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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