Okay, now I’m angry. I had not intended to produce another blog article quite so soon, but false prophets are rampaging through the vineyards of the Lord. Fortunately, there are only a few of them reported so far, two of whom have been cited for certain misdemeanor offenses. But with the coronavirus, it takes only two megachurch pastors calling hundreds of people to live church services to let loose the plague on not only their own followers but everyone around them. They need to get some common sense and knock it off.
In addition, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the founder of the fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia, has called students back to the campus after spring break, ignoring the actions of almost every other college in the nation to forsake such close contact and take lessons online for the duration of the semester. With several documented cases on campus already, the question is how many more students and staff will be infected.
In Central, Louisiana, Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church was arrested after holding services on Sunday in violation of the emergency order by Gov. John Bel Edwards for Louisiana residents to stay at home for the coming month. Released after his booking, he proceeded to defy the order again by holding services on Tuesday evening. As on Sunday, curious onlookers wondered what he was doing. On Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune, people in the neighborhood were questioning what made the people of the church think they were so special as to disregard Gov. John Bel Edwards’s stay-at-home order. No one is discriminating against anyone’s religious rights because the order does not prohibit online gatherings and similar modes of worship. It aims to limit large crowds to inhibit the spread of a deadly virus for which there is, as yet, no known vaccine or effective cure. That is a matter of public safety. Thousands upon thousands of other congregations nationwide are live-streaming church services as a substitute for assembling masses of people in a Sunday morning petri dish for coronavirus.
I write from personal experience. My own congregation, Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, in Chicago, suspended services more than two weeks ago, but provides recordings, readings, and other online and private opportunities for worship and meditation as we can. I serve as the coordinator for the Adult Forum, the Sunday school session for adults, which predictably draws its fair share of devoted seniors, who are at greatest danger of exposure, and about whom we are most concerned. We are not meeting until further notice. We may miss the interaction and the discussions, but we do not wish to put anyone’s life in danger. Our priority is safety. We want everyone to emerge from this in good health.
In Tampa, meanwhile, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of the River at Tampa Bay Church violated a stay-at-home order by holding services this past Sunday. He later turned himself in to authorities, but the law firm representing him maintains that the church practiced social distancing. Given the human interactions inevitably occurring in large crowds, that may be beside the point. However, USA Today reports that, in a Facebook post, Howard-Browne described coronavirus as “blown totally way out of proportion.” It is worth noting that Florida is nearing 7,000 confirmed cases with 87 deaths so far, and the trend is moving rapidly upward. One wonders if the families of victims share his perspective.
Mark my words: In the face of the pervasive concerns of neighbors and fellow citizens and fellow Christians, such defiance soon turns to arrogance. And arrogance demonstrates egotism, not faith.
Given several thousand deaths to date in the U.S., out of hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases, with untold suffering likely still to come, I have a simple question for these three ignorant gentlemen:
Who the hell do you think you are?
Pastor Tony Spell insists he will do it again because “God
told us to.”
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. All those other pastors and rabbis and imams and nuns and priests, including Pope Francis, who is not asking anyone to come to the Vatican for Easter because he cares about the lives of fellow human beings, seem to be getting a very different message, which I suggest might sound something more like this:
Take care of my people. Save lives, especially those of my elderly servants, by taking precautions. This is your chance to show how you love each other, protect each other, and lead each other through the valley of the Shadow of Death. Use this opportunity to make your communities stronger. And, for my sake, think about the lives and health of my thousands of servants on the front lines–the doctors, the nurses, the EMTs, the social workers, the police—they are parts of your flock to whom I have assigned great responsibilities. Please do not think me so vain nor so cruel as to insist on the continuation of live worship services during this crisis. This is your opportunity to show that I have gifted you with moral imagination. Use it.
Resilience has become almost a buzzword with regard to how communities handle adversity and disasters, albeit a very useful buzzword. It focuses our attention on how we can better prepare for and cope with such events. The question of the moment is how the concept of resilience applies to our response to coronavirus.
One of many hospitals in Chicago, all of which have visitor restrictions in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.
I am not and never have been a public health expert, though, as an urban planner and adjunct planning professor, I have often worked with such people. I say this because I want to be clear about the prism through which I am viewing the coronavirus pandemic as a public health disaster. What I bring to the task is decades of work, particularly as a research manager, in the subfield of hazards planning. I am known for deep expertise in hazard mitigation and planning for post-disaster recovery. In this article, I am reaching into that toolbox to help identify what we need to learn from the current crisis.
Specifically, part of what has become the standard approach to hazard mitigation planning is vulnerability analysis, the process of identifying what in plain English are weak links in the chain of community capabilities and capacities to manage and recover from a disaster. Every community, every nation has strengths and weaknesses built into its systems, which are really an ecosystem of economic, social, institutional, environmental, governmental, and other elements of the community that comprise the way the community functions in both sunny times and days of turmoil and dysfunction. How well can that community or nation restore itself, rebuild, adapt, and learn from its experiences? One of the most fundamental elements of success, for example, is trust in government and community leadership, something that is being tested right now in the U.S. That leadership can either greatly enable and empower or greatly hinder the capacity for effective response to, and planning for recovery from, a given disaster.
But my focus here is on what a vulnerability analysis of our response to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, might include. I say “might” because I do not pretend that what follows is comprehensive. It is merely suggestive. A more comprehensive list would best emerge from a summit of leaders and experts when it is time to decide on the lessons learned from this disaster. For now, leaders are rightly focused on using existing authorities and capacities to control the spread of the disease.
The main point of a vulnerability assessment is to identify potential points of failure relative to the hazard under consideration. For instance, with hurricanes or floods, we would want to know what roads or bridges would collapse or become impassable. We would also want to know the locations of substandard housing that might suffer damage or destruction or endanger its occupants. There are dozens of other examples of potential points of failure that I could list here, but presumably, you get the idea.
With the novel coronavirus, we are dealing with an invisible hazard that inflicts suffering and death on people, not buildings or structures, and—most importantly—for which there is not yet an identified cure or vaccine. Most people do not die, and many suffer only mild symptoms, but the spread of the disease is of radical concern in part through the slow rollout of testing kits in the U.S., which exacerbates an existing inability to know precisely who is infected, especially since many people test positive who are asymptomatic, that is, not exhibiting clear symptoms of the disease. Vulnerability depends on various factors, most notably, but not exclusively, age. Respiratory and other existing conditions can elevate that vulnerability, while some older people may be tough enough physically to weather the assault. Thus, identifying and classifying real and potential victims is a business fraught with uncertainty.
Given all that, where are the weak links in our communities? Many can be readily identified from the more routine aspects of vulnerability assessments, starting with governmental capacity:
To what extent has the city, state, or the federal government prepared and established capacity for anticipating the problem and quickly enabling the appropriate responses? It is perfectly logical to expect that greater capacity should exist at higher levels of government that have greater resources at their disposal.
What is the level of political maturity among the electorate, and the political will for undertaking and enforcing difficult but necessary decisions in a crisis?
The biggest questions surrounding coronavirus seem to relate to institutional capacity, some of which can obviously be enhanced or supported through governmental capacity, for example, in procuring and distributing the personal protective equipment, ventilators, and temporary hospital beds needed by the regional “hot spots” for virus outbreaks, which at the moment include New York, but also a frightening spike in confirmed cases and deaths in the last few days in Louisiana, possibly tied to the huge crowds attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans. These have led to Gov. Jon Bel Edwards issuing a stay-in-place order similar to those in effect in California, Illinois, and New York. Among obvious questions in a vulnerability assessment going forward:
What hospital capacity exists for treating large increases in numbers of patients in a future pandemic? This includes emergency room capacity, intensive care units, and other essential elements of the treatment process, as well as the ability to expand access to protective gear. It also involves the adequacy of skilled professionals to work with this increased patient load.
What capacity exists to monitor, work with, and even thin the population of crowded jails and prisons, where social distancing is effectively an oxymoron, and the potential for rapid spread of disease can amount to a death sentence for those confined behind bars?
What are the sanitary and patient care conditions in local nursing homes, and how effectively are they regulated? Nursing homes and similar facilities for elderly medical care have in some cases become virtual incubators for the spread of coronavirus, leading to situations where relatives can no longer visit.
Many of these questions also lead us to questions of economic vulnerability, which also pertain to social equity. Restaurants in states that have instituted closures of public places where people normally congregate in large numbers have laid off thousands, possibly millions of workers—the numbers change by the day—who often work for hourly wages and need every hour to pay the rent. Workers in the gig economy, the tourist economy, and the travel industry are all similarly vulnerable in varying ways. One result, even under normal circumstances, is that many of these workers, some of whom are also undocumented immigrants, are reluctant to take sick days because they have no paid sick leave. Often, they also have no paid health insurance, or cannot afford it.
That, in itself, needs eventually to be recognized by the United States as a source of pandemic at worst, or a threat to public health, at best. Take, for example, the story of a McDonald’s worker who shared the news that he went to work ill, vomited when he ran to the restroom, but was afraid to call in sick because a missed paycheck was a threat to his economic security. How often does that happen, and how reassuring can it possibly be to customers who even think about the potential consequences? Is anyone attempting to gather data on this problem? A worker rights organization, Arise Chicago, has been fighting for better protection for workers on this front for several years, and won passage of a Cook County ordinance in 2016, but the battle continues. At the moment, these workers either are laid off because of restaurant closures, or are adapting to the temporary new world in which their employers can sell takeout, drive-out through, or delivery.
But whether it is hotel, restaurant, or transportation workers (such as taxi and Uber drivers), among others, the vulnerability lies in the harsh facts that drive them to show up for work despite illness because of their lack of paid sick leave or medical coverage. Nowhere in America can an honest vulnerability assessment of future pandemics ignore these socioeconomic imperatives. Economic facts drive health impacts, which in turn drive at least some of the questions surrounding health care capacity. In this sense, one can see how identifying all the weak links in the chain of vulnerability means recognizing the interrelationships between the various categories of vulnerability I listed initially.
This description of the process could go on for many more pages, but it may be more important to let the complexity and interdependence of it all inspire further thought. With that in mind, let me offer a few other items for consideration:
Given the inability of some parts of the population to accept the necessity of temporary restrictions, how well prepared are we to control the wayward behavior of the few, even as the majority of our citizens show adequate consideration for others around them? What are we prepared to do about them?
In the event of a lockdown, what are we prepared to do for victims of domestic abuse who are suddenly trapped inside their homes with abusive partners, parents, or relatives? Do we have institutional capacity to remove them to safer quarters and the ability to answer their calls for help? Sheltering in place is hardly likely to make an abuser more sympathetic.
In what ways can we respond to the needs of homeless people, for whom the spread of a pandemic disease may increase due to proximity and unhealthy circumstances?
There are some very hopeful signs of creative thinking on these issues in local and state governments, if not in the White House. For example, the City of Chicago has reached agreement with several hotels to use hotel rooms as isolation rooms for victims of COVID-19, with the city paying for the capacity in advance. This relieves hospital capacity, to some degree, but it also provides some employment for hotel workers who would otherwise be idling at home because of the shutdown of the hospitality industry as both leisure travel and conventions grind to a halt. The workers will provide food in the kitchens and undertake other safe duties, while trained public health personnel deal directly with the quarantined patients. The hotels stay open, some workers stay employed, and some strain is removed from medical facilities. Some members of the Chicago City Council are now calling for the use of vacant public housing units for the same purposes.
Likewise, some otherwise closed YMCA facilities will begin accommodating the homeless while providing necessary social distancing. All of these are creative solutions that can emerge from identifying the weak links in the chain, and can provide cornerstones for sound planning for resilience in the face of future public health emergencies.
In short, let’s all keep our thinking caps on. We’re going to need them not just this time, but for the future as well.
If the doctor’s office had not called, I would not even have been here writing. I would perhaps have been on the CTA Blue Line on the way to my appointment, or more likely walking from the train station to his office. But they called less than an hour before the appointment. The urologist merely needs to follow up on a February 26 procedure, so could we just do a telephone consultation? Frankly, I had wondered why they had not offered that option already, so I accepted. The only difference it would make, I noted, was that I had planned to use the opportunity to shoot photos of the empty “el” cars, the empty streets as I moved up Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River, and perhaps the empty Millennium Park downtown, if it was in fact empty. Deprived of the need to go there, I simply walked the neighborhood, shot photos of restaurants open for takeout only, and took two shots of the empty el platform. Then the drizzling rain began, and it was time to come home and await the call, which came late as the doctor scrambled to maintain his schedule.
The Western Avenue Blue Line station platform, early afternoon, March 19. If you are not from Chicago, trust me: You have no idea how unusual it is for this platform to be so empty. This is the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Ridership is down by more than half.
But at least I got that first paragraph written, before the nurse called, as I thought about a potent issue for urban planners amid the coronavirus pandemic. Under normal circumstances, there are few subjects most planners like to discuss more than the design and use of public spaces. These come in a variety of forms, such as trails, parks, and plazas, which are generally publicly owned, but they also include a wide variety of privately owned spaces that are nonetheless generally accessible to the public, such as restaurants, outdoor cafes, malls, stores, and recreational facilities like the YMCA. The latter category is more frequently available on a paying basis, but those lines can be blurred under specific circumstances, such as the rental of public spaces for private events. The one overriding factor is that planners are very much aware that the public life of cities is very much defined by the activity levels and density of use of these spaces. An urban park visited by almost no one is not a positive sign of urban vitality. A public concert in the park attracting hundreds or thousands of happy people dancing and swaying to the music is a sign of a city in love with life and alive with culture.
Margie’s Candies, a nearly century-old family and teen hangout and source of sandwiches, ice cream, and candy for residents of Chicago’s Humboldt Park, can only offer takeout sweets at this time.
In the midst of pandemic, however, especially in dealing with a disease for which no one has yet developed an effective vaccine, not to mention a disease that disproportionately slays the elderly and those with respiratory vulnerabilities such as asthma, crowded public spaces are an indicator not of prosperity and vibrancy, but of danger. Social distancing to protect ourselves from unidentified carriers of COVID-19 is now an essential element of survival and personal protection. Yes, it’s nice to greet a friend in the park, but only if they keep their distance, and no, I don’t wish to shake your hand. There is a certain weary loneliness about this that is undeniable. Most of us are highly social beings, even the introverts among us. We like to talk, to exchange news, to share ideas. Thank God for the invention of the telephone and the Internet.
Why order online? Because, for the time being, restaurants in Illinois are not permitted to offer dine-in service. Takeout, drive-through, delivery are your only options. Blow up the photo to see the sign on the door more clearly.
But it’s more than that. Public spaces often provide us, to one degree or another, with the opportunity to move, to exercise, to stay physically fit. I got word just two days ago that the X Sport Fitness gym at which I maintain a membership would be closed until further notice. The trainers, I learned, are left scrambling to determine how they could continue to earn a living. They are joining millions of others whose livelihoods are in jeopardy until this scourge passes. If you know someone in Chicago who can benefit from in-home fitness training, let me know. I can hook them up with capable trainers.
Coffee shops and restaurants are no longer public meeting spaces. Just get it and take it home.
I will be looking to find other ways to stay physically active. As noted in posts of years past, I am fortunate to live near the 606 Trail. I need to get my bicycle tuned up for another season, and I can ride for miles. On my stroll yesterday, I could see that joggers were making generous use of the trail, as were walkers and others. Interestingly, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has posted information quoting medical experts suggesting that people should seek to maintain their exercise routines and use our public parks and trails for just these purposes. There is nothing worse for physical health than being cooped up in one’s house or binge-watching past seasons of whatever. Get out and move around. Just keep your distance.
The joggers, bicyclists, and strollers are still using the 606 Trail. This is near the Western el station shown above and the photo taken less than 20 minutes earlier.
That goes for the kids, too. Playgrounds, for the most part, are still open. If you’re worried about touching the equipment, make the kids wear gloves or use disinfectant wipes on metal and plastic surfaces before letting them ride or play. But, above all, let them run around.
What we are all, I hope, trying to do for the near future is to slow or halt the transmission of this dangerous new coronavirus. That does not mean we become couch potatoes obsessed with watching our favorite 24-hour news source feed us endless details about the latest announcements, as important as they may be. There is still plenty of opportunity for most of us to stay healthy and drink in copious doses of fresh air. But we can also follow the guidance about social distancing and sanitation practices. In short, most of us should be very capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. Just don’t spit that gum out on the sidewalk, thank you very much. Think about the safety of those around you. Use the trash can.
If we can all learn anything from this disturbing experience, it is perhaps an increased attention to sanitation and cleanliness in public spaces and the need to respect others by maintaining the quality of those spaces. Too many of us have seen public restrooms that are poorly maintained or not cleaned with adequate frequency. Those are obvious examples, but we can discern many others, including coughing and sneezing away from others, using facial tissue or handkerchieves, and simply cleaning up after ourselves, and understanding why some people find it necessary, even critical, to wear face masks or take other precautions. Think about the safety of those who must clean up after us, who often earn low wages and have less access to medical care. Don’t put them in greater jeopardy than necessary. Those of us involved in planning for post-disaster recovery often talk about finding the “silver lining” in each disaster experience. With any luck, that silver lining in the COVID-19 experience is a greater attention to public health, starting with the White House and extending all the way down to our own house or apartment.
The other big lesson for planning is the value of readiness and preparation for disaster. The old saw that “they also serve who only stand and wait” may be far more applicable and relevant than we realize. When President Trump eliminated a White House office that President Obama had created to focus on global pandemics, following the gruesome lessons of the Ebola virus, the assumption seemed to be that those studying and preparing for the next big public health crisis were simply wasting time and money. If that is true, why do we have an army of emergency managers spread across the country, preparing for natural and man-made disasters that, according to that line of logic, “may never happen”? The answer is that we should know all too well that reconstructing such capabilities after a new public health crisis or disaster is already underway wastes weeks and months of valuable time that can never be regained, and in this case, may be costing thousands of lives before it is over. Let us be wise enough as a nation never to repeat that mistake again.
Warning to readers: This is not my usual single-focus essay.
It is a collage of news from two coastal states with an assortment of serious natural
hazards challenges—Florida and California. In recent years, their politics has
tended to diverge widely, but perhaps we are seeing a welcome convergence to
some degree around climate issues. It is about time: Both face severe and
unrelenting challenges, and there is little time to waste in identifying and
implementing effective solutions.
Let’s start with Florida.
For starters, they are getting significant help from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), an
organization that has long performed great work in preserving open space and
researching the values of green infrastructure. For years, I have heard about
the merits of coastal mangroves in mitigating hazards such as storm surge and
coastal erosion. Recently, TNC employed an insurance industry catastrophe model
to quantity the economic benefits of mangrove forests for
reducing coastal storm damages in Collier County, and from Hurricane Irma, which struck
parts of Florida in 2017. For those unfamiliar with the area, Collier County is
in southwest Florida running from Naples on the Gulf of Mexico coast east into
the Big Cypress Nature Preserve,
which lies just north of Everglades
National Park.
To quote the TNC website, “Many areas in the county received over $1 million in benefits every year
in flood damage reduction benefits due to the mangroves in front of them.”
Moreover, “Mangroves averted $1.5 billion in storm damages, amounting to a 25%
savings in counties that have mangroves. They also protected more than 626,000
people across Florida.” You can access the full report, Valuing the
Flood Risk Reduction Benefits of Florida’s Mangroves, here.
While TNC could be expected to take
climate change and natural hazards seriously, Florida Republican officials are
another matter. It is thus heartwarming to learn in
a new Associated Press article that first-term Gov. Ron DeSantis has helped turn the page,
along with some Republican lawmakers, on the climate denial that prevailed under
his predecessor and now current U.S. Senator, Rick Scott. It also appears
that Sen. Marco Rubio has
joined a bipartisan Senate
Climate Solutions Caucus launched in October. While one should not expect
the sort of wholehearted embrace of climate issues that one sees among progressive
Democrats, that is not necessary for one to appreciate the value of a return to
a bipartisan approach to an issue where Republican support (and connection to
reality) has in recent years been woefully lacking, especially under President Trump.
Shifting public perceptions have driven political change in both California and
Florida, and it is about time. Southern Florida has been awash in nuisance flooding
driven by sea level rise, and pollution has threatened the environmental
viability of the Everglades. If Republicans are finding a need to appeal to
voters through climate action, that is, on balance, a far better thing for the
political system than a hyper-partisan battle of acceptance of reality versus
denial. It is also not surprising that two highly vulnerable states with major
natural hazard threats would be in the forefront.
Of course, California under former Gov. Jerry Brown went all
in on confronting climate change, in part because of the motivating impact of
increasingly frequent and violent wildfires and lengthening wildfire seasons.
If anything, current Gov. Gavin Newsom
may be picking up the pace, but it is worth nothing that even former Republican
Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger has long acknowledged climate change and advocated effective
state and federal action in response. But let me keep this post short and to the
point. I recently taped some introductory material for new additions to the
American Planning Association’s Resilience Roundtable
podcast series, for which I will soon be moderating several new installments to
be released in the coming year. But two new podcasts involve interviews by Prof. William
Siembieda of California Polytechnic
State University in San Luis Obispo, with planners from Butte County. The
first is already available, in which he discusses the impact and recovery
from the Camp Fire,
which destroyed much of the city of Paradise, with senior planner
Dan Breedon. The second interview will appear on the Resilience Roundtable
page soon.
That headline is a quote from Mayor Tommy Muska of the town of West, Texas, in the Dallas Morning News of November 21, regarding the Trump administration’s rescission of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for disaster prevention in chemical facilities, issued that day.
Aerial photo of the west explosion site taken several days after blast (4/22/2013). By Shane.torgerson – Aerial photo taken from my plane Previously published: Facebook and Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25727808
So much news passes under the bridge in one month these days
that readers can be forgiven if they do not immediately recall what happened in
West on April 17, 2013, but my guess is that many do. Or they may if I nudge
them by noting that the West
Fertilizer Company suffered an explosion in a storage facility at the edge
of this small city of 2,880. The explosion resulted from the combustion of
ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in fertilizer, which is notorious for its
chemical instability. Still, the facility had been there since the 1960s, but
West had over the years allowed a middle school, an apartment building (which
was destroyed), a nursing home, and other structures to be built nearby. When
the explosion occurred, 160 people were injured, 14 first responders (mostly
firefighters) were killed, and one elderly man died of a heart attack as the
nursing home was evacuated. All that triggered a bit of soul searching about loose
regulations at all levels of government regarding the operation of such facilities,
their disproportionate environmental impact on vulnerable populations, and how
better to prevent future disasters.
One year later, in May 2014, I
wrote in this blog about West following my own involvement on an expert
panel for the federal Chemical Safety Board,
which held a hearing in West on the anniversary of the disaster. I raised some
pertinent questions about Texas chemical and fire safety regulation that were
of interest to the board.
In the meantime, however, moves were afoot in the Obama
administration to respond to the larger questions of chemical facility accidents.
According to Earthjustice,
an environmental advocacy group, in the decade up to the West accident the U.S.
had experienced 2,200 chemical accidents at hazardous facilities, two-thirds of
which caused reported harm, including 59 deaths and more than 17,000 people
injured, hospitalized, or seeking medical care. As a result, President Obama
signed on August 1, 2013, Executive
Order 13650, “Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security,” which set
in motion a
rule-making procedure at the U.S. EPA. By July 31, 2013, EPA issued a Risk
Management Program request for information in the Federal Register, proposed
new rules on March 14, 2016, and finalized the new rule, known for short as the
Chemical
Disaster Rule, on January 13, 2017, with one week remaining before
President Trump took office.
The final rule is a bit complex, using 112 pages of the Federal
Register, but among other items specifically required a “root cause
analysis” as part of an incident investigation to determine what “could have reasonably
resulted in a catastrophic release.” It would also require compliance audits
after reported incidents and required all facilities with certain processes to
conduct annual notification exercises to ensure that emergency contact information
was complete. The overall idea was to improve effective coordination with local
emergency responders. One problem that caused fatalities in West was a lack of
firefighter awareness of the precise contents and dangers of the facility that
exploded. Thus, the requirements in the rule for field and tabletop exercises.
Finally, the rule aimed to enhance the availability of information about chemical
hazards in these facilities including sharing such information with local
emergency planning committees.
The rest is almost entirely predictable. With little grasp
of public policy but considerable animus toward anything with Obama’s name on
it, Trump put his appointees to work undoing his legacy. That included action
by then EPA Administrator
Scott Pruitt on March 16, 2017, in response to an industry-sponsored
petition, to announce a 90-day stay of the Obama-era rules, followed by an
extension to 20 months shortly thereafter. In the meantime, Louisiana and 10
other states, including Texas, petitioned for reconsideration of the Obama
rules. The delay would last until February 19, 2019. However, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia, responding to a petition from environmental
groups, vacated
the Trump rulemaking. But now we have a final rule from the Trump EPA
officially rescinding the Chemical Disaster Rule.
The public information aspect of the rule became a target, with the Trump administration claiming it was responding to homeland security and emergency management experts who feared that such information would become a target for terrorists. However, it would seem to me that far more people have been affected by routine chemical accidents than by any terrorist incidents at such facilities. The U.S. EPA also noted that the rules would not have prevented the accident at West because it was ultimately determined to have been caused by arson. It is worth noting, however, that most of the first responder fatalities in that incident were more credibly the result of a lack of training and information on the potential explosiveness of the materials involved, which might have prompted greater caution and different tactics by firefighters. And none of this answers the questions I raised in my 2014 blog post about land-use practices and limitations on fire safety codes in Texas.
So, back to Mayor Muska, who is reportedly disappointed with
the outcome, and for good reason. His town has to live with the results of the
2013 explosion, which decimated the volunteer firefighter staff and obliterated
a local business (and employer). Muska was mayor when the disaster happened and
is now serving his fifth term. I think it is worth sharing the comments he made
in the final two paragraphs of the Dallas Morning News story:
“The American people and
American politicians, they have a short memory,” Muska said. “They’re going to
say everything is fine, and every few years something like this is going to
happen again, and ‘Oh, yeah, we need to look at this again.’
“We’re yesterday’s news. It’s not on anybody’s minds
as it was in ’13 and ’14.”
Last week was for me an eventful time, including a four-hour trip to Dubuque, Iowa, on Thursday for the Growing Sustainable Communities conference, an event the city sponsors every year. I spoke in a session that afternoon, October 24, on community planning for drought, but mostly what I remember was the combination of keynote speeches that addressed the major issues of our time, notably including a luncheon talk on Friday by Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, of Texas Tech University, on communication about climate change. It was impressive and inspiring but underscored how much work lies ahead to reverse damaging trends affecting our planet.
But the week started out differently, with smaller actions
that I think are extremely important in setting the tone for the way all of us
relate to our fellow human beings.
My wife and I are members of Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park,
in Chicago. Situated catacorner from the Lutheran
School of Theology in Chicago on E. 55 St., our church enjoys the benefit
of the knowledge that abounds among the LSTC faculty. I serve as coordinator of
the Adult Forum, an adult discussion group that meets during the Sunday School
hour. That makes me responsible for finding speakers, programming discussions,
and promoting the events. On Sunday, October 20, we discussed actions we could
take following a five-week series covering the World War II Nazi death camps,
visited by Dr.
Esther Menn and her husband, Bruce Tammen, in August
during a trip to Poland and Ukraine, which fed into considerations of how we
treat immigrants and minorities in our own time.
Our pastor, Rev. Nancy Goede, told me about an incident that occurred the prior Tuesday in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, at Lincoln United Methodist Church. Lincoln has chosen to become a sanctuary church out of concern for the safety of undocumented immigrants, but a man shouting Nazi slogans came to the building in an angry confrontation with church staff. It was not the first time the church had been targeted for its actions. The man proceeded to smash the front window.
There is little we can do directly about an incident that is already past, but we decided that we could establish a supportive relationship with the congregation in the face of this hate crime, so we composed the following letter, eventually signed that day by at least 25 members of Augustana:
To the Members and Staff of Lincoln United Methodist Church:
We are very sorry to hear about the incident on October 15, in which a man shouting Nazi slogans smashed the glass window on the front door of Lincoln United Methodist Church. We have learned that you have been targeted by right-wing groups for your stance in establishing Lincoln UMC as a sanctuary church. We support your efforts and pray for your safety as you continue to follow your consciences in doing the Lord’s work.
Your Brothers and Sisters in Christ at Augustana Lutheran Church
Indeed, part of the purpose of this letter is to reassure
Lincoln United Methodist Church that its members are not being left to handle
this attack in isolation from the rest of the Christian community. We had learned
a great deal about the high cost of silence during the Holocaust, as well as
the need to forcefully address racial equality as we commemorated the 100th
anniversary of Chicago’s
race riots in 1919, a story detailed well in Claire Hartfield’s recent book, A Few Red
Drops.
But that is not all we chose to do. Esther Menn then noted the American Jewish community on this past weekend would be commemorating the first anniversary of a violent anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which eleven members were killed, and seven others wounded, by a man apparently inspired by right-wing rhetoric. Robert Bowers, a truck driver from Baldwin, Pennsylvania, was arrested for the massacre, and authorities said he used social media beforehand to post criticism of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which has been supportive of the human rights of immigrants to the U.S.
In solidarity, Augustana announced that members of the congregation, as well as people from LSTC and McCormick Seminary, would gather last Friday evening to walk to nearby KAM Isaiah Israel congregation in Hyde Park to join its Friday evening shabbat service. Once again, Augustana would make a simple statement in opposition to hate crimes and violence against religious and ethnic minorities and immigrants. Because traffic on the way back from Dubuque that afternoon obviated the possibility of my own participation, Esther related to me that 27 people from Augustana and the two seminaries joined the effort, plus others who met them at the synagogue, and that their presence was greatly appreciated.
Supportive visitors at the doors of KAM Isaiah Israel synagogue. Photo provided by Esther Menn.
Sometimes, it is worth remembering that the simple act of reaching
out to say we care and stand behind others is enough to establish lasting and
meaningful bonds between otherwise disparate groups of human beings. It
certainly is a place to start.
We have become so accustomed to a certain Homeland Security
phrase since the events of September 11, 2001, that we have never seriously
contemplated its larger meaning. “If you see something,
say something,” for most people simply means that, if you notice something
strange, someone leaving a package on a train platform and walking away, for
instance, you need to call 911 or point it out to a nearby security official.
Having done our civic duty, we can go on about our lives and hope for the best.
We may save someone’s life, or we may simply be exercising caution. Check it
out.
But suppose we interpreted that phrase in the context of our
duties as citizens of an endangered, or even potentially endangered, democracy.
Suppose the threat were to our democratic institutions and not just to the
lives of those in a single public place. Suppose the threat involved policies
that affected thousands of people threatened by racism, ignorance, or hatred?
Ought we not to speak up? How different would the history of the world have
been if millions of Germans had spoken up about what they saw even in 1933? How
many Russians in the past two decades have risked their lives and their careers
to speak up about the threats they see to a democracy being strangled in its
cradle? In the past year, the people of Sudan have arisen against a brutal
military dictatorship and forced remarkable changes. Are we Americans somehow
so special as to be free from such obligations? Do we not eventually lose our
moral authority to speak for democracy in the world if we fail to speak for it
at home?
If you see something, say something. Let me tell you
what I see:
I see children
housed in filthy cages at the southern border by the U.S. government, separated
from their parents, their eyes full of fear and bewilderment, when their only
alleged crime was to be brought here by parents from Central America who sought
to remove them from gang warfare, violence, crime, and corruption in
desperately poor countries. I see a U.S. President, as a form of retribution, cutting
aid to those countries that was meant to promote reform and economic
opportunity to reduce people’s need to flee such chaos in the first place.
I see Temporary Protective Status (TPS) denied to survivors
of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, a neighboring country with deep ties to the
U.S., even as that nation struggles to rescue and house its own people in the face
of mind-numbing devastation. The rationale from the President was that “very
bad people” would harm our country if this were allowed, although TPS has
been standard practice in the past in the very same circumstances. It is
unclear, other than being people of color, what makes the Bahamians especially
dangerous in his eyes.
I see neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Ku Klux Klan
members marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us” through the campus of
the University of Virginia and the streets
of Charlottesville, defended ardently by a President who sees “very fine
people” on both sides while an innocent young woman is run over and killed by a
young Nazi sympathizer with his car. I see this rhetoric emboldening an ever-widening
circle of mass shooters who sow terror in American cities with unlimited access
to weapons of war, but I also see a widening
circle of brave citizens rising to demand effective action against such
terror.
I see America losing the moral courage of the Emma Lazarus
poem at the Statue of Liberty,
pleading for the world to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,” and nearly mocking Lady Liberty as she seeks to lift
her lamp beside the golden door. The Golden Door is becoming instead the Great Border
Wall built with money never legitimately appropriated by Congress, and members
of the President’s own party unable and unwilling to stop him or even raise the
weakest of objections lest they be expelled from the halls of power—or are they
becoming halls of obeisance, like the Roman Senate in Nero’s time?
I am telling you what I see because I understand the moral
and civic obligation to say something. We must all be whistleblowers for the
future of democracy. What do you see? Are you prepared to say something as well?
And what shall we do once we have spoken?
This week, it seemed as if the world was determined to break
my heart. I am sure I am not the only one who felt that way, but I may be the
one who puts two seemingly unrelated events together and wonders how we come to
such a pass. I often write about how we can minimize losses from natural
disasters, but today’s topic is tragedy wrought by humans upon others.
Illinois
Let me start closer to home. In Crystal Lake, an outer-ring
Chicago suburb, a five-year-old boy, “AJ” Freund, was found in a shallow grave
in an isolated site near his home. Police found him during an investigation
triggered by the boy’s father, who called 911 to report that he was missing.
Police dogs tracing his scent at home found no evidence that he had walked out
the door. Interrogation of the father, a 60-year-old attorney engaged to a
former client in a divorce case, the boy’s 36-year-old mother, caused the police
to become suspicious of the couple themselves.
It turned out that the Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services (DCFS) had been involved with the family since the boy was born
with opiates in his system, clearly indicating a drug problem for the mother.
One police report a few months ago indicated that the home was filthy with pet
feces and utilities were shut off, but DCFS apparently found concerns about
neglect “unfounded.”
So, how did AJ wind up in his shallow grave? According to
the police, the couple kept him in a cold shower before beating him, resulting
in his death from head trauma. Needless to say, the couple are now in jail,
facing murder charges, and are separately secluded from the rest of the McHenry
County jail population for their own safety.
I don’t wish here to focus on the court case. Judge, jury,
and prosecutors will make their own determinations as the case proceeds, and
like anyone else, the parents are entitled to a defense. What concerns me is
what needs to happen at DCFS to prevent many more children from being similarly
harmed. This is an agency with serious problems that must be solved.
In the past four years, we had a governor with a serious
empathy deficit, who preferred to engineer a stalemate with the Democratic
legislature over the state budget while bills went unpaid and progress at
agencies like DCFS sputtered, and numerous nonprofit social service providers
went unpaid for months on end. But Republican Bruce Rauner did not
initiate the crisis at DCFS, which is a product of neglect and malfeasance by
several prior administrations, not to mention the frequent unwillingness of the
legislature to prioritize funding for social services. But funding is not the only
issue.
How bad has it been? According
to today’s Chicago Tribune, “DCFS
has churned through 14 previous leaders since 2003 and has seen its budget and
staffing dwindle.” This turnover implicates two previous Democratic
administrations as well as that of Rauner, who had his own revolving door for
DCFS executives in the last four years. No one can establish stability and
quality of services in such an environment. We can only hope that Gov. J.B.
Pritzker, who took office three months ago, can make this a priority and
turn the situation around. He has brought in Marc
Smith, previously the head of a suburban social service organization, and
more importantly, has requested a $75 million increase in funding for the
agency. He is taking heat for proposing to amend Illinois’s constitution to
allow a progressive income tax in order to gain new revenue from high-income
residents, but the money must come from somewhere and the state needs to
balance its wobbly budget.
But let me get more personal here. And I do take this
personally.
My wife and I have been foster parents since 1991. Two
daughters we adopted are now grown, and there are grandchildren. We also have
guardianship for one grandson at the moment, so we have a long history of
interaction with DCFS. Like many other foster and adoptive parents in Illinois,
we have long had reason to question the managerial culture of the agency, which
has tended to emphasize restoring or maintaining the custody of natural parents
whenever possible. I understand that generally, but not when there is obvious
abuse or neglect and caseworkers either fail to take notice or fail to act to
protect the children. As headlines have often suggested, that happens more than
we may want to know. AJ has become the
latest case in point.
Long ago, two children from a large family reached out to
connect with us, and we often let them visit and share their story. We relayed
some concerns to DCFS. As a teacher, my wife fell into the category of mandated
reporters under state law. Doctors, school officials, and others who may
suspect or witness abuse or neglect are legally obligated to report it to the
DCFS hotline. In this case, nothing happened until one child died of starvation.
Then the remaining children were placed in foster care.
On another unrelated occasion, I became concerned about belt
marks on a three-year-old child. I called the hotline, where an imperious
responder told me that “under Illinois law, parents are allowed to use corporal
punishment to discipline their children.” Appalled by her disinterest, I raised
my voice: “We are talking about belt marks on a three-year-old!”
“Mr. Schwab,” she
responded sternly, “it is not illegal for parents to use corporal punishment.”
Stunned by this indifference, I faced the same dilemma I am sure has confronted
others in the same position: Where do we go from here?
Such responses, to be sure, are not always the case. They
simply happen too often. Sometimes, an overburdened caseworker takes shortcuts
or fails to investigate. The point is that something must change.
Some Illinois legislators—from both parties—were seeking answers
from DCFS officials at a hearing in Springfield yesterday. I hope they are all,
finally, serious as hell about fostering positive change and not just grabbing
headlines in a dramatic case. Too many children’s lives and welfare are at
stake.
Sri Lanka
By now, I don’t imagine there is a need to rehash the
details of recent
bombings in Sri Lanka. It would have been hard to escape the news: suicide
bombings by apparent Muslim extremists in three hotels in Colombo as well as
several Christian churches on Easter Sunday, killing well
over 250 people. The body count has varied, in part because it is difficult
to count bodies that have been so badly burned and blown apart. Exactly who
planned what is not entirely clear yet, although authorities have blamed a
homegrown Muslim militant organization, National Towheed
Jamaat. Whether there are ties to Islamic State is a subject of
investigation. The precise motive is something that remains unclear.
This comes just a month after the attack by an Australian
white supremacist on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, which I discussed
last month. I noted that I had spent time in New Zealand in 2008 as a
Visiting Fellow for a research center in Christchurch. Thus, I found it
disturbing in part because of a personal connection.
It so happens that I spent 10 days in Sri Lanka in 2005 as
part of an eight-member interdisciplinary team of Americans invited by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects to assess damage
from the Indian
Ocean tsunami and recommend options for rebuilding. In the weeks before the
trip, I made a brief, stumbling attempt to acquire some familiarity with the
dominant national language, Sinhala, but found it daunting. But I find such
efforts allow me to breathe in a little more of the ethos of the nation I am
visiting. And from further reading and from talking to our hosts, I learned
some very interesting facts about Sri Lanka.
The civil war that once raged is now over, but that was not
the case then. We traveled from the capital, Colombo, on the western coast
of this island, along the coast to Batticaloa, halfway up the
eastern coast, before we were forced to turn west through the Central
Highlands of Kandy back to Colombo. The Northeast and the Jaffna Peninsula were
under the control of the rebel Tamil
Tigers. Along the way back, we encountered some military checkpoints.
Caught in the middle of this long-running tragedy were the people of many rural
villages and smaller cities. As one architect on our team from New Mexico, who
was a Vietnam veteran, commented, “The rural people are the ones who always
take it in the shorts.”
But this struggle had little to do with Muslims or
Christians, except coincidentally. They were largely bystanders. The battle was
between the Sinhalese
majority and the Tamil
minority, which wanted rights to sustain its own Tamil language
and culture in a multicultural nation. That sounds fair enough, but the Tamil
Tigers became an incredibly vicious movement that had few compunctions about
sending suicide bombers to blow up public buses. They demanded a Tamil homeland
in the regions they controlled. Thousands of Sri Lankans died during decades of
armed insurgency. Finally, the rebellion was suppressed by the government about
ten years ago.
When we arrived, a cease-fire negotiated by Norwegian
diplomats was in effect, but 35,000 Sri Lankans had died as a result of the
tsunami—drowned in a wall of water, washed out to sea, crushed beneath
shattered buildings. The southern and eastern coasts were devastated. A nation
that had suffered so much needless death suffered even more at the hands of the
forces of nature, reinforced by a noticeable lack of preparation for such an
event.
Even before I left for Sri Lanka, I experienced a personal connection to it all. The Rev. Eardley Mendis, a Sri Lankan-American pastor, had worked as the custodian for Augustana Lutheran Church, of which my wife and I are members, while studying at the nearby Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. By 2005, he was the pastor of a local Lutheran church largely supported by Asian Americans. But his wife and daughter had returned to visit family in Sri Lanka over Christmas in 2004. When the tsunami struck on December 26, they were aboard the coastal passenger train that was destroyed by the second major tsunami wave, largely due to lack of warning of the impending danger. Eardley’s daughter survived; his wife did not. I interviewed him over lunch before I left Chicago. Later, during the trip, a villager in Peraliya took me to see the demolished train, stored on a side track as a memorial. For me, it was one of the most emotionally powerful moments of the entire tour.
The ghostly memorial of the train after the tsunami, May 2005
This man then showed all of us what was left of his home by the sea, including his makeshift oven, where he cooked meals that he sold to travelers along the road. That was his now fragile livelihood.
David Downey, Alan Fujimori, and others visit with my new acquaintance and his makeshift, post-tsumani home.
Sri Lanka has had a measure of peace for most of this decade
since the end of the Tamil Tigers insurrection.
A note on Sri Lankan demographics is in order at this point.
About two-thirds of the nation is Buddhist, mostly of Sinhalese ethnicity.
About 15 percent are Tamil and largely Hindu. The remainder of the nation mostly
consists of two religious minorities, half Muslim and half Christian. The
Muslims are mostly descended from traders who occupied the coastal cities since
medieval times, with Sri Lanka about midway between the predominantly Muslim
Arabian peninsula and predominantly Muslim Indonesia. While a very small number
of Christians are descended from European colonial settlers of centuries past,
most are converts of native Sri Lankan ancestry. The churches, both Catholic
and Protestant, are part of the fabric of modern Sri Lanka.
And so it may seem curious that one minority might attack
another, but it is far more important to know that the vast majority of Sri
Lankans of all faiths have had more than enough of war and bombings and
sectarian violence. The perpetrators of the Easter bombings appear to include some
children of a wealthy spice dealer in Colombo. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
apparently has expressed doubt that the father knew what the children were up
to, but the police rightly seem determined to find out. Muslims, like other
people across the planet, sometimes experience the pain of children who choose
an evil path. The Bible is replete with such stories.
So, for the moment, Christian bishops are warning worshipers
to stay home and avoid danger. Churches and other houses of worship no longer
appear to be sanctuaries, but targets. Here, it is probably worth quoting the
words of the chairman of one Colombo mosque, Akurana Muhandramlage Jamaldeen
Mohamed Jayfer, in an Associated
Press story today, describing the attackers as:
“not Muslims. This is not Islam. This is an animal. We don’t have a word (strong enough) to curse them.”
My only comment would be that he may have inadvertently
insulted the animals, who merely hunt for food. Only humans harbor hatred
powerful enough to motivate such heartless mass murder.
New
Zealand is a nation that counts its annual
totals of gun homicides in single digits, as a friend of mine who just
returned from a visit Down Under accurately notes. It is, by comparison to most
of the world, an incredibly peaceful, peace-loving country. Yet two days ago,
on Friday, March 15, an Australian
white nationalist allegedly killed 50 people and wounded 39 others in a
mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, the largest city on the South
Island. This same city lost 185 people in a series of earthquakes
in 2011, but that was a natural disaster. While it delivered painful
lessons about building standards and preparedness, it did not hang the specter
of evil over the city or the nation. Brenton Harrison Tarrant is alleged to
have done exactly that. Christchurch is a city in shock and mourning.
I don’t ordinarily use this blog to discuss mass shootings,
bombings, and terrorist incidents. For one thing, they have become too common
in some parts of the world, including, sadly, the United States, and I prefer
to spend my limited time trying to use my special expertise to make the world a
better place to whatever extent I can. That expertise lies largely in urban
planning and natural hazards, not in terrorism or crime, but readers will
notice that I also discuss more pleasant topics like travel and books and the
arts. I write a blog because I am also a professional writer.
But some events become more personal. In 2008, at the invitation of the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand (CAENZ) at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, I accepted a three-week Visiting Fellowship to work with CAENZ on land-use policy for addressing natural hazards in New Zealand. In late July and the first half of August of that year, I traveled the country with Kristin Hoskin, then a member of the CAENZ staff and currently an emergency management consultant who lives in Christchurch. I delivered seven lectures and seminars in those three weeks, visiting several cities on a tour that ended in Christchurch, which did not experience its earthquakes until more than two years later. In the course of much advance reading and a great deal of inquisitive conversation and exchange with Kristin and others, I learned a great deal about the country. When I left, I was aware that, while it faces challenges and problems like any other nation, it generally does so through remarkably civil debate and politics. While I realize that New Zealand benefits, in that regard, from its relatively small size—about two-thirds the area of California and a population of roughly 4.2 million—I still must say, as an American, that my own country could easily learn something about civil behavior from the Kiwis. Far too much of our own current political debate is not only over the top, but downright crude and thoughtless.
And so I reacted, when I learned of the shootings in
Christchurch, like someone who had, on an emotional level, been stabbed in the
heart. It was hard even to picture the scene that was being painted on the
news. I tried to imagine the horror felt by people like Kristin, and George Hooper,
the executive director of CAENZ when I was visiting, or others I had met around
the country. I will admit it brought tears to my eyes thinking about it. How
could it happen?
I first got the urge to write about it on Saturday but did nothing about it. I labored to produce a title, then sat there, staring at the screen. Mind you, I am not one who ordinarily wrestles with writer’s block. The words often come pouring out, and the challenge is simply to edit and refine them. But this time, I could not get started. Two or three times, I stared at the screen but wrote nothing. It was too hard. More than ever, I am filled with admiration for the young people from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who found their voice after the mass shooting there, or others who have similarly taken action after violent tragedies. It is not easy. But it is extremely important. And if New Zealanders respond positively to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s promise to tighten gun laws, then they are far ahead of the tortured American politics that have stood in the way of gun reform in the U.S.
I would also note that I am spurred by some of what I have read today in the Chicago Tribune. One article recites the story of Abdul Aziz, 48, a father of four sons and a member of the Linwood mosque, who shouted, “Come here!” to lure the gunman away from the mosque, risking his own life, and who stunned the man by throwing a credit card machine, which he said was the first thing he could find, at the shooter’s car, shattering the window. Other stories of courage will probably emerge in coming days, but it is a reminder to all of us that such courage is not tied to any one religion, race, or nationality. It reflects depth of character.
That is the saddest part of it all. There are those among us, and they hide within a wide variety of identities, whether it is Islamic extremism, white nationalism, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu tribalism, or some other perceived affiliation that somehow fosters hatred instead of a common love of humanity, who fill the void in their own emotional and intellectual development with a fear of others that causes them to fail to see our common humanity. The justifications vary, but one common thread is paranoia and a painful, even crippling, inability to reach out and open their hearts to those different from themselves, whether in language, skin color, national origin, gender, religious belief, or some other supposedly defining characteristic.
And every so often, that sense of separateness and need for a feeling of superiority erupts in an attack against people who are simply living their own lives, worshiping as they believe they should, but have done nothing to the perpetrator(s). In the case of Dylann Roof in Charleston, members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church welcomed him into a Bible study before he unexpectedly opened fire on them and killed nine people. Welcome was greeted with murder.
The real miracle of God is when his worshipers responded to such violence by insisting that more love is the answer. The Charleston survivors chose to forgive Dylann Roof. People suffering such attacks are certainly entitled to ask, “Why?” Even, and most certainly, “Why us?” That is a vital part of the grieving process. But don’t be surprised if New Zealanders, and the Muslims of Christchurch in particular, insist that love is the only path forward.
Hillsborough
County is a dense metropolitan area, anchored by the city of Tampa. Tampa and nearby
St. Petersburg, in
Pinellas County, sit on opposite
shores of Tampa Bay, a 400-square-mile
expanse of water connected to the Gulf of Mexico. Across
that gap sits the Sunshine
Skyway Bridge, a magnificent and scenic section of I-275. On a sunny day,
it displays coastal Florida in all its glory.
Eugene
Henry, like anyone else, enjoys those sunny days, but he also worries about
what may happen when the region suffers inclement weather. As Hillsborough
County’s Hazard Mitigation Program Manager, it is his job to think about how
well the area will fare under the impact of natural and other disasters, which
can include hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, sinkholes, and wildfires. At least
the first two are complicated by sea level rise, and one can easily argue that
climate change in a broader sense may well influence the damage from wildfires.
For those uninitiated in the particulars of Florida’s natural environment,
wildfires are a recurring feature. In what is ordinarily such a lush
environment fostered by rain and abundant sunshine, it takes only one drought
year amid high heat to turn dense vegetation into a tinderbox. It has happened
before, repeatedly.
But the biggest concern, by far, is the arrival of the Big
One, the high-intensity hurricane that the county readily admits it has escaped
in recent decades. In its Post-Disaster
Redevelopment Plan (PDRP), the county states forthrightly that this is
merely a matter of good fortune and that planners fully understand that the day
will surely come—and that they had best be ready for it. Disaster resilience in
the face of hurricanes is not a matter to be taken lightly with 158 miles of
shoreline along Tampa Bay, numerous rivers and streams, and numerous
vulnerable, low-lying areas. Absent serious attention to mitigation, damages
from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, or one like Harvey that stalls and dumps
voluminous rain on an urban area, could become catastrophic.
But Tampa and Hillsborough County have been very fortunate.
The last Category 3 hurricane struck the area in 1921. What may have been a Category
4 struck in 1848, though wind speed measurements were primitive at the time,
and the U.S. had no official records yet. According to the county’s Local
Mitigation Strategy, that storm “reshaped parts of the coast and destroyed
much of what few human works and habitation were then in the Tampa Bay area.”
Tides rose 14 feet. Tampa was still a small city then, and Gene Henry wonders
about the staggering losses that might occur with a comparable event today.
I had long wanted to visit the area to see in person how
these issues are being addressed. I have known Gene for a long time, and I have
read the county’s PDRP, an extensive document laying out the county’s
preparations for recovery from disasters. But I had never been to Tampa. As the
result, however, of a personal invitation from a high school classmate, David Taylor, who now
lives in Sarasota,
my wife and I flew to Tampa February 20 and stayed with Dave and his wife,
Linda, for five days. Sarasota is about one hour’s drive south of Tampa. As
part of the trip, I arranged to meet with Gene the day after we arrived and
tour the county to see the hazard mitigation projects underway there. I also
delivered a one-hour lecture the following afternoon in West Palm Beach,
on behalf of Florida Atlantic University, as part
of a two-hour program that included a panel discussion following my talk on
“Recovery and Resilience: Facing the Disasters of the Future.” Not one to skip
a learning opportunity, Gene drove four hours from Tampa to attend the program.
But back to Hillsborough. My wife and I met Gene at the
county’s Emergency
Operations Center (EOC) around mid-morning, hopped in his county truck, and
took off. Our first stop was the Florida Center
for Design + Research, housed in the School of Architecture + Design at the
University of South Florida (USF),
Gene’s graduate alma mater. The school features an urban planning program where
he wanted us to meet Professor
Brian Cook. Planning students often take studio classes, which involve
design or research work on real-life community problems. Students learn to
define a community design or policy issue, work with clients, and try to
produce solutions that will be of some practical value to the community they
are serving. They typically work in teams. In this case, students were applying
geographic information system (GIS), or mapping, skills to determine areas of
high vulnerability to flooding and sea level rise in less affluent
neighborhoods. Gene’s county office collaborates with USF instructors to
identify areas of practical concern for the students’ work. The photos show
some of the design work the students have done, the best of which is often
displayed in poster sessions at state and national professional planning conferences.
Posters (above and below) from the USF design studio
The most encouraging aspect of that visit was, for me, the mere fact that the students are engaging with such a pressing problem. I have researched the issue of hazards and climate change in the planning curriculum for both undergraduate and graduate degree programs in urban planning, and most such programs are lacking in this respect, a situation that is disserving the planners of tomorrow who must be well trained to come to grips with these challenges in whatever communities they end up serving. But a growing number of students are getting such training—I have myself been teaching such a course at the University of Iowa since 2008—and southern Florida is as good a laboratory as they could wish for. To see collaboration between a county agency and USF graduate students and faculty is a most welcome note.
But Gene had other places to take us in the afternoon,
besides, that is, the Cuban-themed La Teresita restaurant
where we ate lunch—a place I am willing to recommend if you ever visit Tampa.
First up in the afternoon was the University
Mall area north of downtown Tampa and just east of I-275. This involves a
stormwater management and flood-mitigation project in an area subject to a
certain amount of repetitive loss, meaning that the same properties continue to
suffer periodic flood losses. The project removed structures while creating
additional areas for stormwater storage and reshaping a natural area known as
Duck Pond, thus creating a system for stormwater conveyance. This includes a
large stormwater pump that transfers slow-moving stormwater to areas further
downstream and, in due course, to a reservoir owned by the City of Tampa.
Before this project was initiated, storms used to inundate multifamily
apartment buildings, Gene says, as well as a nearby assisted living facility.
How does the county pay for all this? He credits a combination of local funds,
which is certainly not unusual, and federal money in the form of Hazard Mitigation
Grant Program (HMGP) funds. The latter are available as part of an overall
recovery package after a Presidential Disaster
Declaration, but require that purchased properties, once cleared, remain in
perpetual open space. The point is to ensure that a vulnerable area is not
redeveloped, thus perpetuating the problem.
At 132nd Street, also in Tampa, another flood-mitigation
and stormwater management project presents a very different appearance. This
too was subject to repetitive loss and required protection from urban flooding,
which is typically the result of poor stormwater drainage in developed areas. The
problems can include poor water conveyance from one area to the next—the nearby
highway provided an impediment to drainage—and high levels of impervious
surface, meaning coverage with concrete and structures that limit percolation
of water into the soil. In this case, a small subdivision suffered repetitive
flooding even with small storms. Here also, the county acquired homes with HMGP
funds, which are dispensed by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The streets were removed, and
stormwater ponds were added.
This was a location where the county’s partnership with USF
paid dividends. Researchers analyzed which plants were best at removing
nitrogen and other chemicals common in stormwater runoff in order to clean up
the water before it reaches Tampa Bay. Henry says this project was made
possible through a combination of local and HMGP funds in combination with
federal Community
Development Block Grant entitlement money.
I included the chain link in my photo to show that the solution may not be complete. After all, chain link fences are intended to limit access. What consideration, I asked, had been given to eventually converting this cleared area to some sort of public park and thus facilitating a public benefit? There can be challenges in part because of pollution cleanup and other public safety factors. Gene readily admitted he would love that solution, but it may take time. The adjoining neighborhood must be comfortable with that use, which can involve solving various site-related problems. A nearby church might be a potential ally, serving as a patron and watchdog, but reaching agreement about solutions and responsibilities, including ongoing maintenance and supervision, takes time. And only time will tell whether such a solution materializes with the support of local public officials.
Some projects assist a single homeowner with a stubborn
problem. This is often the case with homes that are elevated, a common site in
parts of the Southeast, where coastal and riverine flooding can wreak havoc
with homes in vulnerable locations that do not necessarily require buyouts and
relocation. That was the case near Rocky Creek,
where a homeowner rebuilt a structure elevated three feet above base flood
elevation (BFE) using a combination of private funds and a Flood
Mitigation Assistance (FMA) grant from FEMA. The result is living space
that is better protected when flood waters surround the lower level.
The same story occurred at a home near the Alafia River, where
another homeowner was elevated three feet above BFE, using the same combination
of funds.
Gene also shared with us an interesting strategy at a
frequently flooded and highly vulnerable modular home park, where an area had
been cleared of its former homes to allow repopulation with recreational
vehicles (RVs). The logic is that, when flood warnings arrive, RV owners will
be able, unlike those with more stationary modular homes, to simply drive off
the site to safer areas until the emergency subsides. The initiative, Gene
says, was taken by the park’s new owner (which owns other parks nationwide), which
identified no more permanent structures in the floodway as part of its
compliance strategy after the most recent flooding event in the area.
This area is slated for RV occupancy only.
Finally, we returned to learn a little about the EOC. We
visited what is often known in such centers as the “war room,” where designated
officials meet to discuss and establish strategies for dealing with an
emergency of any sort that activates the emergency operations plan. In the
photo, each chair is designated for a specific official, with groups of people
with related tasks seated in color-coded sections of the room. Many such EOCs
are much smaller, but Hillsborough County is very urban and populated, and the
needs are complex and interrelated. It is expected that those involved will
arrive with authority to respond to the disaster, to indicate what they are and
are not capable of doing as part of the overall response to disaster. It is not
a place where one expresses a need to go back to another office and “find out.”
Hillsborough County Emergency Operations Center “war room”
Ready to relax and enjoy a drink and a snack, we followed
Gene down the highway to the Sunset
Grill at Little Harbor, which has a beautiful view of the bay. At dusk,
numerous people followed a daily ritual of photographing the sunset over the
water. Tourist attraction it may be, as well as a local watering hole, but the
surrounding area has a significant mangrove forest and salt-bed areas that were
preserved as open space using Environmental Land Acquisition Funds from what
Gene describes as a “locally instigated preservation program.”
Hillsborough County’s Hazard Mitigation Program Manager, Eugene Henry, at rest at Sunset Grill at the end of our day-long tour.
And so, with the sun declining in the west, we sat at an
outdoor table and hashed over the world’s problems, and sometimes our own. One
point that seems clear to me is that Hillsborough County has a great deal to
offer to other jurisdictions, just as it has undoubtedly learned a great deal
as well—one reason both he and a resident scholar and Japanese graduate student
from the University of Illinois, Kensuke Otsuyama,
planned to drive to West Palm Beach the next day to hear my presentation. Although
there is sometimes a tendency for local governments to become more insular, to
allow fewer opportunities for employees like Gene to share and exchange
information in professional forums and conferences, this, I think, is always a
mistake. The growth in the value of what someone like Gene does lies in this
fruitful sharing of experience and perspectives that such opportunities allow,
and I hope that will continue, for certainly Gene made my day by sharing his
time to allow me to learn and to share with the growing readership that follows
this blog.
Supplemental Comment:
Although the hearing was held today, making live streaming a
moot point, significant written and recorded testimony on hazard mitigation and
climate resilience issues occurred before the U.S. House Appropriations
Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development. Yesterday, the
following link was made available from several sources including the American Planning
Association (APA) to provide access to this testimony and information:
Representatives from APA, PEW, Houston Public Works,
Rutgers University, and the Town of Arlington, MA are delivering testimony to
the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) congressional
subcommittee tomorrow, March 13th at 10:00 a.m. EST. THUD, a part of
the House Committee on Appropriations, writes laws that fund the federal
government’s important responsibilities. The testimony is available for
streaming here:
