Hurricane aftermath: Damage to infrastructure, health, and the environment

[00:00:24]

RICK WEISS: Hello, everyone, and welcome to SciLine’s media briefing on the aftermath of hurricanes, with a focus today on how research can inform your stories as you cover damage to local infrastructure and other impacts on the inland and shoreline environments, not just after hurricanes, actually, but after all kinds of storm surge-related flooding, as we’re seeing happening right now across some of the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and, as well, focusing on the health impacts which are not sufficiently covered, I think, a lot of times in the aftermath of these storms, in part because, as we’ll learn, it’s those who are least well-resourced who are most affected by these kinds of impacts. I’m SciLine’s director, Rick Weiss. And for those of you not familiar with SciLine, we are a philanthropically funded and, sorry, nonprofit independent free service for journalists. We’re based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Our mission is simply to make it as easy as possible for you as reporters to include scientist sources and scientific resources in your news stories, whether those stories are about a science topic per se or are just about things going on in your community where a dose of science in your reporting can make that story better, which is just about any story you can think of, in our opinion. Among other things, we offer a free expert matching service where, if you need a scientist to weigh in on your story, even on relatively short notice, a couple hours’ notice, we will help you find a scientist who can speak to the issue you’re writing about, make sure they’re available to talk to you before your deadline and get that scientific expertise and context into your stories, make those stories stronger. You can get there at SciLine.org and look at the button that says, I need an expert.

We have three panelists today to make short presentations of up to about seven minutes each before we get into a live Q&A. To enter a question, either while they’re speaking or after their presentations are over, just go to the bottom of your Zoom screen to that Q&A icon. Hover over that. Click on it and tell us your name, your news outlet, and your question; and we will get to that in the Q&A session. A full video of this briefing is going to be available probably by the end of the day today, and a transcript will be available a day or two later for you to refer back to for your stories. Also, if you have any technical issues, you can contact us through that Q&A box as well. OK.

Last, before we get started, I don’t want to take the time to do full introductions for all of our speakers. Those bios are on the website for this briefing. But I will say, just to prepare you, that we will hear first from Dr. Andra Garner. She’s an associate professor at Rowan University in the department of environmental science. And she’s going to focus on what’s driving the increase in storm surges that we are experiencing in the United States and how coastal communities can and, in some instances, already have begun to increase resilience to these hazardous occurrences. Second, we’re going to hear from Dr. Antonia Sebastian, who also goes by Toni, and who is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She’s in both the department of earth, marine and environmental sciences and in the environment ecology and energy program there at UNC. She’s going to focus on hurricanes’ effects on infrastructure, and we’ll expand a bit on the resilience issue as well. And, finally, third, we’ll hear from Dr. Tim Collins, who’s a professor in the department of geography and within the environmental and sustainability studies program at the University of Utah. And his expertise is in environmental justice and health disparities, social vulnerabilities to disasters. And he’s going to speak about how hurricanes are exacerbating health disparities with an eye towards some of the ways these impacts can be minimized and mitigated. OK. With that, let’s get started. And over to you, Dr. Garner.

[00:04:25]

ANDRA GARNER: All right. Great. OK. So I’ll go ahead and jump in here. Thank you, everyone, for coming to hear a little bit more about hurricanes and, in my case, storm surge in a warming climate. So as I do get started here I wanted to start just by thinking about what exactly we mean when we say a storm surge. A storm surge, in its simplest form, is just it’s a rise of water that’s kind of unusual along our coastlines. And that rise of water is associated typically with a storm. So, if we look at this diagram here, we have a hurricane; and we can see that this hurricane is traveling towards the coast over on the right. And under that hurricane we can see this pile of water that has been formed, and that’s going to be our storm surge. That storm surge really has two things that kind of drive it and create it. The largest component of that storm surge is going to be from the winds within the storm. And, of course, hurricanes are very strong storms with very damaging winds, and those winds are very capable of kind of pushing the water and piling up that water like we can see in the diagram here. And then there’s a smaller component of that storm surge that we see here that is driven by the low pressures in a storm like a hurricane. So, essentially, hurricanes are low-pressure weather systems, and the pressure within them can actually be so low compared to kind of normal sea-level pressures that it actually causes a little bump in the water and a little bit of a rise in the water. And so this storm would travel towards the shore here on the right, and it would push that wind-driven and a little bit of the pressure-driven surge towards the shore, especially where the winds from the hurricane line up with the direction of the hurricane that it’s moving. And so that is really how we end up getting storm surges created from this kind of an event. I’ll just kind of note that storm surge really is one of the most damaging aspects of many landfalling hurricanes. It’s especially destructive to infrastructure and also really hazardous for human life. And I think that our other two panelists will probably talk a lot more about those aspects.

So, as scientists, one of the things that we are most sure about when we look at research related to how hurricanes are changing in a warming climate is that our storm surges will get worse as the climate warms. And the reason for that is because of sea-level rise. So, as we’re warming the planet, we are causing our sea levels to get higher. And that’s at a global perspective, primarily because, when it gets warmer, ice melts. If that ice is on the land, it’s going to eventually make its way to our oceans and raise our ocean levels. We also know that, when we heat up our oceans, that water expands and causes sea levels to rise. And when we have that sea-level rise occurring, it’s essentially giving our storm surges kind of a head start on their flooding, as you can see on this diagram. That starting water level gets consistently higher as we raise our sea levels, and so the extent and damage of that storm surge can be much worse. And so this is especially a problem in the US where a lot of the places that are impacted by hurricanes along our U.S. Gulf and Atlantic Coasts also actually tend to see some of the higher sea-level rise than the global average. And so this was an issue that I actually did some research on and published back in 2017 looking at how changes to storm—to sea-level rise and storms were affecting storm surge flooding in New York City.

So I’m going to talk here about a 7.4 foot flood. So that’s a flood that’s not quite as large as Hurricane Sandy was, but it’s certainly an impactful flood, if we think about 7.4 feet of water rushing into New York City. And I’m going to be talking about a return period of that 7.4 foot flood. So a return period is going to just essentially be, on average, how much time passes between events so how much time between these 7.4 foot floods from a storm surge in New York City. And when we looked at our research, what we found was that, in the preindustrial time, prior to when humans were really having a big impact on our climate, this 7.4 foot flood, as you can see in blue here, was something that would have happened on average about every 500 years so possibly something that you would never even see in your lifetime. As we looked into a more modern time period in yellow here, you can see that that average return period, the length of time between events has decreased now to about 25 years. So we’ve gone from a 7.4 foot flood being something that maybe would never happen in your lifetime to something that could happen several times in a lifetime. And, as we look forward not too far into the future here, into the middle of the century, we see in red that this kind of event could be something that happens on average every 5 to ten years. And so this is something that, when we looked at the research, we really could see that this is primarily driven by those higher sea levels that we see occurring and those higher sea levels really helping to drive the flood heights that we see in New York City and how frequently these major floods happen.

In addition to sea-level rise, there are other ways that hurricanes change in a warmer climate that could affect our storm surge. And so I’ll just talk a little bit about one other study that I conducted that was published last year in 2023. And this study found that, essentially, when we look at hurricanes, we found that modern hurricanes in the Atlantic are more than twice as likely as historical hurricanes to intensify from a pretty weak storm, so category 1, or even a tropical storm, into what we call a major hurricane so category 3 or greater within 36 hours or less. And so that’s what these charts are showing here. We have the percentage kind of on the vertical axis there, and the bars are showing in purple. For the historical storms, how many storms would have made that jump from a weak storm to a strong storm in either 12, 24, or 36 hours; and then same thing but for the modern time period in orange over on the right. And so, for example, if we look at 24 hours, we can see it was about 3.2% of storms in the historical time that would have strengthened this much. But, in the modern time period for 24 hours, we’re up to over 8% of storms strengthening that much. And so this really can impact our storm surges when we think about the fact that wind really drive a lot of that storm surge, and winds also are how we really characterize how strong a storm is. So, this is something that not only could make storm surges worse but also harder to prepare for because these storms that intensify really quickly can be especially dangerous and especially hard to forecast and prepare for and get people to safety.

So, I’m going to just go ahead and wrap up here. I’ll put up some of the references of some of those studies that I talked about. But I would just like to kind of end by again saying storm surges are a really dangerous component of hurricanes, and what we’re seeing as we look at what’s happening now is that climate change really is already having an impact on those storms. So right now we need to be thinking about how we can adapt our coastal communities to handle worsening storm surge impacts. Think about how we can better get people to safety. And what that looks like in any given community is going to vary. You know, adaptation measures might include anything from a seawall to really kind of protecting our natural barriers like salt marshes. So that’s really going to be something that varies. But the other thing we also need to be thinking about now is lessening our emissions to make sure that we don’t continue to make this problem worse into the future and that we limit how much worse these impacts might become.

[00:12:47]

RICK WEISS: Fantastic. Thank you, Dr. Garner, for a really clear and excellent intro. And for reporters who are covering these events as they happen, it’s so great to be able to refer back, so important to be able to refer back to some of the historical data here and some of the causality data so we’re not just reporting on a weather event, but why that weather event is happening and why it’s different now than it used to be just even a few years ago. Really important component that you don’t want to leave out of your reporting. OK. Let’s go on to Dr. Antonia Sebastian.

[00:13:28]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: Sorry. I lost the ability to change my audio. All right. Are we seeing the screen now?

[00:13:35]

RICK WEISS: You’re not quite present—there you go. Yep. You’re good.

[00:13:39]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: Thank you for the introduction. My name is Antonia Sebastian. I do a lot of research related to the prediction and quantification of flood hazards. We work in my lab a lot on hurricanes but also on other types of flooding. And so today I was asked to provide a little bit of an overview of sort of the current state of knowledge regarding hurricanes in this season, in previous seasons, and in future seasons and what that means for hurricane impacts, particularly to infrastructure, and what communities might be able to do to adapt to that. So just a brief overview of hurricane patterns in the US. The Atlantic hurricane season, we’re in the middle of it. It lasts from June 1 to November 30 each year. Historically, we see an average of about 14 named storms in the Atlantic basin, with about two making landfall in the U.S. each year. And so, when I talk about a named storm, I’m talking about those cyclones which have winds, which have a central pressure. They’re rotating, and they have winds exceeding 39 miles per hour, sustained winds.

In 2024, so in this season, it was predicted to be above average with more than 20 named storms. Numerous organizations as well as institutions, agreed that it would be a very active season. And even in mid-season updates we’re continuing to predict an active season this year. We’re currently on hurricane number 7, or we just surpassed tropical cyclone number 7, Gordon, which dissipated out in the Atlantic basin. But we’re expecting to see more activity. And, really, we’re only about halfway through the season. Most of the greatest activity tends to peak in the month of September and into October. This year, there have been a few landfalls already in the U.S. So Beryl, which impacted Texas in June; Debbie, sort of the larger southeast, it made landfall in Florida and then came up the Atlantic seaboard and made landfall again in North Carolina in August. Francine made landfall in Louisiana in September. And just this week, as I was preparing these slides, we had a potential tropical cyclone number 8 in the Carolinas which, to date, doesn’t have a name; but it could still be revised to have one. So the question arises what drives hurricane impact? And you heard from Dr. Garner already about storm surge and sea-level rise. But, really, there are sort of two types of hazards that hurricanes can create: wind hazards, which, of course, can produce a lot of damage by blowing roofs off of things and knocking over, let’s say, electricity poles, etc.; and water-related hazards. And these can range from storm surge to high tide to precipitation induced flooding. And the key thing about precipitation is how fast and how much is falling, which can lead to localized flooding, often referred to as urban or pluvial flooding or high river levels due to the runoff of that water over land.

And then there’s sort of this other type of hazard, flood hazard that we are increasingly seeing written about in the literature and increasingly referred to in common language, which is compound flooding. And compound flooding is really the co-occurrence of two or more of these processes and interaction of them leading to greater flooding or exacerbated flooding because you have, for example, precipitation interacting with storm surge in these coastal areas, if you take nothing else away from what I say today, most importantly, the number one predictor is the coincidence of these hazards with exposure. So how much stuff and people is in harm’s way will determine whether or not there are impacts from a hurricane event. And so our ability to accurately assess and predict our exposure to these hurricane-related hazards, whether that’s now or in the future, is really paramount to our ability to increase community resilience and adapt to these types of events.

And so, thinking a little bit about climate change, you heard from Andra already about sea-level rise and its influence on coastal storm surge. Generally, from the IPCC report that came out a couple of years ago, it’s highly likely or it’s likely that the number of annual hurricanes is not going to increase, or it might even decrease. But there’s a lot of confidence in the literature that the characteristics of these tropical cyclones that drive the associated hazards are likely to increase. So just some examples of these types of characteristics that I’m referring to, we’re expecting that there will be higher wind speeds, more category 4 and 5 hurricanes. We’re going to see higher sea levels that might lead to higher storm surges and more coastal inundation. We’re expecting to see more intense precipitation from these tropical cyclones. And we’re expecting that there could be a potential slowdown; or we’re observing already that there’s a slowdown of the forward speed of these storms. And, by slowing down, these storms are likely to cause more precipitation to fall in a given area. So, again, more precipitation leads to more flooding. This compound flooding is expected to increase in the future due to an increase in-depth and extent and all of the hazards above interacting.

And then, finally, as Dr. Andra Garner already referred to, were expecting to see an increase in intensification of these storms as they approach land. And what does this mean for impact? So the hazards are likely—the hazards from individual storms are likely to increase in the future. And so the places that are currently exposed to hurricanes are expected to be more exposed in the future. What’s probably important to point out is that these places are also exposed to other types of severe weather events that can cause flooding. And so the question around future impacts is really—the answer to the question around whether or not there will be future impacts is somewhat nuanced. It’s a little bit unclear because a lot of whether or not we’re going to see more impacts in the future is a function of whether or not these places are going to adapt to the flooding that they’re seeing in the present. And so this kind of gets at that issue of vulnerability. But the question about how resilient will these places be in the future is likely to be a function of whether or not they’re investing in infrastructure now, moving away or beginning to or, in other cases, becoming less resilient over time due to repetitive flooding occurring. But, in general, as a result of climate change, we’re expecting to see greater flood exposure and also reduced capacity of existing systems to withstand those changes because there’s just more hazards at play.

So, what can communities do to adapt or mitigate flood impacts? There’s numerous examples of communities who are already taking steps to adapt. Adaptation can range from everything from structural solutions to softer solutions to policy related solutions. So just a couple of examples. Communities could employ stricter development standards so elevating homes in flood-prone areas or restricting development in areas that are known to be flood prone are both examples of ways that we can reduce exposure to flooding. Hardening utilities and critical infrastructure like schools and hospitals. A great example of this is what the Texas Medical Center did after Tropical Cyclone Allison or Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 when they built a bunch of flood walls, flood doors, flood gates to prevent water from entering the facilities during extreme events; and this has worked very well over time. Building hard structures like seawalls, reservoirs or dams or tunnels. Investing in nature-based solutions. These are often referred to as soft structures so things like living shorelines or bioswales that can accommodate or withstand extreme rainfall events and heavy surge. Protecting open spaces by creating buffers or setbacks. Flood proofing so making structures more resilient to the impacts of floods by reducing the amount of damage that might occur when a flood takes place. And then other types of policy related solutions like increasing hazard disclosure so informing—there are examples from some states like the state of Texas where there are now laws that require homeowners to disclose whether or not a house has previously flooded during the sale and also increasing flood insurance coverage, as flood insurance has been shown to be one of the fastest tools to recovery after a flood event.

So, for later when these slides are shared, there’s a couple of references. Many of the—much of the information about how hurricanes are changing is in the IPCC. But there have also been a number of additional studies since that was published. And this list is by no means comprehensive, but there have been studies on the changes in hurricane precipitation, the increase in those compound hazards, and the rapid intensification of hurricanes that have really been published more recently since the IPCC came out. I mentioned this potential tropical cyclone 8 that just took place in Texas, and a rapid recap came out this morning from the North Carolina climate office. And then I had a gif or a gif that was running in the background on one of the slides, and that’s from the Sunny Day Flooding Project, where they’re finding that coastal locations or coastal towns are flooding much, much more frequently than anyone previously thought. And then, lastly, this is sort of a slide of the things that I’m finding interesting and reading right now. But there are a couple of studies related to flood hazard exposure and managing flooding. As I mentioned, if you take nothing else away from my talk, whether or not things are impacted or how much impacts there are from these hurricanes is entirely a function of the relationship between where people are and where the floods are taking place. And then, on the impacts of hurricanes, recently there have been some really interesting studies related to economic losses, impacts to health, and impacts to social community structures. And so I just wanted to point out some really exciting work related to Hurricane Florence in North Carolina in which we quantified some of the economic losses from the storm after—after the event occurred. So, this is just sort of my fun reading list, and I thought I would provide that more broadly to the group after this talk.

[00:24:13]

RICK WEISS: Fantastic. What a treasure trove of resources for reporters online. And really two take-homes I’m getting from this right off the bat is I see so much confusion in the news about whether the future is predicted to be more hurricanes or stronger hurricanes. So I appreciate that reminder of the IPCC findings that focus mostly on intensity rather than frequency. But also that’s such an important take home, that it’s only a hazard if something is there, if somebody’s there. And it’s not locked into place. A lot of the future of how bad this is going to get is how people respond and what kind of mitigation measures they put into place. And that slide with eight bullets on it is a great slide for reporters to go back to their own communities and say, are any of these eight things happening where I live? Right off the bat, you’ve got eight stories there. OK. Let’s go over to Dr. Tim Collins.

[00:25:06]

TIMOTHY COLLINS: Right. Can folks see that?

[00:25:15]

RICK WEISS: Yes. Perfect.

[00:25:16]

TIMOTHY COLLINS: Okay. Great. Yeah. I’m really happy to be presenting here today. I was asked to talk about the impact of hurricanes on human health and some other aspects, social aspects of hurricanes in terms of inequitable effects and environmental justice implications. So I’m going to dive right into it right now. So hurricanes can affect human physical and mental health over the short-term and long-term. During hurricanes, causes of injury, death, drowning caused by storm surges and flooding from heavy rainfall and physical trauma from debris carried by high-speed winds. In the immediate aftermath of hurricanes, people suffer at higher rates from some physical conditions, including upper respiratory infections, asthma exacerbations and allergies, gastrointestinal illnesses and other communicable diseases, skin rashes and eye irritations, pregnancy complications. During cleanup and repair, people may experience electrocution, trauma caused by slips and falling debris, dehydration, and heat exhaustion. The trauma of people’s hurricane experiences and their associated economic impacts can also severely affect mental health over the long-term. Common mental health conditions caused by hurricanes include posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety.

So, people are often interested in knowing how many lives are lost from hurricanes, but mortality from hurricanes is very difficult to quantify. Official estimates usually do not capture deaths that are indirectly attributable to hurricanes, such as preventable deaths caused by disruptions to medical care from treatable conditions like pneumonia, heart disease, diabetes, or Alzheimer’s disease. Medical care disruptions include the inability to access medications, inability to use medical equipment that requires electricity, closed medical facilities, and absent doctors. Excess death analyzes seek to quantify the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in the specific time and place of a hurricane and the expected numbers of deaths in the same time and place if the hurricane had not occurred. This requires baseline data on mortality before hurricanes, right? So Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico provides a good example. The deaths of 64 people were initially attributed to Maria by the government of Puerto Rico. Almost a year after the hurricane, a comprehensive excess death study attributed nearly 3,000 deaths to Maria. And, as a result, the official death toll was updated to that number. And there have been many other published excess death analyzes of Hurricane Maria with other analysts arriving at considerably higher death numbers. For example, one study in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated nearly 5,000 excess deaths.

[00:27:54]

RICK WEISS: Dr. Collins, I’m going to interrupt for one moment and ask you to try to stay a little bit closer to your mic because we’re—the audio is a little bit low right now.

[00:28:01]

TIMOTHY COLLINS: OK. Sorry about that. Okay. So research on health disparities in disasters highlights the unequal distribution of health impacts across different population subgroups. Coming back to Hurricane Maria as an example, one of the excess mortality studies I mentioned before found that residents of poorer areas and older men experience mortality disparities in Maria. A recent review article of numerous health disparities studies of floods and hurricanes in the United States documented consistent health disparities for Black and Hispanic people, people of low socioeconomic status, and women. Those disparate health risks result from unequal exposures to hurricane impacts and unequal levels of social vulnerability. Social vulnerability shapes people’s capacities to protect themselves and their families before, during, and after hurricane events. As an example of unequal exposures to hurricane impacts, research on Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Harvey has consistently shown that racial ethnic minority and lower income people and neighborhoods experienced more flooding compared to their white wealthier counterparts. Coming back to the issue of social vulnerability, I’ve included a link to a review article in the resources slide at the end of this presentation that documents how people who are Black, Hispanic, or of low economic standing experience constraints in protecting themselves across all phases of the 2017 Hurricane Harvey disaster. In terms of pre-event hazard mitigation and preparedness, environmental and health impacts, disaster response, and post-event recovery. And I could provide some specific examples during the Q&A, if you’d like. But those inequities in people’s exposure to hurricanes and their social vulnerability shape the unequal risks and impacts they experience, including health disparities. Because they’re structured by broader patterns of disadvantage and privilege in our society, many scholars view the unequal impacts of hurricanes as issues of environmental justice.

And so, to paraphrase a recent federal executive order number 14096, environmental justice can be defined as the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, tribal affiliation, or disability in activities that affect human health and the environment so that people are fully protected from disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects of hazards. So how can we reduce health impacts and disparities triggered by hurricanes? With climate change, more intense tropical storms are occurring. Andra and Toni described some implications of that in terms of how communities are going to be affected and sort of the infrastructure challenges and exposure challenges come along with that. So communities obviously need to be better protected. Vulnerable social groups need to be prioritized in any resilience building efforts because they bear the brunt of health problems and other hurricane impacts. Research indicates that much greater investment should be made in equitable hurricane risk reduction actions before events. So I want to get a little bit of a nuance in terminology here because it can be confusing between people who study hazards and people who are immersed in this climate change community.

When I use the term mitigation with reference to hazards, it really is sort of the equivalent of adaptation that climate change scholars talk about. When climate change scholars talk about mitigation, they’re specifically talking about reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses that contribute to a warming climate. So I’ll use the word mitigation here, but really you can sort of—it’s basically a synonym for adaptation in the climate change literature. Okay. So examples of pre-event risk mitigation or adaptation strategies were covered in pretty good detail by Toni. I think I don’t need to go into that here. But research has shown that investing in pre-event hazard mitigation is very cost effective. For example, a comprehensive study found that every $1 spent on a Federal Emergency Management Agency hazard hitigation grant produced $4 of benefits in terms of avoided future losses. The highest returns were on projects that mitigated hurricane winds and floods, which gave returns of about $5 for every $1 spent. One important point to keep in mind is that vulnerable populations differ across contexts. For example, the vulnerability of a Florida community that’s home to many older retirees living in mobile homes with high rates of disability and special healthcare needs is distinct from the vulnerability profile of a Texas Rio Grande Valley community with many Hispanic residents, high levels of poverty, and fragile and insecure housing conditions. So planning to reduce risks and prepare for hurricanes will differ between those two contexts. Finally, following hurricanes, there’s a need for larger-scale funding to support long-term recovery and adaptation, especially for impacted vulnerable populations. You must think about recovery at this point in a forward-looking manner as a means to reduce future risks and successfully build more hurricane-resilient communities.

And, with that, I’m going to conclude and just flash the resources slide up here. But I have some information from FEMA. That first—that first link I have there actually provides a lot of information about health impacts from hurricanes, a lot of details. I have a few citations, so a few Hurricane Maria excess mortality studies that I noted; some information from the CDC on health equity and health disparity, just general information. I included a link to a review article, although I know it may not be easy to access that article; and I gave you an email address of the scholar who wrote it because I know it’s fine to share personal versions of articles by authors. I also include a link to that executive order that I quoted, as well as a link to that article I described, sort of talks about the different phases that reviews research that’s been conducted on various phases of that Hurricane Harvey disaster and how you had the just sort of disparate levels of access to resources for protecting people based on race and socioeconomic status. And then I also have a link there to that article I cited where—that sort of documents the sort of cost effectiveness of adaptation and mitigation measures to protect people. And, with that, I’ll conclude.

[00:34:40]

RICK WEISS: Great. Thank you, Dr. Collins. Another treasure trove of resources there. Really appreciate the work you all put into providing these valuable resources and the emphasis on sort of the long-term recovery in some of these cases. You know, it’s a cliché at this point, but reporters do tend to leave a storm area a little bit soon after the worst of it’s over. And the stories of what goes on afterwards just don’t get told enough. So let’s turn to the Q&A here. And we do like to start this Q&A part of our briefings with one question from SciLine first, which asks each of our experts to really think not just as the experts that they are but as news consumers who read news stories about the things that they study and mention one or two things that they either appreciate or maybe don’t appreciate so much about the way some of what they work on gets covered in the news and some advice, basically some advice to reporters along those lines. Dr. Garner, can I start with you?

[00:35:39]

ANDRA GARNER: Yeah. Sure. So I think my answer to this falls somewhere a little bit between doing really well or could use improvement, and that’s really making the climate connection to some of these extreme events that we see happening. I think very much that is something that we’re starting to see happen more often. I know even a few years ago it seemed like very often you get a big storm happening, and I don’t see a lot about the climate connection there. And I think that’s changed, although I still feel like sometimes we get a news story about Hurricane Beryl, and then at the end is tucked into the last paragraph information about how climate change might be affecting that. So I would just say I think we’re getting there, but I think it really is important to highlight that climate connection to these extreme events because of the fact that it is a narrative that we have some control over. It’s something that we very much could find scary to know that we are the problem here, but also knowing we’re the problem means that we can help be the solution. And I think that reminding audiences of that is going to be really important, especially when a big event kind of brings these impacts to the forefront of their mind.

[00:36:58]

RICK WEISS: Yeah. I really want to echo that. And I do think it’s getting better. I think it’s still not happening enough. And I’m actually going to put on the chat right now—if that goes through to everyone; I’m not sure it will—a link to a page on the SciLine website that helps reporters just very quickly find out what can you say accurately about the connection of climate change to hurricanes, to wildfires, to other extreme weather-related events. It’s just so important not to leave that out. As a reporter, you would never leave out the why this happened if it were a bridge collapse or something else. Why are we leaving it out when there’s an intense storm that clearly has some human input to it. Thank you very much. Okay. I’ll go to you next. Dr. Sebastian.

[00:37:48]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: Yeah. So I—the thing that I’m finding great in where we are at with media coverage of hurricanes and other types of flood-related research is just the increase in how data is used in generating media articles. I think that that has been fun and cool to see the data uptake. But I will also say one of the caveats that I see, or things that I would like to see done better, is just the conveying sort of the scientific uncertainty that’s in these studies. And I know that that’s really, really hard. But I think sometimes there—there is one flood study of many, and they don’t always say the same thing. And I’m seeing more and more of that conversation come into sort of the news and articles that are written that this is one of many, or this may—this study might be having different findings than others. But I think making sure that that gets conveyed to the general public as well is really important and trying to find that nuance in some of the scientific writing as it comes out.

[00:38:51]

RICK WEISS: Great. Thank you. And Dr. Collins.

[00:38:56]

TIMOTHY COLLINS: Yeah, yeah. I really appreciated those comments. I come from a social science background, so I think I may diverge a little bit in terms of the things that—I think media does certain things really well. But I’ve been really impressed over the years with how media sort of focuses on the physical aspects of hurricanes. You can see really it’s not just in the field while the event’s happening. You’ll see reporters in the field on the news, and you’re writing about it from the field. And you’ll—you’ll see really cool imagery of the progression of these hurricanes. You’ll see sometimes sort of graphics like Andra sort of presented to describe the storm surge. You’ll see things where that—where I think people get a sense of what’s happening to the hurricane physically from the news. I think what—in terms of what reporters should improve is that I think there’s a general perspective shared by the vast majority of people in the United States, including reporters, which is that hurricanes and other hazards are natural phenomena with human and societal impacts is basically responding to the raw physical aspects of these events. And I think that’s why reporters and other people in the US tend to focus on those physical aspects of hurricanes. And I used to view hurricanes and other hazards that way as well. And it wasn’t until I started studying disasters in graduate school that I came to realize that social factors, things like development of the built environment; the absence of adequate planning and building codes; inequalities driven by segregation, poverty, and so on are actually the primary things that translate these physical events into patterns of damage and destruction that humans experience.

So I think sort of reporters should strive to improve how they report on those dimensions of hurricanes, I think. I—and I’ve seen better work with that over the years. I think really before Hurricane Katrina, you probably would have seen those stories like that. But I think there were—when Katrina, it sort of forced people to reflect a little bit on how social factors may shape patterns of impacts and events. And I think you do see better reporting on that now. But I—Rick, what you said at the beginning to kick off, it’s like I’d like to see a lot more. I know it’s not popular. The event itself is such a high profile thing, and it draws attention. Viewers are interested in it. But I’d really like to see what happens. What’s critical is what happens in that time period after these leading up to the disaster and then following the disaster. I think more coverage on that would really help that integrate that social dimension.

[00:41:34]

RICK WEISS: Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful context. Yes, Toni.

[00:41:36]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: I was just going to add to what Tim said because I have similar feelings, that the immediate impact of these events garners a lot of attention, but it’s what we do in the wake of the event; and it’s the impact of the smaller events that come later that really determine how society responds and adapts to these floods and how they’re going to fare when the next one comes around. And so sort of just like continuing the reporting over time. I completely agree with that point.

[00:42:05]

RICK WEISS: And it does seem like it’s not only going to be for hurricanes. We’re seeing that some of the issues we’re talking about right now happen with less than a hurricane causing it. And so this is a story that’s not going away for sure. Okay. Let’s turn to some reporter questions here, and we have one. Actually, I’m going to attribute this to Liz McLaughlin at WRAL in Raleigh, although we’ve got similar questions from a few other reporters on the line, directed to Dr. Sebastian. Although interested to hear from any or all of you. Could you elaborate on what’s been happening in the Carolinas, specifically in terms of storms and impacts? Are the types of adaptations that you listed likely to be effective on barrier islands like the North Carolina Outer Banks?

[00:42:51]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: Yeah. So, in North Carolina recently, irrelevant of the event that we just saw this past week, we are seeing in general along the coastline more intense precipitation, not only from these hurricane events but also just from other types of events as well. So more of the rain is falling in fewer events and coming down much harder and, therefore, causing much, much more flooding over land. Specific to the barrier islands and the coastal communities so not just the outer coast but also the inner coast, sea-level rise is really contributing to the frequency that we’re seeing flooding in those places. So whether that’s literally water on the roads because of the ocean or because sea levels are high and we’re experiencing rain simultaneously, we’re seeing many, many more—or let’s put it this way—much, much more often water on the roads in these coastal communities and sometimes even damaging floods. And I will defer to my colleagues who are working on the Sunny Day Flooding Project down at the coast, Dr. Hino and Dr. Katherine Anarde at UNC and North Carolina State University because they are doing an excellent job putting sensors out on the coastline and trying to map and monitor how often these floods are occurring. And they’re finding that it’s very, very, very frequently. So that—that I would say is the primary driver of what of what’s happening down at the coast. In terms of adaptation, we do see that communities are beginning to adapt in a variety of different ways, whether that’s from small local infrastructure to some proposals for things that are larger scale. And that very much is different from town to town and community to community. But right now in North Carolina it’s a big topic, and there’s a lot of work going on in that area.

[00:44:39]

RICK WEISS: Great. Anything to add from you, Andra or Tim, on that?

[00:44:44]

ANDRA GARNER: I can just jump in here. I don’t know if I have a whole lot to add. But just to what Toni was saying, that we see multiple kinds of hurricane hazards coming into play here. When you have sea-level rise, that, of course, can create its own flooding associated with any storm surge or higher tides that might be occurring. But then you add to that, that this system was really rainy, and that’s something that we expect in a warmer climate because our warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and then dump more moisture on us. So I think that we, again, are seeing, as Toni mentioned, these compound hazards, kinds of multiple things coming into play here that really are having an impact. And we know that many of those hazards are driven by climate change.

[00:45:32]

RICK WEISS: Great. A question here. Maybe I’ll start throwing this your way, Tim. What are some characteristics of an area that make its population more vulnerable to severe hurricane consequences?

[00:45:45]

TIMOTHY COLLINS: Yeah. I guess in different—what are the characteristic—people like in terms of evacuation, that’s important. I think my colleagues talked about evacuation. People, for example, who are transportation disadvantaged, people who live in institutional settings, people who experience disabilities, these people are particularly vulnerable and less able to sort of evacuate from—during these sorts of events. And so that’s—those are populations that really need to be taken into account in planning for these events. If you think about before an event, for example, some of the mitigation measures someone might implement at their home site, whether that’s elevating appliances, doing things to protect their own personal home and property from flooding associated with hurricanes, that costs a lot of money. And people aren’t—so people of lower income at all across all phases of disaster cycle experience challenges taking—their ability to take measures to protect themselves during these events. So people of low income. And then there are people who’ve experienced historical marginalization and discrimination, particular racial ethnic minority groups in our country who experience discrimination and live in areas where the infrastructure may be less adequately developed. They may be living in lower lying areas where they experience more exposure. And all of these more marginal groups may have challenges accessing healthcare, for example, more so than the rest of the people, if you’re thinking about it from a health perspective. And so it really does vary from context to context. I tried to make that point during the presentation that what—a given community, what makes that community, groups in that community particularly vulnerable really depend on those particular population characteristics.

[00:47:36]

RICK WEISS: Great. Sounds like something important for a local reporter to dig into for their area, what are those most relevant things. I do want to try to squeeze in a few more questions here. Dr. Garner, a question directed towards you. Do we see something similar to that chart from New York City showing the once-in-500-year floods for other coastal cities? Are there these kinds of modeling predictions that are available for other coastal areas?

[00:48:01]

ANDRA GARNER: That’s a really good question. I don’t know of any specific studies that are coming to mind right now. I do know that New York has gotten a good bit of attention, especially after Hurricane Sandy back in 2012. But I think that it is something that we could anticipate at other coastal communities, especially in areas where we know that sea levels are rising or rising faster than the global average, especially because of the fact that you can have, say, even if nothing changed with the storms over time, when that sea level is starting at a higher—at a higher point, then the storm surge flooding will be that much worse. So as far as exact numbers and how quantifying return periods, I think that would take research. But I think we can say qualitatively that, when we have the sea-level rise, we would expect to see that flooding becoming worse and more frequent over time.

[00:48:59]

RICK WEISS: Yeah. Great. OK. Here’s a question from Stephanie Castellano, who’s a freelancer based in Florida. And I think, Toni and Tim, you might each get a piece of this. But this is what can you tell us about how hurricane damage tends to disrupt the cultural fabric of smaller coastal communities, especially work—especially working waterfronts. So I guess that includes the infrastructure that requires a waterfront to be a working waterfront when residents cannot afford to return and rebuild and the—and when the area gets gentrified. Complicated question. There are a lot of dynamics. But do either one of you want to jump on that?

[00:49:41]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: I can take a stab, and then maybe Tim can follow up. I think you’re hitting the nail on the—the nail on the head already with these. The impact, the devastation occurs; and there is some disruption due to the damages to the infrastructure that is there. And I think a big question is, what does the recovery of that place look like? Can those living there afford to rebuild what is there, or are—do they have access to other types of funding to rebuild what was there? And, if not, then sometimes the fabric of communities is disrupted by these events because people are forced to move away because they cannot afford to come back, or they cannot afford to rebuild; and/or there are shifts in what people desire to do for a living because of how frequently they’re being disrupted. And so it’s a very nuanced question. I think it really varies from place to place. And there are examples where especially these small communities that rely, for example, on fishing are beginning to ask questions about how long they can stay in these places and continue to deal with repetitive flooding. Tim, I don’t know if you want to take it from there a little.

[00:50:56]

TIMOTHY COLLINS: I know. I think it was a good response. I know following Hurricane Katrina there—there were a number of studies focused on population displacement and that found that particular groups of people, people of lower socioeconomic status, people from particular minority racial ethnic backgrounds that really didn’t return to the—to the coast where they were from after the event over time, or at lower rates they were able to return. And so there were permanent—there’s permanent displacement that occurs. And I think, when that happens, you have to conclude that there has been fundamental disintegration of that cultural fabric. I don’t have an answer over the long-term, but I think these sorts of relocating communities, relocating entire communities is sort of a big topic. And the academic literature right now due—in these areas of coasts that are seeing increasingly frequent flooding and do not appear to be habitable—in the future may not be habit—really habitable for people. You know, what do we do with these communities? I don’t really have the answer for it, but it’s a big topic for sure right now.

[00:52:12]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: Yeah. And maybe I can just add one more thing. There is a growing area of research on the impacts, the systemic risks to let’s say mortgages from floods and whether or not direct damage, damages can lead to indirect losses that cause people, for example, to not be able to return or to have to default on a mortgage. And where do those risks cascade, or to whom do those risk cascade as people cannot recover? And so that’s a space that I’ve worked in a little bit. And there are—there are a couple other really interesting studies coming out in that space that probably are too much to talk about now, but I think that there is a growing recognition from the research community that that question is out there and that we need a better handle on it.

[00:53:03]

RICK WEISS: Great. I want to acknowledge a question from Kerry Sheridan at WUSF, but I think we got the answer to that from Dr. Garner that there aren’t maybe specific data that will help you on your Debbie story. But the trend lines are clear, as Dr. Garner mentioned, what to expect. We’re just about out of time to wrap this up at the 55 mark, so I do want to do something we like to do at the end of our briefings, which is just to go around quickly and give each of the speakers a chance to really give you reporters a take-home message or a real nut that you can walk away with and—and use in your stories. And I also want to remind reporters as you prepare to log off after this that you will be confronted with a very short survey. It’ll take about a half a minute to fill it out. We all hate getting surveyed after everything we do, but it really helps us design these briefings in ways that are most helpful to you. So I hope you’ll take that half a minute and give us a few answers before you leave. And, at this point, let me just go around the horn and ask each of our speakers to just take a half a minute or less and say, if there’s one thing you want reporters to walk away with today, what would that be? And, Andra, I’ll start with you.

[00:54:14]

ANDRA GARNER: Sure. So I think my take-home point would be that, when we look at hurricanes and we look at the hazards that they present, that we really are already seeing their damages and their impacts become worse because of climate change. And, for example, today I talked a lot about storm surge. So really, as we warm the planet, we’re kind of stacking the deck against ourselves by making the chances of these impacts being worse. And, again, when we think about that, that can be really scary; but it could also be kind of hopeful and motivating to know that we have the chance to kind of change that narrative and to change what it looks like into the future. So take-home point would be that we do need to be acting now to protect our communities, but we also need to be acting to reduce our emissions and make sure that we do have a more sustainable future.

[00:55:04]

RICK WEISS: Thanks. Dr. Toni Sebastian.

[00:55:07]

ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: Yeah. So I think my take-home message would be that, while we might not be seeing an increase in the number of hurricanes, we are seeing an increase in their intensity and associated hazards from these hurricanes. And also we’re seeing an increase in other types of extreme weather events that are compounding the hurricane impacts themselves. And I think what’s really important is trying to better assess where these risks are and to whom these risks are and then begin to think about how we adapt to those risks and make changes in how we’re approaching, let’s say, coastal flooding but all types of flooding and what that means for our futures in these communities.

[00:55:49]

RICK WEISS: Thanks. And Tim Collins.

[00:55:52]

TIMOTHY COLLINS: Right. Yeah. I want to emphasize the knowledge of the particular social context where hurricane strikes is critically important for understanding the impacts of the event. So it’s important to have a sense of which particular groups in a given place are most vulnerable, the conditions under which those people live, how they’re impacted during the event, and the challenge they face in recovery. If you can develop that knowledge, then I think you’ll be able to tell a central story about the human toll of these sorts of events.

[00:56:23]

RICK WEISS: Such a great point and such a great endorsement in the end for local journalism because that’s where that’s going to happen. It’s the reporters who know their communities and who care about their communities where I think we’re going to see a lot of the progress in this kind of journalism. So thank you all for supporting journalists as they work to do a great job covering this complicated story that we can still make a difference in the outcome of. So thanks to our experts. Thanks for you reporters who are on the case covering this topic, and I look forward to seeing you all at the next SciLine media briefing. So long.