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Today I went to a lunch time discussion of sustainability. This concept promoted development with an equitable eye to the triple bottom line - financial, social, and ecological costs. We discussed the how it seemed relatively easier to discuss the connections between financial and ecological costs, than between social costs and other costs. Sustainable development often comes down to "green" designs that consider environmental impacts or critiques of the capitalist model of financing.
As I thought about sustainable development, or sustainable community management if you are a bit queasy with the feasibility of continuous expansion, I considered its corollaries in the field of disaster risk reduction. It struck me again that it is somewhat easier to focus on some components of the triple bottom line in relation to disasters.
The vulnerability approach to disasters has rightly brought into focus the fact that not all people are equally exposed to or impacted by disasters. Rather, it is often the poor or socially marginalized most at risk and least able to recover. This approach certainly brings into focus the social aspects of disasters.
The disaster trap theory, likewise, brings into focus the financial bottom line. This perspective is most often discussed in international development and disaster reduction circles. It argues that disasters destroy development gains and cause communities to de-develop unless both disaster reduction and development occur in tandem. Building a cheaper, non-earthquake resistant school in an earthquake zone, may make short-term financial sense. However,over the long term, this approach is likely to result in loss of physical infrastructure, human life, and learning opportunities when an earthquake does occur.
What seems least developed to me, though I would enjoy being rebutted, is the ecological bottom line of disasters. Perhaps it is an oxymoron to discuss the ecological costs of disasters, given that many disasters are triggered natural ecological processes like cyclones, forest fires, and floods. It might also be an oxymoron simply because a natural hazard disaster is really looking at an ecological event from an almost exclusively human perspective. Its not a disaster if it doesn't destroy human lives and human infrastructure. But, the lunch-time discussion made me wonder if there wasn't something of an ecological bottom line to disasters in there somewhere. Perhaps it is in the difference between an ecological process heavily or lightly impacted by human ecological modification. Is a forest fire in a heavily managed forest different from that in an unmanaged forest? Certainly logging can heighten the impacts of heavy rains by inducing landslides, resulting in a landscape heavily rather than lightly impacted by the rains. Similar processes might also be true in the case of heavily managed floodplains. Flooding is concentrated and increased in areas outside of levee systems. What does that mean for the ecology of these locations? Does a marsh manage just as well in low as high flooding? My guess would be no.
And of course, there is the big, looming disaster of climate change. This is a human-induced change that may prove quite disasterous to many an ecological system, everything from our pine forests here, to arctic wildlife, and tropical coral reefs.
Perhaps, we disaster researchers, need to also consider a triple bottom line when making arguments for the benefits of disaster risk reduction.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Disaster reduction and the sustainability challenge
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
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.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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.
Monday, June 30, 2008
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.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
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).
Read More......
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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?
Read More......
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.Read More......
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?
Friday, May 23, 2008
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.)
Monday, May 12, 2008
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. Read More......
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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.Read More......
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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.Read More......
Sunday, April 27, 2008
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....
Friday, April 25, 2008
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:
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:
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):
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:
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.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
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.
Friday, April 4, 2008
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.
Read More......
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Sunday, December 9, 2007
A Convenient Half-Truth
Excuse me for losing my cool, but man I'm sick of the climate-change scare-mongering like this recent post by the Sightline Institute's Eric De Place.
Sure, blogs are a casual venue, but organizations like the Sightline Institute or knowledgeable folks like Al Gore, who spuriously linked the Hurricane Katrina disaster to climate change in "Inconvenient Truth," should hold themselves to higher standards than these convenient half-truths.
Is climate change real? It's beyond discussion. Will climate change result in changes in global precipitation patterns? You bet. Will there be more precipitation in the Pacific Northwest? Maybe, maybe not. Would major floods occur in the absence of climate change? For sure.
And there are more immediate causes to flood disasters that are critical to address, especially in light of climate change. The half-truths of "[insert disaster here] was caused by climate change" does nothing to build this awareness. If anything it distracts from this awareness and serves to reduce the credibility of climate science that is based on entirely different (and more reliable) data, showing that CO2 emissions have and are changing our climate.
