--:-- Noelle King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noelle King: Vermont's Governor Phil Scott addressed reporters and Vermonters earlier today and told them that after days of flooding, it's not over yet. Unfortunately, parts of the state are now expecting severe thunderstorms, which could bring more flash flooding, hail, and even the threat of a tornado. As many as nine inches of rain fell in parts of Vermont this week.
--:-- Noelle King: To the question of whether it's possible to be prepared for something like this, consider Christiana Athena Blackwell. She moved to a new house in Plainfield, Vermont, with her husband and baby five days ago and left her unpacked boxes in the basement, as you do, which then flooded.
--:-- Noelle King: We have to face that reality and get prepared for the future. But I have my family. I have what matters and a really nice community. I'm worried about Vermont and sad.
--:-- Noelle King: Coming up on Today Explained, preparing for disasters in an age when they just keep coming.
--:-- Noelle King: Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management platform that Adio says is built for the next era of companies.
--:-- Noelle King: Nina Keck is a senior reporter with Vermont Public. And she has had an unusually busy week. Normally, I cover older Vermonters and issues around aging. But with the flooding that's gone on, it's all hands on deck. And we are all focused on the damage and the recovery right now.
--:-- Nina Keck: What is the mood like in Vermont today? How are people feeling?
--:-- Noelle King: I spent most of yesterday afternoon in Ludlow, which was one of the hardest hit towns in the state. And, you know, on the one hand, it was truly devastated by the flooding. Businesses were grappling with the after effects, the cleanup. There's furniture all over the streets and people's lawns, broken glass.
--:-- Nina Keck: It's chaos just to look around and try to figure out where all these things came from.
--:-- Noelle King: There was a palpable feeling of frustration and sadness. But I have to say there was this mixture of energy, too, and community spirit that really was kind of awe-inspiring to see because there was this muck everywhere.
--:-- Nina Keck: People were in filthy mud boots and shorts. They were tired. Some were wearing masks because now the mud is kind of dried and it's created this brownish dust that's everywhere.
--:-- Noelle King: But they were all cleaning together and they were sharing stories and talking about, well, how did you do and how did you do and what can I do to help?
--:-- Nina Keck: And that was kind of heartening to see.
--:-- Noelle King: So I think I've seen a lot of destruction. I've seen a lot of blown out roads and crumbling pavement and houses that are going to need a lot of work and buildings and businesses that are closed.
--:-- Nina Keck: But I think there were no fatalities so far that have been reported, which is really kind of a miracle.
--:-- Noelle King: I read that in the hardest hit parts, up to nine inches of rain fell, and it was very fast.
--:-- Nina Keck: In the areas that were hardest hit, what kind of destruction are we talking about here? What should we envision?
--:-- Noelle King: So my colleague up in Montpelier said you cannot understate the devastation that occurred in our state capital. Everything was underwater.
--:-- Nina Keck: We are looking down Main Street towards State Street, and you can see what a lake it is.
--:-- Noelle King: He said he saw people being rescued. They had swift boat rescue teams that were operating all over the state.
--:-- Nina Keck: But he said he also saw just random citizens in kayaks and canoes and on paddle boards.
--:-- Noelle King: In Ludlow, where I was yesterday, when the waters were raging, cars and trucks were floating down the street and being submerged under bridges.
--:-- Nina Keck: The damage has been catastrophic. We're all still sort of wrapping our heads around the damage that occurred.
--:-- Noelle King: Thousands of homes and businesses have been really damaged. And it's going to take months, years to clean up and do the repair work necessary.
--:-- Nina Keck: I spoke to a woman earlier this week who had just moved to Plainfield, Vermont. Three days in Plainfield and her house flooded.
--:-- Noelle King: I can see the river from our house, but it was looking okay until about three, between three and five is rapidly raising and we were getting, you know, okay, nervous.
--:-- Nina Keck: Let's make a plan. Should we have a place to go just in case?
--:-- Noelle King: When was the last time Vermont experienced something like this?
--:-- Nina Keck: The last thing that comes to mind is Tropical Storm Irene, which was 2011.
--:-- Noelle King: That was a hurricane when it hit the east coast of the United States, but by the time it got to Vermont, it had dropped down to a tropical storm.
--:-- Nina Keck: Nonetheless, it dropped, I want to say, 11 inches at least in some parts of the state.
--:-- Noelle King: Not at least, but about 11 inches over a very short amount of time, and it just hammered the state.
--:-- Nina Keck: This recent rain that we got was similar because there was a lot of it, but it was over several days after we'd already had saturated ground.
--:-- Noelle King: So people are drawing a lot of similarities but also differences.
--:-- Nina Keck: Some areas of the state were much harder hit recently where wider swathes of the state were hurt in Irene
--:-- Noelle King: This supposed 100 scenario has now happened twice in a span of 11 12 years
--:-- Nina Keck: And so there's definitely some bewilderment.
--:-- Noelle King: People are still trying to wrap their heads around it.
--:-- Nina Keck: The woman in Plainfield we spoke to, Christiana, she told me that an emergency worker showed up at her home before the worst of the flooding started and told her to get out.
--:-- Noelle King: We got a knock on the door from an emergency team just saying, we're evacuating this street. Waste no time. Don't go left. Take a right. Go to the opera house.
--:-- Nina Keck: That seems like good disaster preparedness.
--:-- Noelle King: After Hurricane Irene, was there a sense that this could happen again?
--:-- Nina Keck: Absolutely. Vermont Governor Phil Scott declared a state of emergency ahead of this storm on Sunday.
--:-- Noelle King: And I think had a lot of emergency preparations in the works.
--:-- Nina Keck: I believe there were swift boat rescue teams that had been requested.
--:-- Noelle King: Several came from North Carolina.
--:-- Nina Keck: He had reached out to other states, Massachusetts sent up crews, and they were available to provide aid.
--:-- Noelle King: And I think just communities, Vermont, I think you have to realize is, for people that don't live here, it's a very rural state.
--:-- Nina Keck: It's a lot of small towns and villages and communities.
--:-- Noelle King: It's hyper-local.
--:-- Nina Keck: And after going through Irene, a lot of towns developed much better emergency plans.
--:-- Noelle King: My own town has an emergency plan director and really mobilized ways to reach out to neighbors on a hyper-local level.
--:-- Nina Keck: And I think, you know, you saw that in communities this time around, they kind of knew the drill that, you know, this can happen and this is who we should talk to in our town.
--:-- Noelle King: This is maybe where the best place is to have emergency meetings or provide shelter later.
--:-- Nina Keck: So I definitely think the state was better prepared.
--:-- Noelle King: But, you know, you really never can fully prepare for something like this because you don't know how bad it's going to be and where it's going to happen.
--:-- Nina Keck: Are people in Vermont talking about climate change or is this viewed as, you know, just an isolated natural disaster?
--:-- Noelle King: No, I think people are talking about climate change.
--:-- Nina Keck: My colleagues at Vermont Public have been reporting on that a lot, talking to climatologists that have been looking at, well, what's the pattern with these storms?
--:-- Noelle King: And, you know, when we get heavy rains, why do they linger and is that going to be the new pattern?
--:-- Nina Keck: I think people are very concerned about it and it like everybody in probably in the country and in the world just sort of trying to wrap their heads around well what can we do as individuals or as towns to to make a difference
--:-- Noelle King: But I think people are looking at it because here in Vermont we've got four seasons that are all being impacted
--:-- Nina Keck: You know we're seeing winters for the ski season which is so important here you know snow making operations have had to shift to different warmer temperatures
--:-- Noelle King: We're seeing the maple sugar industry kind of worry about, well, if it warms up earlier than we're used to, you know, that starts the sap running.
--:-- Nina Keck: And then you've got farmers dealing with warmer temperatures, maybe drier conditions sometimes or water conditions in the summer.
--:-- Noelle King: So, yeah, it's something that I think we're dealing with a lot here in Vermont.
--:-- Nina Keck: Nina Keck, she's a senior reporter with Vermont Public.
--:-- Noelle King: You should know Today Explained It airs on Vermont Public Monday through Thursday at 2.30 p.m.
--:-- Noelle King: Great local news stations.
--:-- Noelle King: Coming up, Vermont did have some disaster plans in place, as we just heard. But those plans were of this day and age. Why we might need to plan as if the future is now.
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--:-- Noelle King: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained.
--:-- Noelle King: Support for this show comes from Macy's.
--:-- Noelle King: It's almost fall, and that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting.
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--:-- Noelle King: It Today Explained I Noelle King.
--:-- Noelle King: Disaster maven Juliette Kayyem needs no introduction but I will let her introduce herself anyway.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: I'm the faculty chair of the Homeland Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School of Government where I a professor in teach in crisis and disaster management 20 years in the field serving both in state government as a state homeland security advisor and then my most recent federal job was as assistant secretary at DHS during the Obama administration.
--:-- Noelle King: And she says we are in fact in one.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: This is where we should stop acting surprised, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: I mean, just extreme climate events are happening in frequency and magnitude that we've never seen before.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: In 2023 already, we have 12 confirmed weather climate disaster events with losses exceeding 1 billion in the United States.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: The scene across Northern California, trees down, damaging homes, businesses, and cars.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: This is actually just outside of Abilene.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It's near Sweetwater, Texas.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: There's a storm chaser out there that did manage to get video of a baseball to golf ball-sized hail.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: You can see it there.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It's bouncing.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: The brutal cold came in with a fury.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: At a city park, hats and gloves were left for anyone who needed them.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Since 1980 to last year, we have about 8.1 events a year.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Those are getting faster and more frequent.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: In 1980, I think we had $3 billion events.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And these are all adjusted numbers.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So if I just look at the economic impact of what's happening, forget the cause.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And we're not even talking about human life.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We are facing these in a frequency.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And they are setting what I call the floor, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: In other words, because these communities, whether they get hit next year or the following or five years from now, they are weaker because of the devastation.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So it's the cumulative aspects of these disasters that is impacting the United States.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And we've got to get out of this mindset that, OK, we're going to save lives, clean up after the disaster and then cross our fingers.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: I have to imagine that our response to disasters has changed over time.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But tell me first, how has it traditionally worked?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: The framework was essentially established, or it was professionalized in the 1970s under a framework called the Incident Command System.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: You'll hear people in my field talk about ICS.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It's a very formalized system, and the benefit of it is it's hierarchical.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: You have an incident commander who's just deploying resources and getting logistics moving and planning.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And the benefit of it is it's plug and play.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So you can expand it.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So if I'm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I need more bodies, people from Boston can come over.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So the general theory or the general plan for emergency management is we say that locals respond, states coordinate, and the feds support.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So it basically means disaster management makes or breaks at the local level.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That is still true, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It is what is your emergency management agency doing?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: What kind of plans do they have in place?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And are they able to deploy resources that had worked relatively well?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: You could expand things.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But now we have no give.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: The reason why is because we don't have localized disasters like we used to.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: I mean, look at the fires in Canada.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: At some stage, the United States cannot send any more firefighters to help in Canada.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So where are they deploying from?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: South Africa and Australia.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: The 57 specialists are from New South Wales.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Most are from the Rural Fire Service.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: The state's Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dibb, says tens of thousands of people have had to flee their homes in Canada, a scenario residents in New South Wales are all too familiar with.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And you're seeing it here just in the last week, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: States generally could call on another state and say, could you send over X, Y or Z?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Because we need support.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We need more bodies.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We need more lights.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We need more generators, whatever it is.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Well, now you have two massive events in two states that generally would share resources under an emergency mutual aid compact.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That's becoming harder as well as we're seeing these multi-state disasters.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We've mutual aid requested from state to state, Swiftwater rescue teams from North Carolina.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We have two in that are engaged right now.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And we have Swiftwater rescue team coming from Michigan and from Connecticut.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: These are the stresses that we're seeing operationally that now is leading in fits and starts to changes in disaster management, how we deploy, how we professionalize it, but also how we think about disasters for the United States.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: You gave me some specific examples there.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: How would you broadly describe how disaster response is changing?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: In the past, we divided the world into left of boom and right of boom.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And we're agnostic about the boom, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So it could be the flood, the fire, the terrorist attack, the pandemic.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But your boom is your disruption.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Left of boom is prevention and preparation.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We're getting ready.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We know it's coming or it could come.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And then right of boom is response, recovery, and resiliency.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That's the stuff you see.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Things are getting deployed.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Communities are trying to rebound.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That used to be viewed as linear, one and done, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Random and rare.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That's the way we thought about it.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That's the way our entire structure was built.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It's a circle.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It's a circle now.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And so you have to think about the investments you're making in preparation.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: As really being about, can this community recover fast enough?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Because it's coming again.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We may not know where or when, but that's the kind of stress that's on, that's facing the profession itself as it transforms from a profession that used to be, say, your average emergency management officer was a former cop or firefighter.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And that's not the communication skills.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That's not the outreach skills.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That's not the equity skills that we really need for disaster management.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But you're also starting to see it in the policies.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Let's just be honest here.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We've incentivized bad behavior through our disaster management framework.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And that's what needs to change.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Everything else is just going to be Band-Aids.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: My mom Juliet lives in central New York in the Hudson Valley.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And she lives in a house where the basement floods.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And in fact the basement did flood this time.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: She got about six inches of water which is not terrible.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We've seen worse.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But once upon a time, I would have thought somebody will come and help my mom if she needs help.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And nowadays, what's really interesting is in 2023, I think somebody might look at my mom and say, why are you in that house?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Why are you still there if this has been going on for 30 years?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Do you think we are looking at the role that the individual plays in the boom more and more?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Much, much more.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Does your mom have flood insurance, by the way?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: She does.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Yep.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Oh, good.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Okay.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So I just were making sure.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: This idea of putting more pressure on communities to behave better is starting to take hold.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And I don't mean that as a sort of hostile thing.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: I mean, it's both good and bad.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So on the tactical level, let's say a boom happens.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We're not going to leave your mom in her house.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But if there's evacuation orders and those evacuation orders are not abided by by some percentage of the community, sometimes it's just ideology, sometimes it's pets.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: In the last 10 years, we've seen some tough love from mayors and others simply saying to people.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: All the advice we can give is get out, get out now.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: You still have time to leave.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Those that are going to stay, it's unfortunate, but they should make some type of preparation to mark their arm with a Sharpie pen, put their Social Security number on it and their name.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We've got first responders available, but once it gets bad, we're not going to put their lives in jeopardy and they will not get help.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: To the bigger issue about, you know, do people stay or go?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We have set up a disaster management system that incentivizes bad behavior.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It pays people to rebuild where they are.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It gives them individual assistance as if they alone were impacted.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We have major events and then, you know, powerful senators can just get lots of money and simply get people cash.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Senator, you wrote a letter Friday to the Senate Appropriations Committee asking for disaster relief dollars for desperately needed resources to rebuild Florida communities.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: After Hurricane Sandy hit northeastern states in 2012, you voted no.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: How is that strategic thinking?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: It's just not.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But we've put in a system in which, you know, the boom happens, we respond, we save lives, that's a priority, you try to minimize property harms, and then everyone goes after disaster relief as if it's one and done.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And the thinking now and the insurance companies are forcing us to think about it is how do we use that money after a disaster to make this community better?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: I want to say there are some changes.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: They're really piecemeal, but they are good.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: There's been changes in everything from the Inflation Act that allows for more money to be spent to mitigation to even the farm bill has provisions because, you know, you don't need to call it climate change.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Some communities and ideologies don't want it to be called climate change.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Who cares?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Get money out to farmers who are seeing flooding and help them mitigate their harms.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: There's been changes to disaster relief that if a community uses their money for mitigation, at the next disaster, the feds will actually give more rather than less.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: In other words, you're sort of incentivizing mitigation.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And the gamble is these communities will suffer less if they put more into resiliency and fortifying structures and getting people out of certain communities.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But these are being done piecemeal or they're being driven by insurance or the market.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: That's no way to think about it, given the numbers and the magnitude of what our communities are facing.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And so to that end, if you were put in charge, you could make whatever change you wanted.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Where do you think you'd begin?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: What would be your first move?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: In my dreams, I would repeal a piece of legislation called the Stafford Act.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Pursuant to the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act or the Stafford Act, FEMA provides public assistance grants to state, tribal, and local governments to assist in their recovery efforts after a disaster strikes.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Basically, its general theory is a disaster happens to a community, that poor community, we feel bad for them, could have been us, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: So let's just pay them money, distribute individual assistance, distribute public assistance, distribute money to the localities and states, and write a check, and let's get them back to normal.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Okay, so that worked.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: But now, it doesn't work, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And so what I would do is rethink how we're paying for the last disaster to prepare us for this disaster, condition that money, right?
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Dear community, dear individual homeowner, we're not doing this anymore.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We don't care your politics.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We don't care anything.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: Basically, you can have a check if you do X, Y, and Z, and whatever those conditions are, and we know what they are.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: If you live in a fire area, we know what kind of roof you have to build.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: If you live by the water, we know what kind of fortification you need.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And these are the kinds of efforts at each home level, at each community level, that will change the incentive structure.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We have to incentivize, essentially, resiliency.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: We don't do that now because we still are in a mind frame of these disasters are random and flukish.
--:-- Juliette Kayyem: And we're just going to brace ourselves until the next one.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's episode was produced by Vermont Bureau Chief John Ahrens and Miles Bryan.
--:-- Noelle King: It was edited by Matthew Collette.
--:-- Noelle King: Laura Bullard is our senior fact checker and Amanda Llewellyn was our junior fact checker today.
--:-- Noelle King: Our engineer is Michael Raphael.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained.
