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Hurricane Helene: U-M experts available to comment
EXPERTS ADVISORY
Hurricane Helene is currently projected to be a category 4 storm by the time it reaches the Florida coast, with a path running up through Georgia to Tennessee and Kentucky. It is spurring evacuations and is expected to cause extensive flooding and wind damage.
University of Michigan experts can discuss the storm and how climate change favors larger hurricanes, as well as the near- and long-term effects on infrastructure and health for communities in its path, many of which are unused to hurricanes.
Sue Anne Bell is a nurse practitioner and associate professor of nursing. Her research focuses on the long-term impact of disasters and public health emergencies on health, particularly among older adults. She is clinically active in disaster response through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Disaster Medical System with over a dozen recent deployments including to the COVID-19 response, hurricanes Maria and Irma, and the California wildfires.
“The devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina exemplifies what we know as the definition of a disaster: when a hazard and vulnerability combine to overwhelm community capacity. But that’s just the short definition,” she said. “The longer story includes the characteristics of the affected community, infrastructure, state and federal policies, and—perhaps now more than ever—politics.
“Moving forward, we need to prioritize building emergency management and public health capacity to address what were once called ‘unprecedented events.’ With increasing urbanization in coastal areas and more frequent extreme weather events, catastrophic flooding, like we have seen with Helene, will become more common.
“We must develop systems that accurately measure both the short- and long-term impacts of disasters on health and assess the effectiveness of our responses. The health response to disasters is about more than just managing immediate crises. Without these systems, it’s the most vulnerable—older adults, children and people with disabilities—who will suffer the most.”
Contact: [email protected]
Scott Greer is a professor of health management and policy and a political scientist who researches the ways political systems operate and shape health policy decisions. He has done extensive research on a variety of topics including disaster response, federalism, science policy, COVID-19 policy response, health governance, the politics of public health and more.
“One of the underlying reasons we suffer such devastating damage from natural disasters is simply that we make local governments dependent on new construction, particularly in some big coastal states like Florida,” he said. “Local government finance that encourages development in the most endangered places creates a very perverse incentive.”
“It is tempting to think that insurance companies, pricing risk like insurance companies do, will slowly deter construction and residence in endangered areas. However, experience to date is that homeowners, developers and local governments alike fight to keep insurance available even if that means creating unsustainable public commitments.”
Greer also addresses concerns that the federal government may deny services to citizens who choose to build or live in inferior housing in areas known for high risk of natural disasters.
“It is also tempting to think that state and federal governments can commit to not helping people who choose to live in endangered areas. The politics suggest that by and large they do not. The U.S. government has been helping victims of natural disasters almost as long as there has been a federal government, and the politics suggest it will continue to do so.”
Contact: [email protected]
Richard Rood is a professor emeritus of climate and space sciences and engineering and an expert in climate change modeling. He can comment about the unusual features this storm is predicted to have, and how it fits into climate change trends.
“The most unique predicted characteristic of this storm is its size and durability after landfall and the geographical extent of hazardous conditions, which could push into northern Georgia,” he said. “Warnings and guidance are available for preparation, but in communities where this is a novel experience, wind, rain and flood damage will stress resources.
‘There will be storm surge on both the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, which is predicted to be 20 feet in parts of Florida’s northwestern shore—more than a two-story house. This is a definitive situation where sea-level rise due to a warming climate is making the situation more hazardous.
“We are in a time of rapid transition. The patterns that we are used to are changing, and that challenges our intuition on where and when storms will form, and we do not know what is normal anymore. It will be decades before a new normal emerges.”
Contact: [email protected]
Andrew Hoffman, a professor of management and organizations and environment and sustainability, studies interplays between businesses and environmental pressures.
“Hurricane Helene is expected to hit Florida this evening. Potential damage could be extensive, and insurance companies will, once again, be paying out for the large amount of claims that will come,” he said. “In the aftermath, there will be yet another reassessment of storm insurance coverage in a state that already has the highest homeowners insurance rates in the country, 1.5 times the rates in the next highest state—also on the Gulf Coast—Louisiana.
“Large insurers are leaving places like Florida (and California) because of the increased weather risks, and many more have declared insolvency, creating an insurance crisis. To control the problem, Florida continues to pump more money into its public insurance option of last resort—Citizens Property Insurance.
“And yet Governor Desantis continues to block efforts to address one of the most important causes—climate change, even erasing references of climate change in state law. In the end, insurance companies are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, pricing the effects of climate change by simply monitoring its costs. Sooner or later, people will be forced to listen.”
Contact: [email protected]
Jeremy Bricker, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, focuses on the resilience of structures and infrastructure exposed to both increasing hazards due to climate change and increasing consequences due to expansion of development in coastal and flood-prone areas.
“The National Weather Service shows a strong hurricane aiming for landfall south of Tallahassee. Storm surge is always worst to the right of the storm (looking in the direction the storm is moving) where it makes landfall. This puts the worst surge risk between the landfall location and north of Tampa,” he said.
“The shape of this coastline has the potential to ‘funnel’ the storm surge as it reaches shore, further increasing its height. Much of this region has 1-2 miles of coastal wetlands buffering the urban areas, and for a fast-moving storm, this can help reduce risk to infrastructure to some degree.
“However, unbuffered areas will be subject to a large surge. If the fast-moving storm slows down, even buffered areas can face a large surge. Either way, residents of this entire coastline should evacuate. If the actual track changes from what is predicted, urban areas such as Tampa could be affected more heavily.”
Contact: [email protected]
Seymour Spence, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, focuses on performance-based wind engineering, probabilistic modeling and uncertainty propagation.
“Hurricane Helene’s expected fast-forward speed is poised to wreak havoc on regions that have never before experienced such storms. The storm’s rapid movement means that strong, damaging winds will extend far inland, reaching areas unprepared for such events,” he said.
“This dual challenge of unprepared populations and infrastructure ill-suited to handle these conditions compounds the potential for a truly damaging situation, especially across the southeastern United States and the higher terrain of the southern Appalachians.”
Contact: [email protected]
