Heavy Hearts for Hawaii
I want to start this month’s column by remembering those lives lost in the recent wildfire in Maui. To their families and their friends, a hui hou. For several days, I watched the news reports come in. In one report I heard something that, even as a hazards professional for my entire career, was sobering: the local hazard mitigation plan identified Maui as having high wildfire risk. That got me thinking a bit. You see, I experienced the allure of Hawaii for myself about seven years ago and I often tell friends and family that there is literally nowhere like it on earth. Although I have only been to Oahu, the beauty of the land, the kindness of the locals, and the richness of traditional Hawaiian culture were hard to describe other than it felt like a little bit of heaven on earth. But, as a Midwesterner, I would have never thought that Oahu, or any other place in Hawaii, had significant wildfire fire risk. I suppose I was just another carefree tourist who didn’t think twice about such things.
The recent wildfire caused me to look up the Maui hazard mitigation plan online and read about the wildfire risk in Maui. One thing that jumped out at me was that the area of the island where Lahaina is located (the West Maui planning area and the epicenter of much of the current wildfire’s destruction), there was not only a history of wildfires but the plan singled out the West Maui planning area as having a highly likely (greater than 90% annual chance) risk of an event happening in the future.
In my career focusing on flood hazards, one thing I know for certain is that to ignore the lessons of past flood events is foolish. It is unfortunate but tragic disaster events can help inform how we look at risk in the future in our communities. Just a few weeks ago, while attending the Natural Hazards Workshop hosted by the University of Colorado – Boulder, I took some time to walk the path along Boulder Creek and make my pilgrimage to the Gilbert White Flood Memorial commemorating the life and career of the person we call the father of modern floodplain management. On that memorial, the Big Thompson Flood event level was shown relative to other types of flooding, such as the 100- and 500-year events, to help build a connection in people’s minds and better translate flood risk.
After the massive losses from Hurricane Harvey, the City of Houston and Harris County analyzed the flood data from that event and ultimately determined that most losses would have been avoided if buildings were protected to the 500-year flood event, resulting in the city and county strengthening their floodplain management standards. When I worked in the State of Ohio’s floodplain management program and was preparing to do a field tour as part of a Community Assistance Visit, some of the most meaningful data I could find was historic flood data. Sure we generate a lot of useful statistical data, but nothing evokes the kind of emotional and thoughtful response as historic data can. To that end, the ASFPM’s Flood Science Center has been working in this space, adapting the Community Flood Notebook concept and doing some of the research to hopefully develop a common platform/tool that communities can use to document and memorialize their local flood events.
At the end of the day, it is critical that we have all the necessary tools, including things like maps to identify the hazard areas, plans to identify current and future vulnerabilities, and a full slate mitigation approaches. It is hard to mitigate against any hazard risk if we don’t know where it will happen and what the vulnerability is. But what is much harder — and elusive — is to translate that planning and hazards data into actions that save lives and property. My heart aches for all those who lost loved ones in Maui and, for that matter, everywhere natural disasters are occurring. Such tragedies redouble my determination that, as hazards professionals, we must continue working to find a way to ensure that we are not impacted by these events in the future. It is my hope that lessons can be learned from this very tragic event and measures will be put in place to reduce future losses. We should all heed the words Gilbert White wrote in 1942, Floods are acts of God, but flood losses are largely acts of man. We can and we must do better; and as hazards professionals, it is on us to help lead the way.
