The Year in Review: Examining the Ecology of Disasters (Part 2 of 2)

[DisasterRelief, 10 Dec 1998]
Written by Doug Rekenthaler, Managing Editor

If 1998 was a year largely defined by disasters and powerful weather events, then Hurricane Mitch stands alone as the sentinel event perhaps not just of the year, but of the decade as well.

Clearly, Mitch was the meteorological story of the year. At one point a monstrous Category 5 hurricane with 180 mph winds, Mitch has been ranked as the most powerful Atlantic storm in 200 years. The hurricane leveled huge portions of Honduras, Nicaragua and, to a lesser extent, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It killed at least 11,000 people, caused $5 billion in damages, left millions homeless and decimated the region's already poor national economies.

At least in the minds of climatologists and weather forecasters, Mitch provided the perfect sendoff for an unusually active hurricane season that saw the formation of 14 named storms, 10 of which became hurricanes (four of them major). Only three other times in recorded history has a more powerful hurricane plied the waters of the Atlantic.

But Mitch wasn't the only hurricane to menace the Caribbean. Just a month earlier, Hurricane Georges raged across the Caribbean, hammering Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, and the Florida Keys before finally making landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Final price tag: more than $4 billion.

The year also saw a once-in-a-century feat in September when four hurricanes simultaneously churned in Atlantic waters. Even when taking into account the slow 1997 season, when a record-setting El Nino suppressed storm formation, the Atlantic has been on a hurricane-producing tear. Since 1995, the Atlantic Basin has been home to 53 named storms, 33 hurricanes and 15 major hurricanes.

And there will be no rest for the weather-weary. William Gray, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State University and the man to whom many look for hurricane prognostications, last week admitted that he underestimated this year's hurricane count and suggested that coming years could be even worse. For 1999, Gray predicted 14 tropical storms, nine hurricanes and four intense hurricanes or, essentially, the same as 1998's count.

Even the Calvary is Hurting

To many of the organizations that respond to disasters, 1998 was a banner year for business - although not necessarily a happy one. The American Red Cross, for example, spent more money on disaster relief operations in 1998 that at any other time in its history. ``This has been an extremely difficult year for disasters,'' said John Clizbe, vice president of disaster services for the Red Cross. By early November, the organization had responded to 238 major disasters affecting 300,000 families in 41 states.

Although not as powerful or destructive as Hurricane Mitch, Georges became the American Red Cross's single most expensive disaster because of the enormous amount of territory it covered. In fact, so often was the organization's disaster relief fund tapped that Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole was forced to launch a $50 million fundraising appeal to replenish the account. Other humanitarian groups, including the Salvation Army and various religious charities, also saw a huge upswing in the number and cost of disaster operations during the year.

The insurance industry, still reeling from Hurricane Andrew's $30 billion assault on the Florida coast in 1992, increasingly is keeping one eye on the meteorological horizon and the other on its bottom line. Loretta Waters, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute in New York, said the industry is being forced to adapt to changing weather conditions. ``We're definitely seeing a dramatic growth in the cost of disasters,'' she said.

According to Worldwatch, Munich Re, one of the world's largest insurance companies, paints a stark picture for those who opt to live in disaster zones. In effect, the company suggests that if current trends continue, in the not-too-distant future some regions of the globe - including the southeastern United States and Indonesia - will become uninsurable.

However, in a stinging rebuttal of the Worldwatch paper, Munich Re told DisasterRelief.org that the company would never suggest such a thing ``considering that the insurance of natural catastrophes is one of our fields of business.''

According to Angelika Wirtz at the company's headquarters in Munich, ``Our investigations indicate natural disasters will not set a new record for absolute losses in 1998.'' However, she adds that a ``comparison of the last 10 years with previous decades shows that the trend toward ever increasing economic and insured losses is continuing undiminished.''

Unfortunately, mankind has raised the disaster stakes through its predilection for living along rivers, ocean coasts, and other disaster-prone areas. According to the American Geophysical Union (AGU), more people than ever ``have become concentrated in disaster-prone areas.'' The result is an astronomical increase in the cost of disasters.

The National Science and Technology Council estimated that during the past five years in the United States alone, natural disaster costs have averaged about $54 billion annually. Looked at another way, Americans spend more than $1 billion per week on disaster-related costs.

Loss graphic
Disaster Losses since 1980.

A recent study by Princeton University confirmed that disaster costs in the U.S. are rising because more people are taking up residence in areas like earthquake-rich California and hurricane-intensive Florida, building expensive homes, and demanding increased infrastructure to support those homes. The result is that even though the number of deaths from disasters actually is dropping, their cost is skyrocketing because of property loss. ``The U.S. has become more vulnerable to disaster because we're putting more people and stuff in harm's way,'' said Gregory van der Vink, a professor of geophysics at Princeton. ``It's really a reflection of the demographics of our nation.''

As a result, James Lee Witt, director of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government leaders are proposing that residents either voluntarily move from disaster areas or take responsibility for their own losses. Speaking at the AGU meeting, William Hooke of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce noted: ``People are saying, 'If my house is flooded, maybe I'm dumb for living where I am.' Disaster costs are doubling or tripling every 10 years. We need to put more responsibility on people's shoulders for living in harm's way.''

In other regions of the world, living in disaster areas is borne more out of necessity that choice. Whether it's the millions of Chinese living along the Yangtze River or the millions of Bangladeshis living on the vast river deltas at the edge of the Indian Ocean, livelihoods are based on resources from the water, the crops it irrigates, or the trade it accommodates.

So What's Going On?

If 1998 ranks as one of the world's worst in terms of natural disasters, the question is why? To many groups, the recent rash of violent weather is Mother Nature's aggregate response to ecological mismanagement, global warming, the powerful residual effect of the recent record-breaking El Nino, growing populations in disaster zones, and perhaps large-scale climatological cycles about which mankind is only vaguely aware.

According to Worldwatch, which makes its living tracking such trends, most of 1998's disasters actually were ``unnatural'' in the sense that mankind played a prominent role in exacerbating their effects. From the deforestation of mountain slopes to development in floodplains and watersheds, from poor topsoil management to excessive burning of fossil fuels, mankind increasingly is becoming an enemy to his own state.

``Land use is a significant contributor to climate change,'' notes Jonathan Foley, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin. ``It's as important as what you do to the climate when you double carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.''

Fortunately, the sheer size and scope of this year's disasters has awakened many to the gravity of the situation. Even the naysayers, who for years dismissed suggestions that deforestation leads to worsening disasters, now are at least listening.

``It's very important that we not jump to conclusions about weather extremes because, in a sense, every year has its extremes,'' notes the Global Climate Lab's Rob Quayle. ``But some events in 1998 just were so striking that it is obvious something is going on.''

In China, for example, the Yangtze floods historically were written off as natural disasters that could not be avoided. But the near-biblical floods of the past summer forced the Chinese government finally to acknowledge that rampant deforestation along the mighty river's slopes has led to heavy build up of silt on the river's bottom and powerful runoff into the river during monsoon rains. The result is catastrophic flooding that worsens with each year's floods. Along the Yangtze alone, more than 85 percent of its original forest cover is gone. Additionally, millions of people have settled - often-times illegally - along the river's floodplains, placing added pressure on the already constrained river channel.

As a result, Beijing recently unveiled a $2 billion plan to ``reforest'' the river's watershed. Additionally, the government banned all logging along the river's upper stretches, and plans are afoot to relocate many of the residents living along the river's floodplains.

Similarly, this year's massive tropical forest fires not only were started by man - usually farmers and ranchers clearing land for use - but were magnified by those same environmentally malignant policies. As most environmental groups have taken pains to point out over the years, the absence of trees exacerbates drought conditions by allowing the soil to dry even faster than normal.

Additionally, fewer trees lead to less evaporation of moisture into the atmosphere, depriving the local ecosystem of important rainfall. In essence, ``the ability of the land to cool itself is diminished,'' said Foley. Similarly, clear-cut lands are prime breeding grounds for flashfloods and the killer mudslides that each year claim so many lives.

Roger Pielke, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, argues that changes to the land have a profound effect on local climate. ``Perhaps the wildfires this summer in Florida were exacerbated by the degree of landscape change,'' he said. Much of the indigenous swamplands of Southern Florida have been drained and built upon this century. This has led to a gradual warming trend in the state, Pielke contends.

Earth's Year 2000 Problem

So what does all this bode for the future? If the environmental Cassandras are to be believed, the natural disasters and weather extremes that plagued so much of the planet in 1998 and recent years will become increasingly commonplace. As more carbon dioxide is added to the air and more trees fall, temperatures will continue to rise, the seas will grow warmer, and more frequent and powerful storms will assault the land.

On the other hand, some argue that the recent weather extremes are simply manifestations of natural perturbations in the earth's climatological cycles. They note that the planet has gone through extremes long before there were enough men or machines to impact the environment, and that it is impossible to determine whether we are affecting any climate changes on a 4.5-billion-year-old planet.

Most, however, admit that while it remains unclear what if any impact mankind is having on the weather, Mother Nature has been acting a bit whackier in recent years. Precisely how this will play out at the changing of the millennium remains to be seen.

``I don't think it's an exaggeration to say I can set my watch by next year's disasters,'' says Worldwatch Senior Researcher Janet Abramovitz. ``We'll have landslides in the [U.S.] Pacific Northwest this winter when heavy rains hit the deforested hillsides. We'll have heavy springtime flooding in Europe. We'll have tropical forest fires. It's become so easy to predict.''

As Abramovitz points out, ``It's not that these things are unusual. It's that they have become routine where once they were not. Tropical forest fires historically were very unusual. Now they're not.'' But she adds that because governments finally are beginning to recognize the enormous physical and economic costs of poor environmental policies and the concomitant gains that can be realized from remedying them, there at least is a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel.

``I don't think we're going to see any big improvements in the next five years,'' she said. ``Too many of these problems cannot be corrected anytime soon. But that's not to say that they shouldn't get started. There's a lot to be said for governments taking steps to prevent these problems.''