“We’re surrounded by water.”
A former public works boss on Anna Maria Island would offer the remark, responding to inquiries about flooded roads, parking lots and buildings.
Without question, the island is surrounded by water, but we can plan and adjust to be more resilient and need to create a stronger community to deal with rising seas.
We can’t ignore the physical and economic risks of wind, water and extreme weather.
We can’t bury heads in the sand.
We should be like the ostrich, which, contrary to myth, doesn’t bury its head in the sand but has adapted to compensate for its inability to fly.
The ostrich deals with risk.
There’s a book titled “The Ostrich Paradox” — it’s not on everyone’s bedside table, I’m sure.
Authors Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther — both of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania — write about “why we underprepare for disasters.”
They list six reasons:
- Myopia, focusing on short horizons;
- Amnesia, quickly forgetting lessons of past disasters;
- Optimism, underestimating the likelihood of losses;
- Inertia, tending to maintain status quo due to uncertainties;
- Simplification, selectively focusing on only part of an issue;
- And herding, basing choices on the actions of others.
The book is a must-read for policymakers, emergency management professionals, risk managers and “anyone who wants to understand why we consistently underprepare for disasters,” according to Jay Neal, president and CEO of the Federal Association for Insurance Reform.
FAIR is focused on reducing uninsured risk and promoting wind and flood mitigation and, last fall, hosted a program on “The Ostrich Paradox.”
More recently, on Feb. 24, the foundation hosted a virtual, Zoom-based town hall on the relationship between extreme weather and rising property insurance costs.
Panelists included Neal, meteorologist John Morales, insurance expert Fred Karlinsky and former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate, who reminded attendees that “Florida is the sore thumb that sticks out in hurricane alley.”
Morales spoke about more days with intense heat and stronger storms delivering more intense winds and more water, as well as nuisance events, such as sunny day floods caused by high tides.
How prepared are we? he asked.
The consensus was not prepared enough, as the panelists shared their goals of promoting resiliency through mitigation, improving disaster preparedness and addressing a multitude of concerns: underinsurance, premium costs, the debt-burdened government flood insurance program.
New research from the First Street Foundation quantifies the financial impacts of flood risk carried by U.S. homeowners and how those impacts are growing as flood risks worsen due to a rapidly changing climate.
The foundation found there are nearly 4.3 million residential homes with substantial flood risk that would result in financial loss.
Furthermore, the research demonstrates that if all of the homes were to be insured against flood risk through the National Flood Insurance Program, rates would need to increase 4.5 times to cover the risk today.
The new research comes as FEMA is working on the “Risk Rating 2.0” initiative, which would set new premiums for properties inside and outside of Special Flood Hazard Areas based on their individual flood risk.
Politicians, planners and property owners face challenges now: escalating insurance rates, keeping the flood program solvent and revising zoning and building codes, infrastructure plans and management to minimize new risk and correct existing ones.
The town hall panelists warned of a perfect storm but, in this case, cautioned against ducking down and burying heads in the sand.
Do as the ostrich does?