After Ian
Using the past to plan for the future
Reports and visuals of the destruction caused by Ian continue to emerge, presenting a growing toll of human misery and property loss, including at least 127 dead and $75 billion in damage. One report put the number of people initially made homeless by the storm at close to 10,000, based on the number in temporary shelters. In Lee County alone (which includes Ft. Myers Beach and Sanibel/Captiva) one report has 5,000 homes destroyed and 13,000 damaged.
But the visual surveys also record that damage to buildings was uneven. While the least resistant kinds of structures, like mobile homes, were totally destroyed, some buildings, especially some newer and commercial buildings, remain standing.
And then there was one community that experienced almost no damage at all. How did that happen?
Babcock Ranch
Just to the northeast of Ft Myers, and directly in the path of Ian, is a planned development called Babcock Ranch. This solar powered, environmentally friendly and hurricane resistant community came into being in 2006 as part of a major private/public effort to protect what became the largest contiguous tract of conserved land in the state. Of the 91,000 acres involved in the transaction, 74,000 were purchased by the state and county for conservation. The remaining area is owned by a single development company headed by a former professional football player turned visionary developer.
A plan was generated for the developable land that envisioned a self-contained community for 19,000 households and 50,000 people that included a number of clustered villages with small-town amenities, including a commercial district, schools, recreation areas and health care facilities.
Central to the plan were two innovative and interrelated goals: energy self-sufficiency and hurricane resistance.
On the energy side, a solar field has been installed consisting of 670,000 solar panels with 150 megawatts of capacity, enough for 20,000 homes, and a 10 megawatt battery system, one of the largest in the nation. The system is connected to the grid, and smart grid and smart home technologies are in place to manage supply and demand.
Steps to ensure hurricane resiliency include burying all utility lines, construction of a series of retaining ponds to capture rising flood waters, using porous materials for road construction to speed drainage, and setting very high standards for home and commercial construction.
The upshot? Ian caused only minimal damage to structures and no disruption in water supply, electrical service, or internet. A few trees and signs blew down, and a few shingles were lost. The community center and schools are open and serving as shelters for many from Ft Myers and Sanibel.
While it might be argued that these steps increase the cost of construction, one Babcock resident interviewed noted that her home may be one of the few in the region whose value has increased as a result of Ian. Some of the simpler steps, like burying utility lines and building to a hurricane-resistant standard need not be unique to this development.
It was interesting to watch a video on Babcock Ranch produced for 60 minutes (see link in Sources below). I could sense some unease in the reporting. One interviewer asked, "weren't you just lucky?" He seemed hesitant to accept that good planning and design could ensure minimal damage and disruption. Another said it was odd to see children playing in the park right after such a storm. One might think this would be cause for celebration.
Sadly, this kind of success story makes poor fodder for media outlets seeking sensational headlines, but perhaps some of the devastated areas can be rebuilt, if they are to be rebuilt at all, with Babcock Ranch in mind. It seems much can be done with traditional tools of zoning and building codes, a lesson that can be seen played out in the variability of building damage seen in those reconnaissance videos.
The CEO of a major commercial real estate company in Florida noted that many of the destroyed structures were built decades ago, before the building codes were updated to protect against strong hurricanes, and that the properties that remained standing after Ian were built to the newer standards. He stated that new construction will meet current codes that require impact-resistant windows and roof straps that enable roofs to withstand 155 mile-per-hour winds. Higher construction costs now to avoid higher reconstruction costs later.
That same story emphasized that residents appear adamant about returning to the sites of their now destroyed homes and rebuilding, with or without insurance. The alternative, a process called "managed retreat," or the abandonment of buildings and areas in the highest risk zones, has gained little traction outside academic meetings and planning studies.
The Financial Impact and Funds Available for Recovery
Part of emergency preparedness planning can include setting aside funds, either through private insurance or government reserves, to aid those impacted or displaced by major storms. Here are some numbers relating to Ian.
That $75 billion damage estimate is $75,000 million. For comparison, the State of Florida has committed about $5 million to relief and a private fundraising organization has raised $50 million. The state has recently released an additional $500 million in aid. At the national level, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has accepted over 600,000 applications for aid, totaling over $545 million, and the U.S. Small Business Association has approved $130 million in loans. One report has FEMA making up to $38,000 available per damaged home. If all the FEMA applications are accepted, all of this still totals just a little over $1 billion.
The fate of insurance claims seems unknown at this point. Some stories emphasize that Ian will cause a permanent restructuring of the home insurance industry in Florida, perhaps causing significant increases in the cost of housing in the state.
Perhaps "managed retreat" will result through these kinds of market forces, but many residents appear to be determined to rebuild, even without insurance.
So the money needed for recovery (the $76 billion) appears to be thousands of times more than the resources available locally. In response, Florida's congressional delegation has called for $33 billion in aid from the federal government.
Previous essays in this series have stressed that climate change is going to be expensive whether we plan and build to resist damage from rising seas and more intense storms, or pay for rebuilding after disasters. Ian is a case in point.
Planning for the Future
Media presentations continue to focus on the individual stories that bring home the impact of storms in terms of human misery, and deliver the imperative that these disasters must be avoided. Planning for the future will require hearings and legislation that do not generate the kind of compelling headlines generated by the destructive outcome of a major storm. Stories about zoning and building codes tend not to galvanize readers, but that basic work is what is needed.
And good planning requires a solid understanding of the likelihood of future storms. Just how unusual was Ian? We can use past storm frequencies to answer that question, but the answer needs to be placed in the context of climate change and rising sea levels.
A previous essay looked at historical data on hurricane frequency in Florida, and concluded that a category 4 hurricane could be expected to occur somewhere in the state every 10-30 years, and a category 5 once every 57-80 years. In recent memory, Hurricane Charley (2008, category 4) caused 29 deaths and about $16 billion in damage in 2022 dollars. Andrew (1992, category 5) killed 44 and damage has been estimated as high as $65.7 billion in 2022 dollars.
Climate change could increase these frequencies calculated from historical data. For the North Atlantic basin as a whole, both the number of tropical storms and the total energy driving those storms have about doubled since 1900. There is every reason to project that these increases will continue.
But hurricanes only really matter to us when they make landfall. The 2022 season was relatively quiet in terms of overall activity (only 11 named storms, the season ends at the end of October), but will be remembered as extreme because Ian hit Florida with such devastating force.
Increasing storm frequency and intensity will also build on a continuous rise in sea levels.
A NASA site presents this image of projected sea level rise through 2300. The range of projections for 2100 cluster around 1 meter or about 3 feet.
NOAA has constructed an interactive site that allows the visualization of the impact of different amounts of sea level rise on coasts, harbors, and estuaries around the U.S. For Florida, a 3 foot rise in sea level will put much of Ft Myers Beach, Sanibel Island, Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale under water, with substantial additional areas subject to high tide flooding, even without storm surge.
The NOAA maps do not include the Everglades National Park, but the National Park Service has mapped likely submergence over time. With a 3 foot rise, much of the park and its infrastructure will be underwater in 2100.
None of us will be around for the projected rise by 2300 pictured in the NASA figure, but somebody will, and so will some of the infrastructure we build now in cities and communities. For those future generations, it may be worth considering even the 2300 projections. The range of 1-5 meters (about 3 to 16 feet) in total sea level rise by that date suggests just how much we can still control the future if we choose to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
As the stories of the tragedies engendered by Ian fade with the passing of each news cycle, can we move beyond lamenting the catastrophic loss of life and property and begin to use those stories to lend a sense of urgency to the next steps? How do we prepare for the inevitability of sea level rise and the next major storm?
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Lizabeth Buckley for providing initial links to stories about the Babcock Community, and Blake Waring at NOAA for help interpreting the projected flooding maps and for input on managed retreat.
Sources
The image of Ian striking the Florida coast is from NOAA through:
https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-goes/
Stories presenting the devastation and human suffering as a result of Hurricane Ian include:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2079623235780
https://abcnews.go.com/US/multiple-deaths-reported-hurricane-ian-slams-florida/story?id=90693636
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/hurricane-ians-damage-reach-65-billion/story?id=90693223
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/15/rebuilding-after-hurricane-ian/10484927002/?gnt-cfr=1 T is includes an aerial video of the destruction around Fort Myers Beach
A summary of events leading to the establishment of Babcock Ranch and a brochure describing the community are here::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babcock_Ranch%2C_Florida
Stories about how Babcock Ranch fared during Ian include:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/us/solar-babcock-ranch-florida-hurricane-ian-climate/index.html
Sources for the level of funds available and requested for recovering from Ian include:
https://floridastormrelief.fl.gov/
https://www.flgov.com/2022/10/22/governor-ron-desantis-issues-updates-on-hurricane-ian-recovery-18/
https://www.news-press.com/in-depth/weather/2022/10/20/hurricane-ian-southwest-florida-housing-crisis-families-weigh-next-steps/10476406002/ This site also has an overflight video
The request for $33 billion in federal assistance is reported here:
Data on Charley and Andrew are from
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2004?amount=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew#Florida_2
The quotes from the real estate CEO are from:
A search for "Managed Retreat" will reveal a paucity of plans for such a strategy, but here is one that mentions it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/climate/hurricane-ian-rebuilding.html
A search for methods of building hurricane-resistant homes will lead to many stories and sites of construction services, including:
https://www.foxblocks.com/blog/hurricane-resistant-homes
https://www.builtbymayfield.com/hurricane-resistant-homes/
https://fontanarchitecture.com/hurricane-proof-house-design/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/05/16/hurricane-proof-homes-deltec/
Data on number of tropical storms and hurricanes are drawn from:
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/archive
ACE is accumulated Cyclone Energy and is an index to the total amount of energy driving all tropical storms in a given year. Information on the index and data used in the figure can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy
https://psl.noaa.gov/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Hurricane/hurr.atl.ace.data
A list of named storms in 2022 is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Atlantic_hurricane_season
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tafb_latest/tws_atl_latest.gif
The NOAA site for visualizing the impact of different levels of sea level rise is here:
https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/slr.html
Note: the High Tide Flooding tab does not change with changes in sea level rise, but represents the impact of a 1.8 foot rise in sea levels.
The image from NASA of projected sea level rise is from:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anticipating-future-sea-levels
Information on projected flooding in the Everglades by 2100 is here:
https://www.nps.gov/ever/learn/nature/cceffectsslrinpark.htm