The multiplier effect of recurring disasters

Hurricane Irma broke a devastating path through many parts of the Caribbean, causing dozens of deaths and severe damage in the West Indies and Virgin Islands in September 2017. Storm saved Puerto Rico, but later, when Category 5 Hurricane Maria hit, it caused damage valued at $90 billion mainly for Puerto Rico.

This was not the end of the country’s ordeals. Puerto Rico suffered a drought in 2018 and then an earthquake in 2020. The devastation caused by Hurricane Maria has overshadowed the recent disasters, but many people outside Puerto Rico don’t realize that the drought and earthquake have continued to exacerbate the suffering and devastation inflicted on the land.

“You have to understand the inherited conditions created by the first disaster to prepare for dealing with the second,” says Gary Machlis, professor of environmental sustainability at Clemson University.

Disaster and damage response assessments usually analyze disasters in isolation. But researchers are now trying to change this approach to deal with the disaster.

In a study recently published in Science Advances, Machlis and colleagues developed a framework for responding to disasters that recur in the same location within a short time.

More adaptive system

The framework created by Machlis and colleagues takes into account the history of disasters and how the inherited problems of one disaster affect another.

One related example includes wildfires in California, Machlis says. In the mountains, these fires create weather conditions that can cause mudslides and subsequent flooding in the Sierra Nevada.

“The inherited conditions of the fire will influence the damage from atmospheric river flooding that comes later,” he says. Machlis says he can already predict where problems may occur in the coming months due to the recent wildfire season in the Sierra Nevada.

“We can be mapping mudslides before they happen,” says Matchlis.

Caribbean woes

Part of the reason Hurricane Maria caused so much devastation in Puerto Rico is that Hurricane Irma had already inundated the islands two weeks ago. The soil was so saturated with torrential rains from the previous storm that the water table was still high at the time it hit Maria. This resulted in widespread flooding from the second storm as the soil could not absorb any more fluid and made it easier for Maria’s strong winds to blow over the trees.

“We recognized that the general weakness of disaster science and disaster preparedness — response and recovery — is the tendency of the scientific community and the disaster management community to treat each disaster as something separate,” says Machlis.

Furthermore, Maria’s response was not ready because supplies were depleted from the previous storm. The next drought in 2018, and the earthquake in 2020, reduced fresh water supplies and destroyed infrastructure that fractured and weakened previous storms.

While each event was a disaster in and of itself, the subsequent disasters were worse than they could possibly have been due to their recent predecessors.

In history, Machlis refers to a series of hurricanes every few years that struck Cuba in the mid-19th century. Since it usually takes Cuban coffee farmers at least two years to produce a productive crop, subsequent storms have occurred before the crops can recover.

Moreover, many farmers borrowed money to grow the second and third crops after the first was destroyed. In the end, the chain of events destroyed the coffee industry in Cuba, and many turned to sugarcane. Muchlis says that many of the effects of these changes have been long-term.

In both cases, some problems arose from geological influences, and others came from failures of human response, or other societal problems.

“These disasters are almost always a combination of human causes and natural events,” says Matchlis. In the event of an earthquake, for example, it is clear that there is a geological component that is causing the tremors or tidal waves. But when asked how many lives were lost, it is due to building codes in the affected areas.

“It’s not worth trying to define natural and man-made disasters,” says Machlis. “It doesn’t give you any deeper insight, it just covers up the insight.”

positive changes

Machlis notes that the legacy of disasters isn’t always bad. The problems Puerto Rico experienced after Hurricane Maria increased the resilience of the community health care system. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, community groups in New York state have adopted increased emergency response missions.

The environment itself sometimes responds favorably to past disasters. In the southeastern United States, an early blizzard can build resilience in trees as it breaks many of the weaker branches. In the event of another storm, the trees are more resistant to severe weather.

“There are some really positive inherited conditions,” says Matchlis.

Machlis’ goal now is to get first responders to disasters to adopt the framework his team has laid out, and eventually share it with more governments and agencies.

“The political implications of this research are very high,” he says. “If this work is done well, we believe it can save lives.”

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