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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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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"It was supposed to be OK; they told me it was in a 100-year flood plain"

The title quote of this post was taken from the this article in The Olympian.

I read this article because Crosscut linked to it saying that it implicated development as the reason for the intense flooding in Thurston County, WA (similar to this article for Lewis County, WA). And folks interviewed definitely do:

"They've got to stop building where the water is supposed to go," Judy McWhinney said. "They say don't blame Wal-Mart; I blame Wal-Mart." ... Others pointed to silt-filled creeks, clear-cutting of timber and ill-placed dikes as the culprits.

Everyone knows not to build in the floodplains, right?

"Flood plains are beautiful, rich, fertile land, good for agriculture," Snyder said. "Really, nothing much else works on the flood plain."

Well, not according to the title quote of this post... Apparently, some people think that being told that living in a 100-year floodplain means they are safe. Obviously, FEMA or the local government was successful in getting the word out that people were living in a 100-year floodplain. But this is a good reminder that communication is not just about transmission of words. Perhaps rather than telling people they are in a 100-year floodplain, we should show them a chart showing the number of significant floods in their area.

Be that as it may, it does sound like some people in Lewis County couldn't have known they were in the 100-year floodplain. Well, unless they moved there in 1982:

"The flood map Lewis County uses is a 1982 flood map," DePuis said. "Before anything else happens, Lewis County should adopt a 2007 flood map."

To what degree development has altered the floodplains in Thurston and Lewis Counties, I certainly don't know. But it does seem like floodplain delineation should be redone when there is major development in the existing floodplain. Maybe the delineation should be done before the development!

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