apply another screening “filter” to reduce that number; however, in the end, Oregon will need to mitigate about 1,000 school buildings.

And on the topic of Washington and their schools? She wrote, "They are still sleeping (except the city of Seattle has done stuff)."

Considering that Washington State's constitution states that "[i]t is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex" it would seem like seismic safety of all public schools, regardless of location, is also of "paramount duty."

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China's earthquake- damage and rescue

I've been watching the news coming out of China for a week now and it feels so much like déjà vu. from the 1999 Marmara Earthquakes in Turkey. In Turkey, as in China, development had been achieved at a break neck speed. Rural people had poured into the major industrial cities of the Marmara regions -Istanbul, Kocaeli, Izmit, Duzce, Adapazarı and others.

With such a rapid increase of population, density was achieved through reinforced concrete construction. Replacing 1 and 2 story wood and brick buildings were towering concrete apartment buildings. It house the people, but so much of it was built before a robust and transparent building inspection process could be fully enforced. This looks to be the case in China as well.

In Turkey, much of the construction from 1960-1999 was also built illegally by self-builders who neither understood what made reinforced concrete earthquake resistant, nor understood the important of construction quality. That may not be the case in China. I'm sure it will be studied in great detail over the next few years.

In the mean time, a CNN video of the minutes after the earthquake was posted to the ENDRR-L list serve hosted by Prevention Web. The video is very dramatic, but also very telling. Survivors engage in a strong self-organizing response to rescue trapped victims, treat the wounded and find needed supplies. Watching the video, I look at it and empathize with the survivors. But I also find myself making a mental note of what supplies would be helpful in that sort of aftermath. Think I'll go check what I've got in my emergency supply kit...

Also telling are the injuries people sustained from non-structural damage....damage resulting from the shifting or collapse of personal contents or things like partition walls and light fixtures. Its a reminder of the importance to secure your furniture if you live in earthquake country.

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Birch Bay Drill

As an intern for IGCR I had the opportunity to participate in an emergency drill in Birch Bay, Washington. The drill was created around the idea that a terrorist attack occurred at Camp Horizon. The scenario is as follows:

*Excercise*
A terrorist attack has occurred at Camp Horizon in Birch Bay, Washington. A tank of isocyanate exploded injuring and kill many resulting in an order to shelter in place for all

As a player (pink arm band) and field observer (yellow arm band), I was able to explore the command center located at the local firehouse, the explosion site, and the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH).

First stop: the command center. Located at the firehouse, this was a place for tracking events (see photo at left) and exchanging information; authorities inside, media OUTSIDE. Even though this was a drill, the annoyance with the faux media seemed genuine. It was interesting to see that many found it difficult to find the line between reality and fantasy. At one point I was told I could not go into the field until it was declared "safe." Isn't the drill over when it is safe? The information flow was so constant that it was difficult to catch anyone's attention as they roamed from room to room. Somehow, I managed to get some vague directions to the site.

Upon reaching Camp Horizon, myself and a fellow Western student were greeted by a man with a large assault rifle and a smile; even the acting students with corpse-like make-up broke character. We were waved in safely thanks to our green arm bands. There were ambulances from near and far lined along the road to the entrance. I wondered if importing ambulances left towns vulnerable to their own disaster.

The actual site of the supposed explosion was teeming with marines and people in hazmat suits. In order to make the task of finding the injured and deceased, dummies with realistic injuries were thrown in trees on strewn across the grass. Actors were also integrated in the mix. Both were dragged on yellow boards to a tent where they were decontaminated (hosed off). A controller/evaluator commented that marines do not have medical training and do not practice the caution with the injured that they should. He also noted that the drill had an unexplained mistake. Less protected participants had entered the site before it had been declared clear. In reality, this could have posed a serious health risk.

The final stop was the fairgrounds where the MASH hospital was located. A less lively scene, a barn doubled as a hospital with rows of injured dummies taggged by injury. Injured people sat in chairs. Another decontamination tent was set up nearby. An injured man decided he would not like to be to decontaminated and was quickly taken down by three marines.

The drill ended with the landing of two black hawk helicopters in an open field of the fairgrounds. They arrived 3-4 hours later than expected which does not bode well for a real disaster. Six of the injured were helicoptered off the site.

The drill ended abruptly with the deconstruction of the decontamination tents and departure of fire trucks and ambulances. The great thing about a drill is you can pack up and leave, feeling a sense of adventure even. Ironically, the same set of events can occur in reality but setting off a the exact opposite range of emotions. Perhaps this says something for the ineffectiveness of raising awareness through morbid or disheartening images. If one doesn't experience the real thing, it is easy for the mind to discount it as fantasy.

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School Vulnerability... Not In Our Backyard!?

The New York Times has a good side-bar article about the vulnerability of schools around the world. They interview disaster luminaries Brian Tucker and Ben Wisner -- probably the most knowledgeable folks out there. (Part of the email interview of Dr. Wisner is in this NYT blog post.)

(Dr. Tucker won the MacArthur Award because of work he did related to earthquake risk reduction for schools, particularly in Katmandu in association with his organization GeoHazards International. Dr. Wisner has written volumes on disaster risk reduction, most notably on this topic is this report [pdf].)

The NYT article observes that...

[e]xperts on earthquake dangers have warned for years that tens of millions of students in thousands of schools, from Asia to the Americas, face similar risks, yet programs to reinforce existing schools or require that new ones be built to extra-sturdy standards are inconsistent, slow and inadequately financed.

Well, of course. That sounds obvious -- schools are vulnerable in places around the world that we associate with being most vulnerable. When the experts says schools are vulnerable in "the Americas," they mean Central and South America.

Right?

Yes.

Well, and North America...

... the risks are not limited to poor or emerging countries. In Vancouver, British Columbia, parents’ groups have been agitating to accelerate a decades-long program aimed at bringing schools up to modern earthquake standards.

Because of the Sichuan earthquake, the Seattle PI is reporting on building vulnerability in Seattle, citing a report for the City of Seattle [big pdf] on unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings that was published in December 2007. The report notes that some of the URMs in Seattle are schools -- not surprising given the age of construction:

Among the more notable buildings on the list are West Seattle High School, John Marshall School in the Roosevelt area, First United Methodist Church downtown, and the Merchants Cafe and the Union Gospel Mission in Pioneer Square.

To my knowledge, the State of Washington has not publicly disclosed schools in the state that are seismically vulnerable, particularly URMs. I'm not even certain if they have them inventoried. Obviously, this is a first step in mobilizing political will to retrofit or replace these schools.

Anyone know about a school seismic-safety inventory in WA?

Other states?

UPDATE

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If True, It'll Leave You...

Speechless.

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Red Cross on the Death Toll from the Sichuan Earthquake

From the BBC.

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News on the Sichuan Earthquake

It's a bit of paradox looking for news in the immediate aftermath of any large hazard event, since the bigger the event the more difficult it will be to get reliable information quickly (or at all), but alas that's the world we live in. So far, the New York Times seems to have the most insightful coverage -- particularly the audio interview (left hand side) include with this story.

The reporter interviewed makes a very good point about the indicators of the scale of the disaster -- the heads of state went immediately to the region:

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who arrived in the earthquake region on Monday night, described the situation as a “severe disaster” and called for “calm, confidence, courage and efficient organization.”

President Hu Jintao ordered an “all out” effort to aid people in the earthquake region and soldiers were dispatched for disaster relief efforts.

The government also has released significant fatality estimates (certainly not actual counts), in contrast to the 1976 event where the Chinese government tried to cover up the more than 200,000 deaths to the world media. This is surprisingly common. I remember after the 1999 Izmet earthquake that the Turkish government was denying any major death toll while at the same time it came to light that they had ordered thousands of body bags.

It's a good lesson to remember: As consumers, maintain low expectations for news in the near aftermath, but producers should not try downplay what they already know.

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When Can't You Recover?

Apparently, according to this story, when your town is a Superfund site, like Picher, OK where the EPA was in the process of buying out homeowners as part of their CERCLA cleanup effort:

Because of Picher's Superfund status, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is unlikely to grant assistance to homeowners to rebuild in the town, said Oklahoma Emergency Management Director Albert Ashwood. But he echoed Henry's assurances about the federal buyout program, which is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.

So what happens if your neighborhood becomes a Superfund site as the result of a hazard event?

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Information Disasters

The New York Times has another to-the-point editorial about the Burma (Myanmar) disaster. (The other one.) This one deals with issues of information flow and freedom of the press and reinforces our understanding that there is no such thing as a natural disaster:

If information can flow as freely as nature’s elements, the consequences of many calamities — be they earthquakes, floods, droughts, hurricanes or storms — are manageable and even preventable. Absent such freedom in news and information, all “natural” disasters are ultimately man-made.

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Hold on to your hat, here come the disasters...

While at an OECD sponsored conference on Financial Literacy, I had the opportunity to present with Dr. Erwann Michel-Kerjan from the Wharton School's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. He was presenting their newly released MANAGING LARGE‐SCALE RISKS IN A NEW ERA OF CATASTROPHES: Insuring, Mitigating and Financing Recovery from Natural Disasters in the United States. The report is a great read, especially for those interested in the financial aspects of disaster management.

While Dr. Michel-Kerjan was a bit too pessimistic in his assessment of disasters....he saw rising disaster costs as a unassailable trend, not seeing that recent hurricanes in the Gulf have also led to implementation of building codes that could, eventually, help bring disaster costs under control....he showed a great graph from his recent work looking at the politics of disasters. The graph shows disaster declarations over time, highlighting election years.





Its clear that disaster declarations are on the rise. And they are heavily influenced by our election cycle. If the trend holds, being in an election year, we should expect a higher number of declarations than recent years. Chances are that most countries have means of funneling development money to favored communities based upon assumed or hoped for electoral support. In Turkey, amnesties for illegal building are regularly handed out in exchange for political support. Here, transportation and urban renewal funding have also used in this way. I suspect we are in an era where DHS terrorism grants and, to a lesser extent, recovery funds that come with disaster declarations are a growing and preferred method of getting a bit more of the pie to one's constituents.

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Burma's Vulnerability

What are some root causes?

The New York Times editorial sums them concisely:

[The junta's] repressive policies contributed greatly to the the disaster. Crushing poverty left many coastal communities more vulnerable to the storm than they otherwise might have been, and, as Laura Bush observed, the government-controlled news media failed to issue timely warnings. The fear now is that the generals may create obstacles to the rescue operation, which will require moving volumes of supplies as well as large numbers of aid workers, many from countries hostile to the regime.

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Retail's Woes Point to Local Gold?

Okay, folks would probably suspect that I'd want to talk about the recent earthquake in Reno that caused a sewer-treatment-plant-damaging rock fall. (Remember, you don't need big earthquakes to cause big problems!) True, true: Renoites (Renoans?) need to be cognizant of their earthquake hazard and get prepared, as the seismologists and emergency managers are saying.

But us resilience researchers, we get excited about subtler things.

Like retail.

I've been wanting to write about retail for a couple weeks now. There have been a lot of numbers coming out showing that retail is struggling right now, with sales down and bankruptcies up.

At some level, bankruptcy is a normal part of the economic cycle. But when a lot of businesses start going under or having to drastically reorganize, I'm starting to wonder about the resilience of the system.

But we're in a recession. (Aren't we?!) You'd expect that if the dominant discourse is that our country and, noting global food prices, the world is in an economic slump, then people would change their buying behavior. This I think is not too dissimilar to how attitudes and priorities would shift in the weeks and months and maybe years after a significant hazard event, such as an earthquake.

Well, maybe, maybe not. According the New York Times, take a look at the changes in consumer purchases during our current GDP stalling:

In March, Americans spent less on women’s clothing (down 4.9 percent), furniture (3.1 percent), luxury goods (1.3 percent) and airline tickets (1.1 percent) compared with a year ago...

Wal-Mart Stores reports stronger-than-usual sales of peanut butter and spaghetti, while restaurants like Domino’s Pizza and Ruby Tuesday have suffered a falloff in orders, suggesting that many Americans are sticking to low-cost home-cooked meals.

Over the last year, purchases of brand name cookies and crackers have fallen, according to Information Resources, which tracks retail sales.

...

Not even beer is immune. Sales of inexpensive domestic beers, like Keystone Light, are up; sales of higher-price imports, like Corona Extra, are down, the firm said.

...

By no means has the economic downturn been bad for all product categories. For instance, sales of big-ticket electronics, like $1,000 flat-panel televisions and $300 video game systems, are on the rise, according to retailers and research firms.

Uh.

Okay.

So apparently when Americans are having to "tighten the belt" they need about as much or more as usual on "luxury goods," airline tickets, flat screen TVs, and video games.

I'm not so sure though. Those sales statistics are based on total receipts, not number of purchases. So while clothing and furniture and food sales may be "down," the demand and, I suspect, the number of transactions (in some form, such as repurposing or remodeling a piece of furniture), is not.

What this data is talking to me about is people's attitudes about substitutes -- how flexible they are in what they buy for a particular need or want.

Airline tickets, flat screen TVs, and video games? Well, there is not enough flexibility in preferences to provide significantly cheaper substitutes.

Food, clothing, and furniture? There is. The Keebler Elves and the Budweiser Clydesdales are really not that important to people, as long as their need is met for a reasonable price (or there is some other incentive).

Where am I going with this, you ask?

Import substitution and replacement.

Wuh?

Import substitution/replacement is a strategy for increasing community resilience by decreasing reliance on importing goods (and services) into the community. The (arguable?) potential benefits are many, including reduced monetary and environmental costs of transportation, increased local multiplier effect (i.e., dollars spent stay inside the community), insurance against failed systems outside of the community (of which the community has little or no control), and higher wages (shifting emphasis of an economy from retail to wholesale and manufacturing/processing).

These data that the New York Times are writing about show me where there is potential for import substitution/replacement: day-to-day needs. Food, clothing, shelter (including furniture) -- these are items that people apparently are not picky about who produces them and where they come from.

In other words, in implementing a strategy of import substitution/replacement to increase community resilience, these are the areas that a community should develop first. (Energy would be another category, as often promoted in the green power movement.)

And when should a community attempt to push an import substitution/replacement strategy? Well, obviously times like now would be good, when consumers are looking for convenient, lower-cost alternatives.

Or perhaps, in the recovery phase of a major disaster. Hmm....

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Do Presidential Candidates Understand Disaster Risk Reduction?

The recent news cycle describing John McCain's visit to New Orleans to criticize the Bush administration's response to the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe made me curious how the three current presidential candidates compare on the issue of community resilience and each compares with what the experts say on the topic.

To see my quick comparison, keep reading.

John McCain

Unfortunately, the McCain campaign doesn't have anything on its website related specifically to Hurricane Katrina, emergency management, hazard mitigation, etc. Interestingly, they don't even have links to the New Orleans news coverage in the "In the News Section." So all I can go on are the news stories about his New Orleans campaign stop. For example, this New York Times article describes McCain as making three general recommendations:

1. Use qualified people


2. Allocate as much money in the recovery phase as is necessary


3. Utilize the private sector, like FedEx, UPS, etc. in the response phase

Hilary Clinton

Clinton's campaign does have a section on their website specifically devoted to Hurricane Katrina and what could be done to prevent future catastrophe. The campaign lists 10 points related to disaster response and mitigation, though most of them are specific to on-going recovery in the Gulf Coast:

1. Elevate the Gulf Coast federal rebuilding director


2. Cut red tape


3. Attract workers to rebuild New Orleans and the region


4. Build a reliable hurricane protection system so there is not another Katrina


5. Expand affordable housing


6. Combat rising crime and give first responders needed tools


7. Build 21st Century schools in New Orleans


8. Revitalize a lagging health care system


9. Promote smart development


10. Revamp federal response so we are ready next time

Barack Obama

Obama's campaign definitely gets the nod for having the most verbiage on the issue, with a Hurricane Katrina fact sheet [PDF file] posted. The major points in the fact sheet are the following (caps below are theirs):

1. REBUILD NOW STRONGER THAN EVER




1. SAFETY AND SECURITY




1. Strengthen the Levees


2. Restore the Wetlands


3. Fight Crime




2. INFRASTRUCTURE




1. Shake the Money Loose


2. Rebuild Hospitals


3. Rebuild Schools


4. Restore Housing


5. Improve Transportation




3. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT




1. Ensure Locals Can Get Recovery Jobs


2. Provide Incentives to Employers in Hardest-Hit Areas


3. Support Financial Infrastructure


4. Fix FEMA Insurance Rules






2. NEVER AGAIN




1. Fix FEMA


2. Fix the Small Business Administration


3. Adequately Plan for Emergency


4. Direct Rebuilding Efforts from the White House


5. Minimize Waste and Abuse


6. Provide an Insurance Backstop

The "Experts"

Of course there are many experts related to various facets of emergencies and disasters and there is not a enough room to put all their views here. So I chose one expert, Kathleen Tierney, who gave congressional testimony on this subject [PDF file]. As part of her testimony she discussed the following seven points towards reducing the potential for another Katrina-scale disaster:

1. Ensure that the nation develops a fully-functional intergovernmental emergency management system, placing a priority on the nation’s most vulnerable urban areas.


2. Ensure that an all-hazards approach to emergency management is implemented at all levels of government.


3. Ensure that FEMA and other crisis-relevant organizations center their efforts on comprehensive emergency management [meaning all phases: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery].


4. Explore organizational arrangements and authorities that de-politicize high leadership positions within FEMA, DHS, and other crisis-relevant organizations.


5. Invest in and mobilize institutions that provide the “backbone” for effective emergency management.
   
6. Develop and implement a strategic emergency management workforce strategy for the nation.


7. Build oversight, accountability, and evaluation into emergency management programs at all levels of government.

The Verdict

Sorry, there's no verdict. This is just a quick (i.e., way longer than intended) blog post and the information synthesized is incomplete and not directly comparable.

That said, it's interesting to note the emphasis of each of the above on the components of resilience (loss reduction and recovery facilitation). The emphasis overall seems to be on response/recovery, rather than risk reduction.

Isn't it always? [Sigh.]

McCain makes no mention of loss reduction, unless of course the qualified person he would appoint will focus on it. Clinton does not specifically mention loss reduction, but certainly investing in flood protection, smart development, good schools, and quality housing could count as risk reduction, depending on how implemented. Obama mentions several similar points, in addition to restoring wetlands, investing in transportation infrastructure, and taking a local approach to economic development. Tierney was asked to testify specifically on issues of response and recovery, but if you read her testimony she takes many opportunities to emphasize the important of loss reduction, particularly in her points 1, 2, and 3.

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Emergency planning in our schools

Over the last week, I have been in Los Angeles talking with school administrators about emergency plans. This is in preparation for the largest earthquake drill California has ever done - the Great Southern California ShakeOut scheduled for November 13, 2008. In the process I have been inducted into some of the real-world headaches of school emergency planning.


At the Team Safe-T office, a non-profit organization helping to create education material on safety, emegency preparedness and social responsibility, I learned of the hazards of doing earthquake drills....not the hazards of a real earthquake, but the hazards of the drill.

Every time there is a fire drill or earthquake drill, the students file out of the building. In some inner city LA schools, some students go to the designated field and are accounted for. Others just disappear- and get in trouble. Following the drill, teachers cannot account for all of their students. The number of hall fights and vandalism goes up that day. Police report increased gang violence on the days schools do such drills.

Fire and earthquake drills are mandated by the state of California, yet so is keeping students in school and learning. Its a tough call and some school administrators have chosen to stop doing drills. This does not bode well for an actual emergency. Students and staff will be unprepared and unpracticed. Moreover, what is occuring in drills may very well indicate major issues that could arise in a real emergency. Following a major earthquake, staff charged with accounting for students and searching for injured and unaccounted students may be looking for students who have left the premises all together. Looting may also be an intensified issue if students take off after the shaking subsides. I also do not envy the school administrators facing anxious parents and telling them then have no idea where their kids are.

In other conversations, I heard about issues of special needs kids. Students on life-saving medication may not have extra supplies to last until their parents can re-unify with them. Nor may staff have the authority to administer needed medications, even if it was on the premises.

Finally, I read a recent new report out of Florida where post-hurricane building code improvements for schools is interfering with police radios. You can look at the article yourself here. Hurricane-resistant concrete walls are so thick they block police radios and have led to difficulties in on-premise police calling for back-up when dealing with security issues.

There are obviously a lot of questions to ask about how to better address the underlying causes of school violence and how to address the needs of disabled students. Those larger questions aside, I was reminded of the vast difference between clear-cut emergency plans on paper and the complicated reality that occurs when they are implemented.

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No Federal Funding for Flood Works

So... if there isn't money to repair and retrofit levees, like say on the Chehalis River in Lewis County, what should be done?

From the Bellingham Herald:

Sen. Patty Murray sharply criticized the Bush administration Thursday for failing to include any money in its budget request for flood-control projects along the Chehalis River and summoned U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials to explain why.

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Popular Mechanics on Our Ailing Infrastructure

The Stranger is boasting that Seattle's Alaskan Way viaduct made Popular Mechanic's list of most deficient infrastructure. It's number five on the list!

This top 10 list is part of a bigger feature on the US's ailing infrastructure and what we can do about it. I haven't read much of it -- there seems to be some sensationalizing and I may not agree with all of the solutions proposed in dealing with the failing infrastructure (i.e., we don't always have to repair and replace; we can remove or repurpose). I absolutely agree though that our risk of disaster is directly tied to our inability to repair and maintain our most critical infrastructure. Perhaps we should fix it first before we build something new.

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Disaster Caused Increased Food Stamp Participation in Washington?

In this New York Times article about the near-record rise in food stamp recipients over the past year, a graphic is included with a map showing that Washington State participants in the USDA's Food Stamp Program (FSP) has risen by about 25% -- unfortunately, the highest enrollment increase in the country.

Clark Williams-Derry over at Sightline, who I recently linked to on the related issue of public health and the wealth gap, read the NYT's article and took note of one cited reason for increased FSP participation: natural disasters. The NYT article was specifically referring to the effect of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on FSP enrollment, not Washington State. However, Clark suggested that the December 2007 flood disaster in Western Washington (Lewis, Thurston, and Grays Harbor County) might be associated with Washington State's FSP statistics for last year.

Typically, rising food stamp enrollment is a clear sign of a slowing economy. But Washington's worst-in-nation food stamp surge likely had another cause: the flooding in west-central Washington late last fall that put many folks in shelters, and still more in dire financial straits.

He uses this supposition to support two claims: 1) That disaster's aren't natural and 2) that this provides even more reason for "stopping global climate change."

I had three reactions to Clark's interesting post:

1) Right on! The idea (fact!?) that disasters are not "natural" is a major theme that we teach here at WWU. It's great to see people who are not in disaster studies making this link and putting it out there.

2) Sightline really likes to use flooding in Washington as evidence for global climate change. I worry about over-selling this point. Flood disasters as the result of unsustainable residential, commercial, and economic development practices are a major issue we need to contend with regardless of climate change. And I would argue that development practices are ultimately more important (and easier) to focus on than the vague notion of "stopping climate change."

3) So what's the deal with the FSP and the Western Washington flood disaster anyway? Did the flooding increase FSP enrollment? And, if so, does this explain the 25% increase in FSP recipients in Washington State?

To answer these questions I did a bit of data compilation and crunching. For those who just want the answers without the explanation: Yes, the flooding likely increased participation in the FSP, but not for the reason you'd probably think. And no; it's unlikely that the flood disaster in Lewis, Thurston, and Grays Harbor Counties accounted for the 25% FSP increase in Washington State from 2006 to 2007.

The upshot is that Washington State lawmakers (and other concerned folks) should not brush of this 25% increase in FSP participants as the result of the December 2007 flood disaster. It's a signal, but not a big one, not even big enough to bump Washington State out of the top spot in terms of FSP participant increase compared to other states. It's important that we do figure out what the bigger signal is. (Anyone?) We need policies and plans to increase our resilience to flooding, but more importantly we need to first increase the resilience of folks to economic disaster who don't experience a natural hazard.

If you're interested in the lengthy details of what I found and how I found it, keep reading.



Before I get into things, let me say that this should be considered a "back of the envelope" analysis. I've done several hours of synthesis and analysis on this, but much more could be done and I wasn't able to find all the data I want.

So like what kind of data couldn't I find? Data on how many FSP participants enrolled as a result of the December 2007 disaster declaration in the three counties.

A minor issue.

So I did what any geographer geek would do: construct a census data spreadsheet to in order evaluate my two questions.

Question 1: Did enrollment in the FSP increase as a result of the December 2007 flooding?

To lighten the analytical load, I only looked at Lewis County for this question. After compiling the household and family income data from 2006 (the most current available), I realized that I didn't even need to compile the data to determine that more Lewis County residents were eligible (if not enrolled) for the FSP than normal.

The USDA has different eligibility requirements [pdf file] in the case of disaster declarations. In many instances, the income level (minus deductions or, in the case of disasters, losses) required to be eligible is higher. That is, it's easier for people to qualify for the disaster FSP.

Well, some people.

The maximum one-month income for a single person to qualify for the FSP goes from $1107 to $1416 -- a 28% increase -- in the event of a disaster declaration.

This appears to make sense -- in the case of disaster more money is available to assist more people in need. However...

The maximum one-month income for a family of four goes from $2238 to $2295 -- a measly 2.5% increase.

Does this make sense? It's significantly easier for an individual to be eligible for food stamps in the event of a disaster, but for a family of four it's negligibly easier.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge about this policy could tell us why the difference.

Regardless of the apparent disparity in disaster FSP eligibility, the fact remains that more people are eligible as the result of the higher income thresholds and thus more people are likely to be participants. In addition to the easier income requirements, of course one would assume that the disaster losses would increase the number of eligible people even without a change in the income requirement. That is, those people who would not qualify for the basic FSP based on income would qualify after the disaster because they can deduct their losses from their gross income.

I was curious which would have the bigger effect on eligibility: the easier income requirements or the increased deductions from flood loss.

Based on the little "what if" analysis I did with the census data, it appears the change in income level has a much greater effect on eligibility than direct disaster losses, in the case of Lewis County specifically. I estimate there was about a 40% more people eligible for the FSP just based on the income requirement difference. Conversely, the eligibility numbers were not very sensitive to losses, which I modeled as proportional to one month of home ownership cost -- data available in the census. In fact, I had to assume that every household incurred over 80% damage to their house to include the next income bracket, resulting in 92% more people being eligible for the FSP. (If anyone wants to look at the spreadsheet, just email me.)

Now obviously, this is as an estimate based on several assumptions, but I'm confident of the relative upshot: there was increased participation due to expanded eligibility, but that eligibility is more related to a policy decision (income threshold increase) than from direct losses from the flooding.

I don't have actual numbers on flood-related participants from the December disaster, but the USDA certainly keeps track of these numbers for all disasters [word document]. The USDA's data for past disasters, including Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, clearly shows an increase in FSP participation.

The first question that came to mind when I looked through their data from Katrina and Rita is why didn't the NYT (or whoever they interviewed) actually crunch the numbers to see IF those disasters contributed to the increase of participants in the Gulf Coast states? Because, honestly, it's rather unintuitive that a disaster that started in 2005 resulted in a bigger FSP enrollment spike between 2006 and 2007, then it did between 2005 and 2006. The disaster FSP benefit period after Katrina and Rita was, as far as I can tell, less than a year in all cases. So the NYT (or their source) is arguing that Katrina and Rita had knock on effects that lead to folks enrolling in the basic (non-diaster) FSP in 2007, but not in 2006. Disasters unfold. It certainly is possible that there are folks who live(d) in the Gulf Coast states who have fallen on worse times in the past year than in 2005 and 2006. But I'm not sure the numbers would be that large.

And this brings us to my second question....

Question 2: Did the December 2007 flood disaster in Western Washington result in the 25% increase in FSP participants in Washington State?

First of all, I'm not even sure if the USDA would consider the disaster enrollees from the December 2007 flood disaster part of 2007 reporting. The application period was December 10-14th, 2007. I'm guessing that all disaster FSP enrollees were authorized before 2008, but it's not unimaginable that they weren't.

Second, and most importantly, it doesn't appear to me that there were even enough eligible people in Lewis, Thurston, and Grays Harbor County to represent a dominant portion of the 25% increase of Washington State FSP participants. I estimate that in 2006 there were about 540,000 FSP participants in Washington State. A Washington State press release from 2007 say there are 500,000 participants in the state. The 2002 (the most recently available) Washington State Department of Social and Health Services "Blue Book" says there were 527,000.

The entire population in the three counties represents about 70% of the number of FSP participants in Washington State (depending on which of the above numbers you use!). In other words, about 35% of the population of the three counties would need to be new FSP participants as a result of the disaster to comprise the full 25% FSP participant increase for the entire state. Based on DSHS's "Blue Book," this represents over 100 times more FSP participants in Region 6 (which includes the three counties and eight others) than normal. My estimate for Lewis County was that an additional 18% of the population of Lewis County were eligible for the disaster FSP. Lewis County was the hardest hit, while Thurston County has the highest population, and certainly not all 18% of eligible people enrolled in the FSP.

The take home message is that, even though these numbers are very rough and the analysis quick, it's unlikely that the December 2007 flood disaster contributed to a majority of the 25% FSP participant increase in the State of Washington. My estimate is that the disaster represents 20 to 40% of the increase. So even without out the December 2007 floods, the State of Washington still had the greatest increase in FSP enrollment in the country between 2006 and 2007.

Now let's start talking about what we should do about this....

UPDATE: In response to Rebekah's comment, I looked a little harder at what counties were eligible for the disaster FSP. The info I read referred to just Lewis and Grays Harbor (and I included Thurston as an assumption for larger population numbers). The confusion was from the fact that more counties were deemed eligible later [Word doc]:

Those counties approved for the food stamp assistance are Clallam, Grays Harbor, Kitsap, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, and Thurston counties.

Deadlines for processing and receiving the benefits are January 2, 2008, for Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, and Thurston counties, and January 7 for Clallam and Kitsap counties.

This snippet from DSHS answers two questions for me: 1) I haven't rerun the population count, but Thurston I think is still the biggest county, so the general conclusion above would remain the same. 2) The deadline for application was in 2008. The 25% increase in FSP recipients refer to the change from 2006 to 2007. So there were participants associated with the flood who could not be in that statistic.

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New Katrina Documentary

The New York Times today has a brief review about a new documentary film called "Trouble The Water" about Hurricane Katrina's effects on New Orleans and the Lower Ninth Ward. It sounds interesting, focusing on the story of a young black couple rather than a whirlwind tour of what happened.

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Social Determinants of Health

Kudos to Clark Williams-Derry at the Sightline Institute for his post skewering the New York Times' recent article on growing life expectancy disparities between rich and poor.

While I don't entirely agree with him that the article will not be surprising to some (maybe I'm more cynical?), I do agree that the article does a poor job discussing the links between wealth and health. If you read Clark's post, you'll get a great overview (and links to more) of issues related to socio-economic determinants of health. To the disaster folks out there, this is basically the progression of vulnerability from root causes to dynamic pressures to unsafe conditions.

By the way, Western Washington University is lucky to have a (recently hired) expert on this subject: Liz Mogford.

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(Sub)urban Demise

Slog posted this outstanding article from the Boston Review. The article is a retrospective on the demise of Chicago suburbs (and in the telling the previous demise of Chicago and New York), some reasons, and some solutions. It's a must read for those interested in fostering urban (i.e., human-dominated areas) resilience.

A little sneak peak:

A ... conclusion is that many of the current political structures and leaders are either unable or unwilling to deal with these new realities. ...waiting for most to act or blaming them when they don’t are often not constructive responses. This puts the burden of thinking and acting back on a new type of civic leader: a volunteer with a real following in a local community, but also with a range of analysis and understanding that crosses town or county or city boundaries. The renewal of most of the failed cities ... depends on men and women who live in and care about those cities. But they will need to relate to leaders well beyond their own towns. And they will need to become a kind of ad hoc economic strategy team for their area, for their state...

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Covering Up What They Already Told Us

The Associated Press is running a story about how the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has been accused of covering up reconnaissance study findings related to the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. I don't have much insight on this, though I do respect Dr. Ray Seed -- a professor cited as one of the "whistle blowers." Obviously, there is no point to doing reconnaissance if you do not take every opportunity to reveal and learn from failures.

That said, the ASCE has been putting out a report card on the US's infrastructure since 1988. And let me tell you, they don't pull any punches in that report card. If you click the above link, you'll see our infrastructure's overall "GPA" is a depressing (scary?), big fat "D." (There is no grade above a C; though the ASCE did not look at infrastructure like fiber optics and cellular networks, which I assume would rank higher.) They estimate that the US needs to invest $1.6 Trillion dollars in the next five years to get our infrastructure up to snuff.

So perhaps the ASCE did cover up small (?) details in their reconn reports. But excuse me if I'm not that upset with them. They have been trying to tell us something much bigger for 20 years: the condition of our nation's infrastructure is severely increasing our risk of disaster.

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Targeting New Families for DRR

Today I was chatting with a British colleague, Justin Sharpe, about disaster risk reduction public education. He lamented the low level of public awareness about natural hazard risk, but also the lack of public action when that risk is known.

The empirical research shows that natural hazard risks are often perceived as less critical than other more daily hazards. Crime and pollution, for example, have immediate visible signals. Yet, even when people live in relatively high risk areas like California, and even when preventative measures are relatively simple, people put off disaster preparation.

Justin Sharpe pointed out that the research he read suggested that being married and having children leads to greater preventative action. Living in a place of high risk has the opposite effect. It leads to a sort of risk tolerance calibration where people become less likely to take action the longer they live in a place. These trends certainly seem to have been true in Turkey and New Orleans, where I have worked previously.

The question Justin posed to me, and which I now send out as a challenge/suggestion is this:

Why haven't Disaster Risk Reduction practitioners targeted 'new' families through ante and neo-natal groups, for instance, showing how simple adjustments can protect both them and their young family?

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