Hurricane Florence Research Paper

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Flooding in the Carolinas after Hurricane Florence in 2018

Introduction

Since the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the poor response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the aftermath of the flooding in 2005, adequate and effective management of natural disasters has become a central concern for leading emergency management agencies at both local and federal levels. A need for greater interagency collaboration has been established and by the time Hurricane Florence struck the Carolinas in 2018 there had been plenty of discussion about safety. Still, not enough was done to prepare the community for the devastation that occurred. In Horry County, South Carolina, where I live, major flooding occurred as a result of Hurricane Florence. The storm was responsible for approximately 40 deaths across three states and the total estimate of damage caused by flooding was approximately $20 billion. Described by the Weather Service as “one of the most significant rainfall events on record in the Carolinas, producing widespread, catastrophic flooding,”that lasted for several days resulting in more than 340,000 people to be without power supply (Siegel et al., 2018), Florence was deemed the cause of one of the deadliest floods in the history of the U.S. It was estimated that more than 10,000 people had to take refuge in the state’s shelters while several others stayed with family and friends, or in hotels. In addition, the rainfall led to the closure of over 1,100 roads including major and interstates roads. In the course of the deadly flooding, many people were stranded and hungry in their homes before foods could reach them. This paper will describe the organizational and situational concerns associated with the flooding in the Carolinas, the challenges and problems, an analysis of the problem of flooding in the area, and recommendations for addressing the concerns associated with flooding like that seen from Hurricane Florence.

Organizational and Situational Concerns

Organizational theory according to Weber’s bureaucratic approach as long been a staple of American emergency agencies’ planning when it comes to natural disasters like the flooding following Hurricane Florence. The purpose of this approach is to keep all stakeholders interconnected to ensure a unified, cohesive and coordinated response. Following Katrina, extensive investigations showed exactly what was needed and what should have been done to ensure a better response: FEMA had inadequately trained staff while the local incident command system was woefully underprepared. Organization had been lacking in the response and there had been no substantial “spirit of mission” among leaders of the various agencies working to stabilize the situation (Samaan & Verneuil, 2009). The same problems existed to some degree locally in Horry County.

Indeed, some believed the effects of the destructive flooding could have been reduced if necessary preventions were in place. For instance, in May 2018, three months before Hurricane Florence, Governor Cooper’s office released extensive studies that raised concerns over the 2016 Hurricane Mathew (Campbell, 2018). The publication detailed prevention projects on the three flooded rivers during the 2016 disaster. Unfortunately, little attention was paid by the legislators to the hundreds of pages of studies that were prepared by N.C. Emergency Management in collaboration with other state agencies and experts from N.C. State and East Carolina universities, which contain necessary approaches to reduce the effects of flooding from Lumber, Tar and Neuse Rivers (Campbell, 2018). This was a major problem in hindsight because it shows that, according to the systems approach model of management (see Appendix A for A Systems Approach to Managing Disasters), Horry County was simply not receiving the attention it required because preparedness was not following mitigation—the community’s leaders (particularly its legislators) had stalled on their end and failed to provide funds to address the issues identified in the vulnerability assessment. Had the local legislatures adopted the recommendations of the vulnerability assessments, actions could have been taken in advance to reduce the risk of flooding.

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This would have been an example of classical organizational theory in action: structure, specialization, predictability, stability, rationality and democracy would have been its hallmarks (FAO, 2018). A modern management example is, of course, the systems approach, which links communication among agencies and departments with organizational balance and decision analysis. In Appendix A, the systems approach is based on a continuous loop of four phases: 1) mitigation, 2) preparedness, 3) response, and 4) recovery. The recovery process feeds back into the mitigation phase—and this was true for the Carolinas following Hurricane Matthew in 2016. The local government, however, failed to proceed onward with preparation—and that played a part in the extent of devastation following Hurricane Florence two years later.

Ultimately, non-linear relationships among systems instead of simple cause/effect understanding of events is an important part of the systems approach and managers and leaders needed to understand that. Leaders should view their interaction with systems as dynamic and always subject to change;…

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…worked well for FEMA and local organizers when Hurricane Harvey struck, and it worked well when Hurricane Florence hit. The main thing that local organizers failed to do was to take infrastructural precautions as part of the systems approach.

Indeed, this is one of the ways in which the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to natural disasters has improved since Katrina. FEMA directors are now required to actually have experience in handling disasters—which was not the case in 2005 (Philipps, 2017). Another federal agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, now requires all hospitals receiving federal money through Medicare and Medicaid to have emergency plans and preparations in place as a condition for receiving that money. This ensures that local area hospitals are ready to face the consequences of natural disasters like Florence.

However, instead of relying on response—whether governmental or local as Smith and Sutter (2013) showed—communities like Horry County have to be prepared ahead of time with prevention in mind. Prevention matters too. Storms like Florence could come again, but if the local region focuses on prevention as much as it focuses on response, more lives could be saved and fewer businesses and homes lost. Disaster management should not just be about planning responses to natural disasters: it should also be about preventing them insofar as a community is able to do so. Horry County and the Carolinas had all the information needed to take action following Hurricane Matthew: the studies showed what needed to be done, yet legislators failed to give the go-ahead to preparation and prevention. For that reason, the systems approach to management was disrupted and the community was kept at risk of suffering from substantial flooding. In the future, Horry County should focus on prevention, first and foremost—and response second.

Conclusion

In conclusion, government at all levels needs to review the studies that were provided to local legislators prior to Florence’s landfall. They need to act to prevent a reoccurrence of the extensive damage from this storm to be better prepared for another event in the future. Recommendations should include: debris clean-up, building several dry dams upstream from Lumberton so that the communities downstream could have been saved from the overflow. The cost for the recommended preventive measures is nothing compared to the potential loss of lives and properties that might arise from another reoccurrence.
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