After Helene and Milton, What Comes Next?

As we approach three weeks since the landfall of Hurricane Helene, and a week since Milton, so much is going through my mind. As is always the case with major flood events, I am struck by the immense human toll.  While the surge and coastal flooding in Florida was devastating, my roots in floodplain management lie in the Appalachian foothills, and so Helene’s impact in the Southern Appalachian region and the resultant flash flooding and damage really hit home.

Although the devastation is undeniable, if there’s one potentially positive outcome it’s the surge in public attention on our nation’s flood issues. In fact, in an interview just one week after Helene made landfall, I was asked by a reporter what would be the big message I would like to give to those affected. And the response was crystal clear in my mind:

This is the opportunity to rebuild resiliently. Never, ever think these rare events couldn’t happen again within a week, or a month, or a year, even if it is called a 500-year or 1000-year event. It will happen again, so instead of thinking of “getting back to normal” as soon as possible, pause and think how you can take this opportunity to be resilient.

At the time of the interview, Milton was not a known threat, and these back-to-back hurricanes have certainly added to the complexity of how we respond. But here we are. What comes next?

After previous flood events of national significance — think Katrina, Sandy, Harvey — ASFPM did several things that I truly think contributed to the rebuilding and recovery effort. We are now applying those same strategies in response to Helene and Milton. Here are the three big things that we’re doing to help:

• Working with the media. ASFPM has been getting requests for interviews on a daily basis, which allows us to bring our expertise to bear on the current event and dispel rumors and myths. Some of the focus in these conversations include the need to consider mitigation and resilience when rebuilding, that the longer-term recovery and mitigation effort is a joint responsibility of all levels of government and the private sector and individuals, and how the new Federal Flood Risk Management Standard could have an impact on rebuilding. It also gives us a chance to put these events into context of the larger arc of rising flood damages in the nation and how programs like the NFIP actually work.  
• Creating a dedicated webpage with curated resources for members, floodplain managers, and the public. More than ever, there is a lot of information available from all sorts of sources — some good, some not so good. Our post-flood resources webpage highlights official information from the responsible agencies at the federal and state level, shares links on how to dispel rumors, curates well-researched articles that discuss flood risk management issues unique to these events, and features some ASFPM resources that could be helpful to local floodplain managers and the public as they recover. We’ll be adding more content to the page in the coming weeks.
• Making progress on policy priorities. Large flood events provide an opportunity to get out some key messages based on our longstanding ASFPM priorities and policy positions. We work with the Administration as well as Congress and, in the past, have worked with individual states to develop and implement long-term policy solutions to help reduce flood risk (e.g., after Harvey, ASFPM was asked to participate in the Governor’s Commission to Rebuild Texas). Some of these priorities include promoting NFIP reforms, speeding up flood mitigation grant programs, and having robust flood mapping everywhere in the nation. ASFPM will soon publish a detailed list of policy recommendations for consideration after Helene and Milton.

For those of you in the ASFPM family who have been affected by Helene and Milton, our thoughts and prayers are certainly with you! These are the times that it truly takes a community to help a community and we will no doubt have hundreds if not thousands of members engaged in the long-term recovery after Helene and Milton. If there is a silver lining, however, it’s that sometimes it takes a disaster to realize that we must make changes if we are to move forward in a responsible and resilient way. Let’s not let that opportunity slip past; add your voice to the conversation and be a champion for the positive change we need to truly reduce flood losses in the nation.

Your partner in loss reduction,