The recent tragedy in Texas, with at least 120 people killed and 160 people missing at the time of this writing, has people pointing fingers at what went wrong. Assigning blame is not going to bring lives back. But examining what went wrong does provide opportunity to help prevent it from happening again – both in Texas and in other areas vulnerable to flooding. We live in such an area.
Investigations are just starting in Texas to understand how this tragedy could have been prevented. One line of investigation is about how much recent cuts to the Weather Service affected timely flood notification. Another key issue is the lack of an effective early warning system. Obviously, whatever was in place was inadequate. No level of government was willing to pay for installing a sufficiently robust warning system. Compounding the misery now is that FEMA may not be responding to many calls, and people simply can’t find assistance.
With the future role of FEMA in doubt, the need increases for local and state governments to address extreme weather events. This can include prevention – things such as maintaining early warning systems, expanding dikes, dams and other control structures (all of which can be quite costly), and restrictions on what can be built in at-risk areas (sure to be opposed by many who want no restrictions on what can be built on their own properties). It is very clear from the Texas example, as well as locally following Hurricane Helene, that doing nothing results in deaths, and enormous costs.
Our recent state budget used some of its surplus to address emergency response, including $50 million for disaster mitigation and Hurricane Helene relief. That may seem like a lot of money, but is a very small part of the Hurricane costs, estimated between $95 and $250 billion in damages and recovery. Of course, no amount of money matters to the at least 250 deaths attributed to this hurricane in the United States. Vital in deciding what to do going forward is to realize that major weather events will continue to increase in frequency and number. What we used to call a 100-year storm, and expect to occur only every 100 years, now occurs much more frequently. Catastrophic storms no longer are a once-in-a-lifetime event. Another major hurricane could occur here even this summer and do even more destruction than last year. Protection and response systems that seemed adequate in the past meet little of the need going forward.
Keep in mind too that state budget surpluses are not common – this one reflected an unusually good economic situation back in 2024. So – what should local governments, and the state, be doing? At a minimum, let’s hope there is robust discussion amongst our legislators, followed by meaningful action. Residents need to get involved too. Protecting against future events will be costly, but ignoring changes in extreme weather events will cost even more.
