Even without considering the challenges imposed by COVID, 2020 was a record setting year for disasters in the United States, with 22 different weather and climate related events causing more than a billion dollars in damages and losses. With extreme weather events expected to continue to become more frequent in future years, resources will become even more stretched as communities attempt to rebuild.“We can’t, as an industry, continue to just collect more and more money, and rebuild and rebuild and rebuild in the same way,” Donald L. Griffin, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association told The New York Times. “We’ve got to place an emphasis on preventing and reducing loss.”
To help improve both disaster preparedness and disaster response, A.R. Siders
Assistant Professor, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Allison Reilly, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland, and Deb Neimeier, Clark Distinguished Chair and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland, offer four recommendations in an article in The Conversation for reforming American disaster policy:
- Better tracking and oversight of disaster funds, to confirm both the amount and the levels of government from which it is being spent, as well as making records publicly accessible and improving record keeping
- Improving coordination between federal agencies, to avoid conflicts in goals and approaches, and allow for plans for national resilience
- Adjusting thresholds at which the federal government will pay for recovery costs, to encourage states to invest in resilience in advance of disasters
- Shift the emphasis of disaster recovery to focus on community and individual needs, rather than on trying to make everyone who was affected whole
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/climate/2020-disaster-costs.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/billion-dollar-disasters-shattered-u-s-record-in-2020/
