'Presponding' to disasters saves lives and money

It was a sleeper of a hurricane season, until it wasn’t. After only five named storms and no hurricanes through early September, Hurricane Fiona’s fury served as a wake-up call from Puerto Rico to Nova Scotia. Then, in southwest Florida, Hurricane Ian provided a devastating reminder that deadly hurricanes can strike with a vengeance in otherwise slow storm seasons. 

Federal, state, and local governments have response plans for unfortunate but predictable disasters — and some plans are better than others. But as our climate becomes more unstable, governments must do more than just react. They must pursue “presponses” to predictable and costly disasters that inevitably occur, like hurricanes.

On a cost-adjusted basis, billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. have increased from 2.9 per year, costing the federal government an average of $17.8 billion in the 1980s, to 16.2 per year at an average annual cost of $121.4 billion from 2016-2020.

These natural disasters include hurricanes, floods, wildfires, drought, heat waves, and cold snaps. They are costly in terms of lives — and taxpayer dollars. The Congressional Budget Office puts it rather succinctly: “Climate change increases federal budget deficits.” And: “Investment by the government or others in various types of mitigation or adaptation efforts could reduce the costs of climate change.”

“Presponding” to natural disasters might sound like "bureaucratese," but it’s common sense. It means thinking ahead to save lives and protect property by creating more resilient communities that can withstand the onslaught of intense hurricanes and other natural disasters. 

The goal must be to develop risk management strategies that enable communities, infrastructure, and industries to become more resilient and better mitigate the future costs and damages of climate change. Disaster dollars doled out by taxpayers today must prespond to future disaster risks, because they are not going away.

Federal agencies and Congress have a role to play. Federal disaster-relief programs are almost purely reactive: They channel funding to communities only after a disaster has occurred. Too often, this results in a wash-rinse-repeat cycle, where communities are rebuilt with the same vulnerabilities as before. In a world with a changing climate, rebuilding and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. After an event as deadly as Ian, it is cruel.

The relentless growth in the cost of federal disaster relief should provide an incentive for policymakers to leverage post-disaster taxpayer dollars for pre-disaster mitigation. Every dollar spent on mitigation can save six dollars or more in post-disaster response.

Even with recent changes to funding formulas, disaster response funding greatly exceeds funding for pre-disaster planning and mitigation.

Moreover, federal agencies have a spotty record in tracking disaster-relief funding to see what worked or didn’t, what are the lessons learned after each major natural disaster, and what should change in the future.

Federal policy and spending that targets presponding to climate-induced disasters will enable communities to develop an accountable and more resilient infrastructure that should require fewer costly, piecemeal, disaster responses when extreme weather events inevitably occur.

Not only will presponding protect human lives, but over time, it offers the potential to stretch our disaster relief dollars. This should help enable states and communities to prespond to other infrastructure threats happening due to climate change, such as “sunny-day flooding” and beach erosion.

Whether it’s a hurricane, wildfire, drought, or sunny-day flooding, better preparation simply makes sense. More importantly, it’s how we save lives.