Category Archives: Hazard Mitigation

Filming on the Texas Gulf Coast

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It has been a couple of months since I last posted a video of our progress in filming for Planning to Turn the Tide. That last article summarized our film efforts in Jacksonville, Florida, in September 2023, but we had another trip in the offing then, to the Texas Gulf Coast. In between, as noted in a January 1 post, I underwent prostate surgery on September 29, which required at least a month of rest and inactivity at home before venturing out again, in order to ensure successful recovery. But on November 7, I met up with videographer David Taylor at Houston Hobby Airport and we drove to Corpus Christi, where the annual conference of the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association was getting underway. The new blog video presented here was filmed there but edited and produced later.

Devastation in the Bolivar Peninsula from Hurricane Ike, 2009

Despite my own challenges, what compelled this schedule was that conference at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi because it allowed us to interview eight Texas planners who have been prominently involved in efforts to confront and address resilience issues along the Gulf Coast, where coastal storms and flooding remain major concerns. Hurricane Harvey, which struck in the fall of 2017, may be the most famous, and famously expensive, disaster of recent history in the area but is certainly not unique. People with a longer memory can cite Tropical Storm Allison, which struck Houston in 2001, and Hurricane Ike, which devastated Galveston in 2008, as part of the long parade of such events.

It is easy enough to cite shortcomings of the past that made destruction in such storms worse than it needed to be, but it is also important to note the resources that Texas has created to tackle those problems, including Texas Target Communities, a program at Texas A&M University that aids resource-challenged communities. These groups were present at the Texas APA conference, and we interviewed both Jaimie Masterson, the director of Texas Target Communities, and Shannon Van Zandt, a professor of urban planning at the Texas A&M School of Architecture, who has long researched and advocated for better affordable housing solutions in disaster recovery.

Tornado impacts in Van Zandt County, Texas, April 2017. Seven tornadoes struck the area in one evening.

I should also note that disaster resilience has been a consistent theme of the Texas Chapter. Back in November 2017, I spent time in Texas at the behest of the chapter, which asked me to facilitate and keynote a recovery workshop in Canton, Texas, following a series of tornadoes there, but I also worked with their Harvey Recovery Task Force well into 2020. The film trip grew out of that partnership, which extends even further back to my speaking at chapter conferences in El Paso and Galveston after Hurricane Ike. We want to thank the Texas Chapter for their logistical and promotional support during the conference.

Peer exchange workshop in Rockport, February 2020, involving Harvey and Sandy recovery planners. Kim Mickelson, of Houston, with microphone, is moderating this session.

Following our time in Corpus Christi, we drove up the coast to Rockport, the site of the first landfall of Hurricane Harvey, where we interviewed four community leaders, including a city council member, the local newspaper editor, the public works director, and a former president of the local chamber of commerce, about Rockport’s experience in recovery. I have learned a great deal in recent years about Rockport, in large part because of my work with Amanda Torres, the former city planner there, now working for the Corpus Christi Planning Department, and Carol Barrett, a veteran planner now living in Austin, who led APA’s Community Planning Assistance Team in Rockport in 2019. They helped me design the Rockport case study for an interactive workshop, including both graduate students and practicing planners, that is part of a course I teach for the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs.

We ended our trip in Houston, which included a tour of largely Hispanic neighborhoods in the shadow of the city’s huge petrochemical complexes, where they face ongoing racially disparate environmental impacts. We were hosted on that tour by TEJAS Barrios, a local environmental justice advocacy group. We hope to return to Houston, but our challenge for now is to raise substantial money to try to complete the film project in the coming year. Fortunately, our core team has grown, with more hands on deck focused on fundraising. If you are willing to help, you can donate here or use the QR code below to contribute online at the APA website.

 

Jim Schwab

Resilience Gains Traction in Florida

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How does a regional planning council plan for and demonstrate local climate resilience in a state like Florida? One answer is diligence—establishing clear goals and the means of measuring progress toward achieving them, even in the face of some political skepticism and, in some cases, opposition to effective planning tools. For those of us involved in the film project of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, Planning to Turn the Tide: Creating Resilient Communities, this brought us back to Florida one more time right after Labor Day. The occasion was the annual conference of the Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association, which took place at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville from September 5-8.

But first, I wanted to offer a short note for readers on why there has been a longer gap between posts on this blog since September. Two main factors delayed this article, which will, I hope, restore the earlier pace. The first was surgery. I was aware since last spring that medical developments would probably lead to prostate surgery, though I only learned in August what type of surgery and what it would mean. It took place on September 29, and I am still emerging from a variety of activity and dietary restrictions that followed during the recovery period. I may write about that more fully later, but it kept me out of circulation for about a month. The second was a week-long trip to Texas, for reasons similar to the Florida trips, that began with my arrival in Houston on November 7. We recorded additional blog videos in Texas, along with a dozen interviews for the movie, and you will read and hear about that in coming weeks.

Click here for a video summary of our interviews in Jacksonville.

Florida APA annual conference reception at Hyatt Regency Jacksonville

One impetus for our trip to Jacksonville was that the Florida Chapter extended a gracious invitation and welcome to our team early in the summer, encouraging us to attend and film at the conference, and providing accommodations to do so, including a press pass for our videographer, David Taylor, and a room next to the staff office for the conference in which we conducted the interviews. They were and have been fully supportive of our undertaking and helped forge a working partnership with our division that we have used as a model with other chapters subsequently. We are very grateful to Florida APA President Whit Blanton and the chapter staff for their assistance and their understanding of the value of what we are trying to accomplish.

The other primary impetus was a need to fill in the gaps in the story we had already recorded about Florida’s natural hazard challenges and struggle to confront the impacts of climate change, sea level rise, and rapid urban growth. We had learned, for instance, from staff at the Tampa Baby Regional Planning Council that they had borrowed lessons in resilience planning from the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, a four-county consortium that was the first to tackle the impacts of climate change on a multi-county regional basis. Their leadership is not surprising when one considers the high stakes of climate change, such as increased impacts of storm surge from hurricanes when coupled with sea level rise, or increased salt-water intrusion into groundwater sources, among other considerations. The potential ramifications involve billions of dollars in climate-resilient infrastructure investments over coming decades. That sort of problem, when faced realistically, absolutely demands visionary planning.

So, we decided to identify and interview some of the best and most experienced planners addressing these issues. The Florida APA conference afforded a certain efficiency in finding many of these people in the same place at the same time, but it also let us learn that the Northeast Florida Regional Council, based in Jacksonville, is adapting its own lessons in resilience in a part of the state that once tended to see itself as immune to the sorts of major coastal storms that afflict most of Florida. Now they are seeking to confront and prepare for such eventualities. In each region that begins to adapt resilience planning to its own needs, experience with such approaches grows, and Florida gets steadily smarter in its strategies for coping with its environmental challenges, even as population growth and new urban development continue to raise the bar. The challenge is relentless, but progress is essential.

To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.

Jim Schwab

Lasting Lessons in Resilience

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In the latter half of June 2008, it was hard to imagine Cedar Rapids as the city it had been just one month earlier. A massive flood along the Cedar River clobbered the city with a classic double whammy: About the time existing flood crests that had already swamped upstream Cedar Falls hit Cedar Rapids, a severe thunderstorm reached the city to compound the impact. The river, which runs through downtown in this city of 130,000 people, reached a flood level of 31.2 feet, besting the all-time previous record of 20 feet, reached in 1851 and 1929.

Downtown Cedar Rapids undergoing debris removal, late June 2008

Flood waters covered 14 percent of the city, more than 10 square miles. About 10 percent of the city’s population was evacuated from the deluge. Highway ramps became inaccessible, and at one point, a bus carrying prisoners from the county jail stayed just inches ahead of the rising waters to make its escape. City Hall, unfortunately situated on Mays Island in the middle of the river, was underwater, and governmental operations were moved to high ground elsewhere. In the end, nearly 1,300 flood-damaged homes were demolished, many making way for permanent open space as the city used federal hazard mitigation grants to acquire the properties with deed restrictions. Amazingly, as city officials have often said, there were no deaths due to the flood.

Relocated Czech & Slovak National Museum following June 2008 flood, Cedar Rapids

The avoidance of loss of life can be credited to the city and Linn County’s rapid response, which was not limited to emergency management. Within days, the Cedar Rapids City Council adopted a set of recovery goals that guided planning for long-term recovery for months and years afterwards. It shifted outside consulting contracts from riverfront planning to flood recovery. And it moved forward with a litany of creative approaches to business restoration, employment stabilization, and affordable housing development. Cedar Rapids became a living laboratory for community resilience.

For that reason, we made a special point during our Colorado to Iowa road tour for the film Planning to Turn the Tide, the documentary project of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, to interview five essential city staff members on Tuesday, July 18, before closing out our trip by heading back to Chicago. These included City Manager Jeff Pomeranz and Community Development Director Jennifer Pratt.

Click here to hear two Cedar Rapids officials—Jennifer Pratt and Brenna Fall—discuss why they are supporting the HMDR film project.

These lessons have had lasting impacts in Cedar Rapids, which also suffered massive tree canopy devastation, as well as building damage, from an August 2020 derecho whose worst winds, exceeding 140 mph, swept through Linn County, including several suburbs. Taking climate change seriously, the city also last year adopted its own climate action plan. Cedar Rapids has quite probably done more to attack these problems in a forward-looking fashion than any other city in Iowa.

In coming weeks, this blog will feature new video clips from a four-day visit to the Florida APA conference in Jacksonville in early September. Meanwhile, plans are afoot for a November trip to Texas to capture additional content from the Texas APA conference in Corpus Christi, follow a mobile workshop exploring Hurricane Harvey recovery in Rockport, a Gulf Coast city where Harvey first made landfall in September 2017, and visit environmentally disadvantaged communities in the Houston area and record interviews with planners and activists there. Those posts will acknowledge the gracious support we are already receiving from several organizations and institutions in Texas.

To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.

Jim Schwab

Striving for Flood Resilience in Iowa

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Collapse of the CRANDIC railroad bridge during the 2008 floods in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

In 2008, much of Iowa experienced such massive floods that 10 percent of Cedar Rapids was evacuated, books were being rescued from the basement of the University of Iowa Library, and homes were under water in Cedar Falls. Dozens of other Iowa communities faced flood waters to varying degrees, all remembering that it was only 15 years earlier that they had dealt with another massive emergency in the Midwest floods of 1993. After billions of dollars of damage and thousands of lost homes, Iowans were forced to confront the fact that so-called 100-year floods might in fact be far more frequent events of the future and that climate change was a reality for the Midwest as well as coastal states.

It was in this environment of concern about how Iowa would cope with future flood emergencies and disasters that the Iowa Legislature decided in 2009 to establish the Iowa Flood Center (IFC). Born of cooperative discussions between IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa and state leaders, the Iowa Flood Center became a leading model for state technical outreach to communities regarding flood mitigation, flood awareness, and warning systems, including an extensive system of stream gauges. Centered at the Stanley Hydraulics Laboratory along the Iowa River, the Center manages the Iowa Flood Information System, a platform that gives communities across the state easy access to inundation maps, alerts, and real-time data on stream conditions.

Over intervening years, I have occasionally worked with staff at the Iowa Flood Center. In addition to their collaborative work in one flood recovery consulting project for the Iowa Economic Development Authority in which I participated, I also have hosted Associate Director Nate Young as a guest speaker in my University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs class, “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery.” In every instance I have seen, IFC has been a class act. Visitors from other states have been intrigued with the Center as a model for their own states.

It should be no surprise at this point that I decided early on that our film project, Planning to Turn the Tide, needed to include some content about the work of the Iowa Flood Center and the changes it has introduced to flood preparation and recovery in Iowa. On July 17, as David Taylor and I were making our way back east from Colorado, we stopped in Iowa City for the purpose of taping an interview with IFC Director Witold Krajewski, a veteran environmental engineer who has become intimately familiar with the hazard mitigation and planning needs of the hundreds of small communities, as well as larger cities, throughout a state that has seen more than its fair share of flood disasters. We also met with Kate Giannini, Iowa Watershed Approach Program Manager, about access for our film project to flood footage and other resources from the Iowa Flood Center that would help tell the story visually as well as in words.

Click here to watch the blog video about our visit to Iowa City.

As always, if you wish to support the Planning to Turn the Tide documentary film project, use this link or the QR code below to access our donations link on the APA website. We can use your help and will truly appreciate the support.

Jim Schwab

Decade of Recovery and Resilience in Colorado

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Victoria Simonsen discussing a map of the town’s flood damage with visitor, 2014

Ten years ago this month, Colorado faced a crisis. Following previous years of drought and wildfires, Rocky Mountain monsoon rains dumped a year’s worth of precipitation on the Front Range in a single day. Water poured down mountainsides that were sometimes so parched and scorched from previous high heat and fires that they could not absorb the rainfall, which then carried mud and debris downhill through the towns in its path. One of those towns was Lyons, which we visited on July 13 to interview Town Administrator Victoria Simonsen, who has remained on the job through thick and thin, helping to guide a remarkable recovery. But she also helped arrange for us to interview homeowner Priscilla Cohan, who is also a local artist, and Neil Sullivan, owner of the St. Vrain Market local grocery store. He has also served on the town’s planning commission, and his wife served two terms as mayor during the recovery.

Click here to watch the blog video recorded in Lyons.

I had previously visited Lyons twice in the early years after the flood, discussing some of the situation in an early blog post here. During the same time, a Community Planning Assistance Team (CPAT) from the American Planning Association spent several days visiting Lyons and producing a report with its own recommendations for moving forward. Lyons received other outside help too, from agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, of course, but also from entities like the planning school at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Aerial view of damage to bridge over St. Vrain River in September 2013

Now, the town is moving forward this month with a commemoration of that infamous flood that divided this Rocky Mountain hillside community into six islands divided by flood waters, compounding the difficulties of search and rescue until the flood waters receded. Why did we go there now? We wanted to capture this story and learn how it fit into a larger story of the State of Colorado building capacity for local governments to develop resilience in the face of cascading disasters like drought, wildfires, landslides, and flooding. We will integrate that story into the final film product for Planning to Turn the Tide, made possible by the assistance of people like Simonsen and numerous other volunteers from the Colorado APA Chapter and the Colorado planning community.

If you wish to support this endeavor, please use the QR code below or link here.

Jim Schwab

Filming at the Omni

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As previous installments of our blog video series have indicated, the production team for Planning to Turn the Tide spent a great deal of time in June and July first in Florida, then on a two-week road trip to Colorado and Iowa from Chicago to capture additional content.

Click here to see the short video taped at the Omni Interlocken Hotel and Resort in Broomfield, Colorado.

From July 9-12, we attended and filmed at the Natural Hazards Workshop, held at the Omni, completing eleven interviews with leading planners and hazards experts:

This range of expertise became available to us largely because of the enthusiastic support of the Natural Hazards Center, part of the University of Colorado, and its executive director, Lori Peek, who arranged meeting room space where we could set up equipment, and to which we could direct those willing to be interviewed for the film. In addition, I was able to scout plenary and breakout sessions for promising speakers, some of whom are on the list above, to supplement those I contacted ahead of time.

Natural Hazards Workshop Barbecue on closing night, University of Colorado Stadium (Folsom Field), July 2013

It may be obvious, at least to those experienced in such productions, that a one-hour documentary can use only a small fraction of the recordings we have gathered to date, but the beauty lies in our ability to identify those segments that will best help tell the larger story and illuminate the issues involved in planning for resilient communities in the face of natural disasters and climate change. Each of these highly trained and knowledgeable individuals gave us new perspectives and ideas to think about as we develop our film. The end product will be richer for it. But it is also likely that we will find other ways to use some of the material that does not make it into the initial film efforts, in part because the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, which is sponsoring and supporting the project, has other avenues for offering public and professional education on hazards.

And who is to say that, as time goes on, and with additional resources, this is our one and only film? If you wish to support our efforts, please use the QR code below to make a secure donation.

Jim Schwab

Fort Myers and the Impact of Hurricane Ian

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In last week’s post, I discussed on our video blog the interviews we had conducted for Planning to Turn the Tide in Sarasota County, Florida, during our mid-June trip through southwestern Florida. Today, we wrap up the Florida trip with a brief video blog about our visit to Fort Myers and Fort Myers Beach, which both suffered the brunt of the impact of Hurricane Ian in September 2022. Despite repeated efforts to identify and contact planning and administrative officials in Fort Myers Beach, we never succeeded, even with the help of some area volunteers. Perhaps if we had more time in our tight schedule, we could have persisted, but my time, at least, was about to expire that weekend before flying back to Chicago on Monday, June 19. The clock ran out for us, but we did tour the city and gather extensive dashcam footage of conditions there. This Category 4 storm substantially damaged more than 1,000 homes in a city of 5,600 people.

City Hall was obliterated by Hurricane Ian, and recent news from the city indicates that the building was slated for demolition starting today. You can see a tour of the damaged City Hall on this local NBC video clip, and you can see the beginning of that process in a Fox news video.

We did, however, conduct an interview that Friday morning, June 16, with Tony Palermo, assistant director of community development for the City of Fort Myers, at that City Hall and learned a great deal about what Fort Myers had experienced. Tony generously followed with a personal tour on foot and by car of the downtown area, again allowing us to gather additional footage of the area. Many downtown businesses suffered flood damage with two to three feet of water, but nowhere near the direct impact of Fort Myers Beach. When we visited, most were back in operation.

Our upcoming video blog posts will take us to destinations in Colorado and Iowa, which videographer David Taylor and I covered during a two-week road trip from July 6-18. Stay tuned.

As always, if you wish to support the project, please use the QR code below for an online donation.

Jim Schwab

Addressing Hazards in Sarasota County

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A bit more than a month ago, I introduced this blog audience to Planning to Turn the Tide, the film project being undertaken by the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. I noted that we would be rolling out a series of updates as we completed work on new trips around the country, but the first was in Southwest Florida in late June of this year. A week later, we shared the first blog video discussing our progress, focusing on a series of interviews with planners and others at the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Commission. Today, I am sharing the second blog video, which discusses our subsequent work in Sarasota County.

Phillippi Creek in southern Sarasota County

Click here to watch the summary video about the interviews we conducted in Sarasota County.

Those interviews included:

SW Florida, USGS map. Sarasota is midway along the central coast in this section. 

One key point throughout the discussions was that Hurricane Ian at one point had been projected to move through Sarasota County before weather patterns in the Gulf of Mexico pushed it eastward into Lee County and Fort Myers instead. That near-miss still allows Sarasota County officials, like those further north in Tampa Bay, to make the point that preparation for a direct hit in a future storm is the entire region’s best bet.

Except for one unrelated post on July 4, it has been a while until now. David Taylor and I left Chicago on a road trip on July 6 to film in Colorado and Iowa, returning on July 18. The delay since then in putting this series back on track arose from both a short-term illness and a long to-do list of other tasks once I was back home, but here we are. We have much more to share now about Florida, Colorado, and Iowa to keep readers aware of our progress, so please keep tuning in every few days. We’ll be working to keep you updated.

If you wish to support the project, please use the QR code below for an online donation.

Jim Schwab

The Earth Is Speaking to Us

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Like most people, I am not worried about the wrath of ancient pagan gods, but I had to wonder. It was just a week ago, amid the horrible air quality in the Midwest, including Chicago, that I told my wife that a good rainstorm might serve to clear the air of many of the particulate pollutants from distant Canadian wildfires. Visibility had been horrible, and Chicago was for two or three days ranked among the world’s dirtiest cities. Due to numerous variables, one must qualify what I said, but generally, rain can be expected to clear the air somewhat.

For healthy individuals, particularly those like myself without any serious respiratory illness, it was still easy to notice that breathing became a bit more strained during that air pollution emergency as fine particles from burning forests drifted through the region. For those with asthma, COPD, and other respiratory challenges, it must have been literally breath-taking to step outside. Those who could found ways to stay indoors, especially if air conditioning could help to filter air quality.

I mention the vengeance of pagan gods because I truly did not expect what happened on Sunday, July 2. It began early in the morning before dawn, maybe a bit before midnight in some places, but the skies opened up to produce record-breaking downpours. It was raining heavily by the time I woke up, around 6 a.m. It was still raining when my wife and I took our grandson to church. The windshield wipers never stopped, and we brought a large umbrella and wore raincoats. Afterwards, around 11:30 a.m., we left Hyde Park to head north along Jean Baptiste DuSable Lakeshore Drive to our home on the North Side, only to find the 47th St. entrance to Lakeshore blockaded.

Flooding July 2 near 95th St. on Chicago’s South Side. Photo by Greg Mathis

While the city was hosting NASCAR races on downtown streets over the weekend (not an event that I find worth the annoyance), blocking access at 47th seemed like an unlikely measure, so I assumed that it was done because the rains had flooded parts of the drive. (It turned out that it was closed for NASCAR, but it created other problems for us in avoiding flooded streets.) After all, cell phones were receiving warnings about flash flood emergencies throughout the area. Traffic was rerouted because of flooding on I-290, a major corridor in the metro area.

I had to find a series of detours to make our way home, with a stop along the way on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive at a Culver’s restaurant for lunch after Jean complained she was getting hungry. The rain almost never stopped except for very short intervals. Precipitation eventually totaled anywhere from three to seven inches for the day, depending on the location, with totals exceeding eight inches in some suburbs. Certain neighborhoods that face more significant problems with drainage infrastructure experienced flooded basements, most notably the Austin area that is home to Chicago’s new mayor, Brandon Johnson, who toured the area yesterday. Also hard-hit were some western suburbs like Cicero. More than a few people were driven from their homes or faced a great deal of potentially expensive work in cleaning up the mess and replacing some furniture and appliances. Businesses providing such services kept their employees on the job through the July 4 holiday, in part because delays can facilitate the growth of mold.

Much of the damage was further demonstration of a problem that has become known as urban flooding, in which high-precipitation storms that are becoming more common as a result of climate change interact with urban areas whose drainage systems are not designed to handle them. This also introduces an environmental equity problem because many of those neighborhoods are older areas with high percentages of minority and low-income populations. This poses a serious planning challenge for cities like Chicago as they seek to remedy such inequities.

It has been twelve years since Mayor Rahm Emanuel dismantled the Chicago Department of the Environment that had been created under Mayor Richard M. Daley. One-term Mayor Lori Lightfoot had originally promised to restore it, but never did so. Now, Mayor Johnson has pledged to reestablish it, and this series of events may well push him hard to adhere to his promise. He said as much as he spoke about the challenges on Monday, July 3. A political science major as an undergraduate, I am not naïve enough to believe that recreating the department will solve all of Chicago’s many environmental problems, in part because mayors will come and go and priorities will change, but it cannot hurt for now to build some sort of political momentum behind whatever mission it is given. Based on Johnson’s statements so far, one could reasonably expect that climate issues would be high on the agenda. But we shall see. Actions speak louder than words.

But certain words matter because they frame the problem being addressed. According to the Chicago Tribune, Johnson told reporters, “Literally, the earth is speaking to us loud and clear, where extreme weather is taking place all over the country. . . .  [T]his is not likely the last extreme example of weather.”

It is time to roll up our sleeves. It is time to debate solutions, not the reality of climate change. In Chicago, at least, that is no longer much of an issue. The issue is what we aim to do about it.

Jim Schwab

Tampa Bay and the Quest for Resilience

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In my last blog post, I discussed the origins of a current active film effort, Planning to Turn the Tide, which I have been leading on behalf of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. This post, which includes the first of a series of blog videos recorded during our travels, discusses what we learned during our meetings and interviews around Tampa Bay, especially during an afternoon at the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council (TBRPC) in Pinellas Park, Florida, just north of St. Petersburg.

Click here to watch the summary video about the interviews at Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council.

One of our interviews featured Jerry Stickney, Director of the Sunshine Line, a Hillsborough County agency that provides transportation for disabled and disadvantaged people, including special services during natural disasters. That last point provided the bulk of our discussion because evacuating and sheltering these people during hurricanes, major storms, and other disasters is a major responsibility, but one that ensures some degree of social equity in the face of life-threatening circumstances. Hurricane Ian could easily have become the major hurricane that finally invaded the Tampa Bay region but instead turned east further south, striking the Fort Myers area.

Cara Serra, resiliency planner for TBRPC, discussed her role in facilitating the work of the Regional Resiliency Coalition, which consists of several working groups examining regional issues concerning shoreline management, infrastructure, stormwater management, and resilient building design and land use, among other concerns. They are currently developing a Regional Resiliency Action Plan.

In the quest for regional resilience, learning lessons from disasters elsewhere plays a major role, one that has not been neglected. Sarah Vitale, planning director for TBRPC, led the development of a new iteration of Project Phoenix, originally created in 2009, to help business leaders and others in the Tampa Bay region understand what the impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane might be if it took aim directly at Tampa Bay, something that last happened more than a century ago, when the population was barely one-tenth

Damage from Hurricane Michael, Bay County, FL. Photo by David Taylor

of what it is now. Her training workshop includes video clips of both a simulation of such a storm and real-life stories from Mexico Beach of economic recovery from Hurricane Michael, which struck the Florida Panhandle in October 2018.

Finally, we also spoke with Sean Sullivan, the executive director of TBRPC, whose engaging New England accent kept us captivated as he outlined his vision for a six-county region that is aware of its risks and prepared to handle the impacts of climate change. It is clear that he has a committed staff that is helping to implement that vision and develop the tools for effective change in that direction.

As promised in the video link above, here are links to the film trailer and the donations page to support Planning to Turn the Tide, the documentary film for which all this work is being done:

Film Trailer

Donations Page (QR code below)

Supplemental note:

The impacts of climate change are affecting us all, often in unexpected ways. As I write this, my own sinuses are recovering from the onslaught of smoky air, full of particulate matter, spread south by the winds from thousands of acres of Canadian forests being scorched by massive wildfires. Winds from such fires in Quebec swept through much of the Northeast two weeks ago, including New York City. Yesterday, it was the Midwest’s turn to suffer, and Chicago was one huge grey fog that burned the eyes and made even healthy people catch their breath. The Chicago Tribune reported that we had the worst air quality of 95 major cities worldwide.

If we needed a vivid illustration that climate change and its impacts know no borders, this is certainly it. That is one more reason we at HMDR find urgency in our mission to develop this film and discuss how better planning at local, regional, national, and even international levels can help us turn the rising tide of losses from natural disasters.

Jim Schwab