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Scoop
5 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Tairāwhiti Knowledge Share With Cooks Islands
A small delegation from the Cook Islands emergency management team are heading out of the region buoyed by what they hope they can introduce to their country after visiting Tairāwhiti Civil Defence. Technical coordinator Stephano Tou and planning and advisory coordinator Ella Napara had a whistle stop visit to Tairāwhiti as part of their NEMA (National Emergency Management Association) supported trip to New Zealand which also included stop-offs in Wellington and Palmerston North. 'I am already thinking about how we can replicate some of the systems Tairāwhiti has in place, using the tools we have available to us,' said Mr Tou. 'We came here to see the ECC (Emergency Coordination Centre) design concept and the tools being used. We'll be taking from it the things that are suitable for us.' TEMO general manager Ben Green and readiness and operations manager Marcus Tibble showed the visitors the state of the art desalination units, the solar powered stations and a 50-litre water heater, as well as the award-winning COP (Common Operating Picture) among other things at the centre. 'Many of these are not things we have in the Cook Islands,' said Mr Tau, who loved the self-sustainability the equipment provided a community. 'It is very relatable here in terms of the population and challenges faced.' Mr Green had underlined the importance of not relying on a national system in times of crisis. 'It is good Ben recognises that and plans with that in mind.' Mr Tou had built an internationally award winning dashboard but wanted to take it to the next level based on what he had seen in Tairāwhiti. Ben Green said the visit was a win-win. 'We gain just as much when hosting international groups given our dispersed communities as well as the region being subject to being cut off,' said Mr Green. 'We often take for granted what resources and capabilities we have developed and imbedded here in Tairāwhiti, however and in context of the South Pacific, we actively collaborate with one another on the back of these events' Ms Napara said it had been an amazing trip. 'It is blowing my mind in a good way,' she said. 'I like the systems here (in Tairāwhiti) – they are so impressive. Everything is there right at your fingertips. We want to build a system where all the data is collected and saved.' The Cook Islands is made up of 15 islands – 13 of which are inhabited. Its biggest threat is cyclones but climate change had now meant they now regularly face coast inundation. The visitors were hugely grateful to NEMA and the Cook Islands government for their support for the trip.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
States and Cities Fear a Disaster Season Full of Unknowns Amid Federal Cuts
States and cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are heading into hurricane season with an extraordinary level of uncertainty, unable to gauge how significant cuts at vital federal agencies will affect weather forecasts, emergency response and long-term recovery. They are bracing for the likelihood that fewer meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will lead to less accurate forecasts, and that the loss of experienced managers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency will lead to less coordination and more inaction. Governors and mayors are also anticipating less financial aid, as the Trump administration shifts the burden of response and recovery away from the federal government. Exactly who will pay for what moving forward is a gaping question as disasters become bigger and costlier. 'There's no plan in writing for how FEMA intends to respond during this disaster season,' said Trina Sheets, the executive director of the National Emergency Management Association, which represents state emergency managers. 'Things seem to be changing on a daily basis. But there's no road map for states to follow or to be able to plan for.' FEMA did not respond to requests for comment. The Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting initiative led by Elon Musk, has left agencies that would normally be preparing for a run of extreme weather at this point in the year trying instead to find their footing after leadership changes and staffing cuts. FEMA has lost about a quarter of its full-time staff, including one-fifth of the coordinating officers who manage responses to large-scale disasters, according to a former senior official. Many of those employees made their own decision to leave. NOAA has lost about one-fifth of its staff, including hundreds of people from the National Weather Service. The thought of a shrunken FEMA — or eliminating the agency altogether, which President Trump has raised — is unnerving coastal residents like Trasi Sharp, of Sanibel Island, Fla. Her business, Over Easy Cafe, was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022. 'To just get rid of it with no plan is frightening,' Ms. Sharp said of the agency. It took her 18 months to rebuild, and then she lost $60,000 worth of equipment in Hurricane Milton last year, after the low-lying restaurant took on two-and-a-half feet of water. She did not receive FEMA assistance to repair her restaurant or her home, but she said the agency's debris removal services were essential to the island's recovery. 'It's just such a confusing time,' she added. 'We're all on pins and needles this season.' Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, whose department includes FEMA, said on Tuesday that the agency was prepared for hurricane season, which extends from June through November. Some of the other federal agencies involved in disaster response agreed, in responses to emailed questions. But the Army Corps of Engineers, which is often called on to help communities after storms, acknowledged that it did not know 'the full impact that staff departures or other reductions will have.' The unknowns extend beyond hurricanes. States and cities in the West, going into peak wildfire season, say they are concerned about how much they will be able to lean on the federal government after the Trump administration reduced the ranks of United States Forest Service personnel who support frontline firefighters. The domino effect may be that more local firefighters are deployed to help other jurisdictions fight wildfires sooner and for longer — leaving fewer available back at home, Chief Leonard Johnson of the McLane Black Lake Fire Department near Olympia, Wash., said in a news conference this month. Several state officials in the West said all the uncertainty affirmed their decision to devote more resources to their own firefighting efforts in recent years. 'We have made the effort to try to take our fate back,' said Stan Hilkey, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety. There is no historical comparison, since no other administration has made such deep cuts to FEMA or other disaster-response agencies. In the recent past, the nightmare scenario came in 2017, when FEMA struggled to respond to three devastating hurricanes in quick succession — Harvey, Irma and Maria — as well as widespread wildfires in California. The agency came close to running out of staff to deploy. At the start of that year's hurricane season, FEMA had 6,588 trained staff members available to deploy to disasters, according to agency records. As of Wednesday, it had 1,952. States with robust budgets and considerable experience with disasters, such as Texas and Florida, may be better suited to working with less federal help than less affluent, more rural states that have fewer funds to tap into. Climate change has not only made extreme weather more frequent and deadlier, but also more likely to hit where it rarely did before. Even some who believe that FEMA needs an overhaul have acknowledged that the speed and volume of the changes could make this disaster season bumpy. 'We're going to be massively transforming the response system while that response system has to be effectively responding,' Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican, said on Tuesday at the inaugural meeting of a Trump-appointed council that will make recommendations on FEMA's future. Few question the need for improvements to the nation's disjointed disaster response system, especially when it comes to long-term recovery. FEMA employees say they are often buried in months of paperwork. States and cities may submit a rebuilding proposal, only to find themselves caught in a lengthy back-and-forth after FEMA underestimates its price tag. Disaster victims often complain that FEMA takes too long, and offers too little, to be of real help. 'They need to be revamped,' said Karen Small, 54, whose elevated home on Sanibel Island suffered damage during Hurricane Ian. That storm caused more deaths in Florida than any in almost 90 years. After her property insurance payout fell short, Ms. Small turned to FEMA to help cover some of her repairs. Agency officials insisted on meeting in person four times to review her application, while she was staying more than three hours away. In the end, she received $700, the standard amount that FEMA offers disaster victims. 'That $700 covered my gas just to meet them,' she said. 'It was almost an insult.' Yet few can fathom disaster recovery without the federal government. 'My God, where would this community be without FEMA?' said Nic Hunter, the outgoing mayor of Lake Charles, near the Louisiana coastline, who steered the city through Hurricane Laura in 2020. His city alone claimed more than $200 million after that storm and Hurricane Delta that year, he said. Had the federal government not stepped in, the city would have had to raise taxes and cut back services to make up the difference. 'By and large, my experience with FEMA has been a positive one,' he said. FEMA is weighing whether to make it more difficult for states to qualify for financial assistance, and whether to reimburse state and local governments at a lower rate. The Trump administration wants states and cities to bear the brunt of the response and cost, saying they can be quicker and more effective. One possibility is to give states block grants to disburse as needed. 'He wants us to be there in a time of need, but he wants the response to be led by those who know best,' Ms. Noem told the advisory council on Tuesday. She asked members to think of a new name for the restructured agency. In previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic, new presidents had appointed permanent, Senate-confirmed administrators of FEMA by the onset of hurricane season. Mr. Trump has not. The administration pushed out Cameron Hamilton, its first acting head, after he told lawmakers this month that the agency should not be eliminated. He was replaced by David Richardson, who has no emergency management background and on his first full day told FEMA employees during a town hall that if any of them tried to get in his way, 'I will run right over you.' On Wednesday, Mr. Richardson told employees that he was rescinding the agency's previous strategic plan. He added that a new plan would be developed 'this summer,' according to a copy of the memo reviewed by The New York Times. When Arkansas was struck by tornadoes in March, FEMA surprised the state by initially denying its request to help victims cover housing, rental and other expenses. The federal government approved the request this month after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who served as press secretary during Mr. Trump's first term, sent a personal appeal to the president. Mayor Cara Spencer of St. Louis pleaded for help after a tornado ripped through her city on Friday, killing at least five people and causing an estimated more than $1.6 billion in damage. 'We're going to run out of resources here pretty quickly,' she said in an interview, calling it a 'classic' example of when the federal government needs to step in. Beyond concerns about funding, emergency managers fear that sharp cuts to federal weather forecasting may give them less precise information to make decisions on evacuations, shelters and positioning of aid materials. 'Having an accurate forecast is one of the most critical pieces of information for effective warning and alerting of populations,' said David Merrick, who runs the emergency management and homeland security program at the Center for Disaster Risk Policy at Florida State University. NOAA did not respond to a request for comment. James Franklin, a meteorologist who retired in 2017 from the National Hurricane Center, which is part of the National Weather Service at NOAA, has seen administrations come and go and federal budgets grow and shrink. What is happening now, he said, is more alarming because it amounts to 'hostility to gaining knowledge about how the atmosphere works and how to make forecasts better.' 'We are largely giving up on the next 20 years of improvements that we could have had,' he said. 'The best we can kind of hope for right now is that we stagnate in our abilities to keep people safe over the next couple of decades.'
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
'Take action now': Inside the race to alert residents of Helene's wrath
This story was updated after it was initially published to make it free for all readers ASHEVILLE, N.C. − If she had known the rivers would swallow whole towns and neighbors would be swept away, Lindsey Miller would have better prepared – or left her home altogether. Her home near Boone, North Carolina, survived, but there was no power, cell service or water. Some neighbors filled buckets from a nearby river to flush toilets and washed children with bottled water. Miller recalled hearing the ping of emergency phone warnings early on the morning of Sept. 27, just hours before the water rushed in. By then it was too late. 'We knew there was a storm coming, but we didn't know it was going to be quite like that,' she said. 'We really weren't prepared at all.' As rescue teams combed rivers and towns for victims or survivors of the massive floods triggered by remnants of Hurricane Helene, communities grappled with the scope of devastation from the storm that caught many by surprise. The death toll across the Carolinas, Tennessee and Georgia as of Thursday afternoon was at 200 and expected to climb. In Buncombe County, North Carolina, the epicenter of the devastation that includes Asheville, authorities have counted at least 72 dead. Interviews with residents, experts, meteorologists and local officials paint a picture of a storm rapidly intensifying, barreling farther inland than usual with stunning ferocity. Authorities are just beginning the process of scrutinizing the alert systems that warned some but not all residents of the incoming catastrophic floods, and how systems could improve. The historic disaster presented unique challenges for emergency officials trying to evacuate and safeguard residents in a mountainous region assailed by multiple floods and tropical-storm winds. Residents from Tennessee to North Carolina complained they weren't given enough warning – or any warning at all – of the floodwaters that overtook their homes and the dams nearing their breaking points. 'There was no warning,' said Sunday Greer, a high school counselor at Sullivan East High School in Bluff City, Tennessee. 'Basically, we did not receive anything officially.' The emergency planning and response to the floods, from forecasts to evacuations, will be studied in the weeks and months ahead, said Russ Strickland, Maryland's emergency management director and president of the National Emergency Management Association. 'This one came with greater strength than they anticipated,' he said. 'Before it's all over, there will be some very serious conversations with NOAA, the forecast office of NHC, state officials. Did they miss something? Was there an indication?'As Helene gathered strength in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Buncombe County officials began taking phone calls from meteorologists as they tracked the storm's path and intensity. Helene was several days away from making landfall near Florida's Big Bend. But a cold front had recently swept through western North Carolina, unleashing storms and dumping more than 6 inches of rain in the mountainous region, swelling streams and saturating the ground. Helene was a large, strong, fast-moving storm – heading right at them and promising to dump more water. Related: Maps track Hurricane Helene's 800-mile path of destruction across southeastern US The threat looked so dire that by Wednesday, Sept. 26, Buncombe County officials declared a local state of emergency for low-lying areas, such as Asheville and Montreat, the county's director of communication, Lillian Govus, told USA TODAY. Later that day, they stood up an Emergency Operations Center in the county emergency services building just north of Asheville. County manager Avril Pinder, Assistant Emergency Services Director Ryan Cole and law enforcement and fire officials, among others, gathered to digest the data and forecasts and decide what to do with all of it. 'CATASTROPHIC FLASH FLOODING POSSIBLE,' warned a post on the Buncombe County Facebook site that day, repeating the warning in Spanish for its nearly 22,000 Latino residents. No evacuations were ordered. Around the same time, Clay Chaney, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Weather Forecast Office in Greer, South Carolina, settled into his workspace and began tracking Helene's activity in the Gulf. Responsible for upstate South Carolina, western North Carolina and parts of Georgia, Chaney sensed mountain flooding would be the biggest threat to his region. He was all too aware of the thunderstorms raking the region. Known as 'predecessor events,' the storm created dangerous conditions for Helene's path. A hydrologist in his office mulled over river gauge readings and other data to forecast flood threats. By Tuesday, Sept. 24, Chaney and others began holding daily webinars, hourlong virtual chats with local and state emergency management officials in his region, including Buncombe County. At 3:30 p.m., more than 230 people dialed in, as Chaney talked through a series of slides showing Helene's path, wind speed and the potential of severe flooding as it reached the Appalachian range. Low-lying areas needed to be ready for 'worst-case scenarios,' he told those on the call. Chaney patiently answered questions as the webinar stretched to nearly an hour. The next morning, Wednesday, Sept. 25, Chaney reached his office and his heart sank – the rainfall totals from the earlier thunderstorms were as high as feared, up to 9 inches in some places. Fresh rains could create historic floods, he and others predicted. That day, rain from Helene's outer bands began dropping in the region. 'We were like, 'Oh crap, this is really about to get bad,' he said. At the Sept. 25 webinar with emergency officials, Chaney stepped up the rhetoric, comparing the upcoming floods to those of the 'Great Flood of 1916,' a deluge that overran towns, killed at least 80 people in Buncombe County and destroyed homes, factories and railroads. His office also released posts on social media sites with dire predictions. '*URGENT MESSAGE*,' it began. 'This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era. Record flooding is forecasted and has been compared to the floods of 1916 in the Asheville area.' The post added: 'We cannot stress the significance of this event enough. Heed all evacuation orders from your local Emergency Managers …' Throughout the region, river gauges were heralding unprecedented rises and forecasting historic highs. The gauge at French Broad River at Asheville showed the river rise more than 2 feet an hour, from 2.31 feet at 3 p.m. Wednesday to 10.19 feet at 9 a.m. Thursday. 'By Thursday, we're pretty much forecasting the worst-case scenario,' Chaney said, 'and letting our partners know about it.' Not everyone was tuned in to the impending storm. Denia Zuniga, 44, a native of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, living about 10 miles east of Asheville in Swannanoa, had worked back-to-back shifts cleaning homes and had not been following the news. As she left work late Thursday, a co-worker told her a hurricane was coming but didn't say where. She didn't think much of it. That night, it rained but otherwise nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She fed her kids, Estefany, 10, and Anthony, 18, and went to sleep with her husband, Pedro Rivera Hernandez, 43, also from Honduras. Her smartphone never rang with alerts. In Buncombe County, officials were heeding forecasters' warnings. At 4 p.m. Thursday, officials from Buncombe and Henderson counties, as well as the North Carolina Highway Patrol, held a virtual news conference over Zoom, broadcast over several official social media sites, to warn residents of the forecast of 'catastrophic' and 'historic' flooding and suggested, for the first time, that residents in flood-prone areas should evacuate. Pinder, the county manager, warned that an estimated 15,000 homes in flood-prone areas could be hit by rising waters. 'We cannot stress enough the seriousness of this situation,' she said. 'If you live in a flood prone area … you should take action now – right now.' As Helene's outer bands strummed into western North Carolina late Thursday and early Friday, dumping rain over the region, rivers swelled, quickly overflowing in some areas. At about 4 a.m., lights started to flick off across the county as power outages swept the region. Emergency personnel reported rivers in Buncombe County overtaking their banks and rushing down roads. At 5:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 27, Chaney dispatched an urgent warning to Buncombe County: 'FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY FOR SWANNANOA RIVER VALLEY BELOW NORTH FORK RESERVOIR …' The message buzzed cellphones throughout the county as Wireless Emergency Alerts, the same alerts that warn residents of incoming tornadoes. Forty-five minutes later, at 6:15 a.m., Buncombe County issued its own emergency warning: a mandatory evacuation order that beeped into phones via the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS, FEMA's system for local emergencies. The county didn't need approval from the state to order the mandatory evacuation, Govus said. But at that point, it was too late to get out, Chaney said. 'By the time you get a flash flood emergency, it's way too late to evacuate,' he said. 'At that point, your only option is to go to higher ground.' Zuniga woke up early Friday as winds pounded the walls of her home. She peeked outside and saw a thin layer of water covering the yard and street outside. She shook her husband awake and checked her phone: no signal. By the time she threw on clothes and stepped outside to warn a neighbor, the water had risen nearly to her knees, she said. Everywhere she looked, water rushed around her. It was time to go, she thought. She grabbed her kids and their passports and Hernandez drove them off in his truck. Within a few hours, floodwaters had swallowed their home. The water rushed up so fast that many of her neighbors were trapped in their homes and had to be rescued, Zuniga said. "We lost everything," she said later at a shelter where she and her family retreated to in nearby Fletcher. "Everything we owned was in that house." She wished she'd had an earlier warning. "We would've evacuated," Zuniga said. "Knowing what was coming, we would've left." All that Friday, walls of muddied water rushed down roads and highways, tossing houses off foundations, mauling bridges and sweeping residents into the torrent. By afternoon, the French Broad River at Asheville had crested at 24.67 feet, breaking its record from the 1916 flood by more than a foot, according to NOAA. Another French Broad River gauge at Fletcher, marked its crest at 30.31 feet – more than 10 feet higher than its record crest in 2004. Govus said they relied on river readings to decide when to evacuate. But the sheer scope and destructive force of the floods took everyone by surprise. 'It was like being hit by Niagara Falls for five hours straight,' she said. As other communities dug themselves out of the flood's rubble, other residents and officials complained they weren't given enough warning. In East Tennessee, dams owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power provider, provided a critical mechanism for slowing the flow of Helene's historic floodwaters as they tore down mountains across the state line. Flooding upstream of the dams was devastating in some places, prompting a dramatic airlift evacuation of 62 people from a hospital rooftop in Unicoi County. The Nolichucky River, which turned the hospital into an island, flowed with nearly twice the volume of Niagara Falls over a small TVA dam downstream. Eleven flooding deaths were confirmed in Tennessee by Oct. 2, and officials expected the number to grow. By the time the first flash flood emergency warnings buzzed into Kriston Hicks' phone at 9:20 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 27, the water already had muscled into her home in Hampton, Tennessee, which she shared with her 78-year-old grandfather and six dogs. Deciding to evacuate, she waded through water to retrieve her grandfather and carry him to her van. 'No one came to tell me," Hicks said. "There is no siren in Hampton." Though her home was destroyed by the flood and torn down on Wednesday, Hicks was reunited with four dogs. Other residents received the alerts – but didn't heed them. In Erwin, Tennessee, Zully Manzanares saw the warnings that began the night of Sept. 26, but didn't grasp the scope of the disaster headed her way. 'We've gotten them before," she said. But she never thought the warnings would lead to the devastation she saw. Manzanares, a Head Start program coordinator and bilingual Spanish speaker, helps immigrants in Erwin's Hispanic neighborhoods. At least three members of the community who worked at the Impact Plastics on the Nolichucky River have been confirmed dead or missing. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into the incident, including allegations that employees were told to stay at work during the floods. The company has denied the allegations. The flooding continued beyond the dams, too. Some downstream residents, like Greer, the Bluff City high school counselor, said they were not warned of continued flooding as the utility released record amounts of water through spill gates. 'They're … saying they've got to prepare for the next storm,' Greer said. 'They didn't prepare for the first storm.' On Thursday, Sept. 26, the day before the floods, Watauga County, North Carolina, officially declared a state of emergency. County officials sent out wireless alert warnings via cellphones, but with cell service down, many of those alerts never reached phones, said William Holt, the county's emergency services director. As Helene approached and conditions deteriorated, Holt said, emergency officials struggled with where residents could be safely evacuated – if there was such a route. An initial city shelter flooded and had to be moved, he said. Two people in the area died in landslides. 'The last thing we would want to do is to move someone from one area to another just to put them in harm's way,' he said, and added: 'There was nowhere to get out of the way in this type of event.' Jervis and Kenning reported from North Carolina, Dassow reported from Tennessee. Reach Jervis on X: @MrRJervis. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NC flooding: Inside the race to alert residents to Helene's wrath
