20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina | Federal government plans to blow off disaster response quicken

Today is the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans.

-- "Stories From The Storm: Remembering 20 Years Since Hurricane Katrina," Weather Channel
-- "Hurricane Katrina, 20 years later," NPR

Looters make off with merchandise from several downtown businesses in New Orleans, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina hit the area. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

When the disaster of federal government response to Hurricane Katrina's effect on New Orleans transpired, my overarching thought was that the cost of austerity-neoliberal policies introduced during the Reagan era finally hit, in that over the previous 20 years, government cutbacks could be withstood because of the long period of overinvestment that preceded it.

-- "Capital shallowing: the effect of disinvestment on government functioning," 2023

Certainly, the Trump Administration's desires to cut FEMA ("The Trump administration says it wants to eliminate FEMA. Here's what we know," NPR, "Trump says he plans to phase out FEMA after 2025 hurricane season," CNN) and devolve emergency response fully to the states is problematic because such "natural" or weather related disasters can exceed the resources and ability of local and state government to respond.

Levee works built to protect New Orleans from floods were inadequately planned and built, and were especially vulnerable to extranormal storm events.  AP photo.

It's already bad that the Trump Administration has politicized what areas get disaster declarations approved ("FEMA delays disaster aid to multiple states while Texas receives rapid approval," EHN, "FEMA faces backlog of emergency aid requests as hurricane season nears," Washington Post), and how quickly ("Hawley says FEMA is ‘slow-walking’ disaster declaration requests, but he’s pushing Trump," St. Louis NPR, " Trump's former FEMA chief opens up — and says administration is 'delaying' aid," Politico).

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became a symbol of the government's failure to prevent damage and save lives after Hurricane Katrina. Here, a plea spray-painted on plywood sits in front of an apartment complex on Sept. 4, 2005, in Biloxi, Miss., which was hit hard by the storm. Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Washington Monthly has a good article, "Trump’s Definition of DEI Is a Disaster for Disaster Management," on the topic of how calling planning and response "diversity" and therefore not funding it will have disastrous consequences.  From the article:

Billion in damages mark, outpaced only by the record-setting 28 in 2023. Presiding over America’s response to this cataclysmic situation, we have a president ignoring the science on climate change, rolling back environmental protections, and denying half of the requests the federal government receives from states for major disaster aid. From weakening the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to laying off hundreds of federal employees critical in forecasting and responding to extreme weather events, this administration has already shown itself to be disastrous for disaster management.

But the unequal consequences of natural catastrophes reveal an added danger that Trump’s wide-ranging rollbacks create. When wildfires ravaged Los Angeles at the beginning of this year, killing at least 30 people, forcing around 200,000 evacuations, and destroying more than 16,000 structures, then-Trump advisor Elon Musk placed the blame squarely on L.A. agencies’ prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

An aerial view Jan. 28 of trees and homes that burned in the Palisades Fire in 

the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. Mario Tama, Getty Images

... we accept the Trump administration’s operational definition of the acronym, the L.A. fires—and every other natural disaster—most definitely have something to do with DEI. Since January, the administration has cast DEI to mean any consideration of populations uniquely at risk, turning efforts to identify and address where needs are greatest into “dangerous preferential hierarchy.” In response, government agencies have been limiting the use of language like “at risk,” “historically,” “marginalized,” “underserved,” and hundreds of other terms, according to a New York Times analysis.

Not surprisingly, those with the least resources have the most to lose in the face of such disasters.  Planning and responding to disaster efficiently saves money, time, and lives.

The inability of the Trump Administration to have any other agenda than wrecking the capacity of the federal government to add value to society is breathtaking ("It was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history: Have we forgotten Katrina's lessons?," NPR).

=====

In 2007, I was in New Orleans for the National Main Street conference and I went on a Katrina "disaster" tour.  The tour guide was incensed "how could the government do this?"  I said, "have you ever been to Detroit?"

Flood waters from Hurricane Katrina cover streets in New Orleans on Aug. 30, 2005. It is estimated that 80 percent of the city was under flood waters as levees broke and leaked around Lake Pontchartrain. Vincent Laforet/Pool/AFP via Getty Images.

Empty lots in the Brush Park neighborhood of Detroit.

Creating risks, the DC plane crash: risk analysis and investigation

Wreckage is seen in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor Bacon, U.S. Coast Guard via AP.

The tragic crash resulting in 67 deaths seems preordained ("Boats return to the Potomac River for D.C plane crash recovery and investigation," Philadelphia Inquirer).  

For years, it's been written that because of restrictions on airspace use around the White House, planes fly to and from National Airport through extremely narrow corridors and tight elevations ("Pilots have long worried about DC’s complex airspace contributing to a catastrophe," AP, note: it requires going into a good library articles database to get older links).

But I don't recall these articles discussing airplanes also having to negotiate airspace with military helicopters on training missions from various bases along the Potomac River, like Fort Belvoir, the duty station for the helicopter involved in the crash.

A Reddit thread shared an interesting article, "Why You’ve Never Been In A Plane Crash" (Asterisk Magazine) about airplane crash investigation not being focused on "blame" as much as the process/system that likely generated the crash, with a focus on structural change.

It discusses a case in Los Angeles, and how a series of near misses similar to the final crash bred complacency.  The New York Times article, "Washington Crash Renews Concerns About Air Safety Lapses" sounds like it could have been pulled from the files on the LA crash, detailing ongoing process issues at National Airport, which, scarily, appear to be more common across the country.  From the article:

Clues emerging from the moments before the deadly collision Wednesday night between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet suggest that multiple layers of the country’s aviation safety apparatus failed, according to flight recordings, a preliminary internal report from the Federal Aviation Administration, interviews with current and former air traffic controllers and others briefed on the matter.

The helicopter flew outside its approved flight path. The American Airlines pilots most likely did not see the helicopter close by as they made a turn toward the runway. And the air traffic controller, who was juggling two jobs at the same time, was unable to keep the helicopter and the plane separated.

WMATA Fort Totten crash, CBC photo.

The same kind of complacency at the airport ("Near-misses at Washington airport worried pilots well before fatal crash," Reuters) seems comparable to WMATA's Metrorail which experienced a number of signals failures induced near misses before the 2009 crash that killed 9 ("WMATA circuit failure," 2009).

Plus things could have been even more discombobulated because of the Trump Administration's call for air traffic controllers to leave government service ("Air traffic controllers were initially offered buyouts and told to consider leaving government," AP).  OTOH, Trump blamed DEI and the Biden Administration ("Trump was challenged after blaming DEI for the DC plane crash. Here’s what he said," AP).

Bollards as a security measure in DC

I can't believe in the Eastern Market entry ("Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my unrealized master plan for the market") I forgot to mention a key security element as part of the transportation element. Retractable bollards at key entry points to the pedestrianized area.  I did list it in the comments once I remembered.

When I ran a farmers market in the Brookland neighborhood of DC, we narrowly missed having an incident by an older man who basically said he was above the rules.

Retractable hydraulic bollards in the Liverpool pedestrian district.

I was on the Eastern Market Community Advisory Council for 13 years, and for many of those years I brought this up, because of vehicle incidents in markets world-wide.  Although the first one, in Santa Monica was not a terrorist incident at all ("Case is closed on deadly day at market," Los Angeles Times).

The killings in New Orleans ("How New Orleans failed to protect Bourbon Street from attack, block by block," Washington Post) should remind every jurisdiction that does regular street closures for events to install high quality secure retractable bollards, to provide an extra level of protection against ever increasing vehicular terrorism.

Also see "After New Orleans attack, how does Houston plan to keep crowds safe? Here's what officials say," Houston Chronicle.

Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore: ferry/water taxi services as an option?

Photo: WJLA-TV

A tragedy this morning as the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed after being hit by a container ship. 

It's a key element of the roadway network--the bridge is part of Interstate 695, the freeway that rings the city but mostly in the suburbs, called the "Baltimore Beltway", carrying an estimated 12.4 million vehicles per year-- and its collapse means it blocks the Patapsco River entry into the Port of Baltimore ("Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse: What we know about ship and bridge," BBC).

It's not like a freeway span in California or Philadelphia ("How commuters avoided ‘carmageddon’ after the I-95 bridge collapse Drivers," Washington Post) that can be replaced relatively quickly.  It will be down for a long time.  Although it's possible that many people can adjust.  According to the Post, in Philadelphia:

Drivers, helped by real-time traffic apps, public transit and more liberal work-from-home policies, quickly adjusted their habits to avoid gridlock

That won't help the Port...

The New York Times quoted a woman concerned about her ability to get to her job:

Marquita Finch, 38, was among a dozen or so people who climbed an embankment along a highway in Dundalk, just south of Baltimore, to see the collapsed bridge. The job she was supposed to be at this morning was just on the other side of the bridge. “I’m probably going to lose that job,” she said. A lot of people would probably lose their jobs, she said. 

I wonder if it's possible to institute a ferry/water service there in the interim, so people can cross more easily, so Marquita Finch won't lose her job.

Government failure in Texas: electricity generation in extreme cold weather (reprint)

The Guardian has a story, "Texans brace for freezing weather in hopes storm won’t be repeat of 2021," about how the forecasted severe cold weather potentially threatens electricity generation in Texas, because the state hasn't moved that quickly to add resilience to their system, despite hundreds dying and billions of dollars of damage just last year.

They just don't seem to have a bias for action.  

Similarly, Republicans in Florida are dealing with the insurance repercussions of extreme weather in Florida, because most property casualty firms are abandoning the state, leaving the market to the state captive insurance firm, which is underfunded ("Why Republicans are coughing up billions of dollars to save Florida’s insurance market," Grist).  From the article:

In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, more than any disaster in U.S. history other than Hurricane Katrina. It also dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.

In recognition of this crisis, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis convened the state’s Republican-controlled legislature last week for a special session devoted to stabilizing the insurance market. In a matter of days, lawmakers passed a package of bills aimed at doing so. The package includes bills that will cut down on litigation and fraudulent claims that raise costs for insurers, but it also provides insurance companies with a $1 billion public subsidy to help them stay afloat next year. That’s on top of another $2 billion the legislature rolled out earlier this year.

I am naive in believing that acting in advance of the potential for failure is better than acting afterwards.

This is a reprint from last year:

Annual household energy resilience planning: a new imperative?

For the past 10+ years, in December, I usually publish an entry on winter weather and "maintenance of way" for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit, as most snow clearance planning and practice prioritizes motor vehicles.

-- "Snow, winter and the Sustainable Mobility City," 2019 (includes links to many previous entries)

While there is a fair amount of writing about how many households are installing generators in places where the electricity system is likely to fail, I haven't been in a situation, either in DC or Salt Lake, where utility interruption is a frequent occurrence, therefore the cost isn't justified.

But we all know what happened in Texas last February, a record cold snap, and the state's regulatory regime's failure to require winter hardening for critical supply and transmission infrastructure, in particular natural gas, led to massive failures across the state, blackouts, water system failure, and many hundreds of deaths.

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"
-- Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"
-- "It's not rocket science: 10 ways to fix the Texas power grid, according to experts (From the Houston Chronicle)"
-- "October is National Energy Awareness Month"

In response, mostly the State of Texas has done very little to mandate system hardening, even though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission once again has recommended that they do so, just as they did after a similar but less deadly event in 2011 ("Feds call for more regulation of Texas power grid, natural gas industry," Austin American-Statesman).

So what's up for Texans this winter?

The Dallas Morning News reports ("ERCOT report says Texans face steep shortfalls in power capacity if extreme event hits this winter") that the state energy coordination ERCOT, is warning Texas residents that the state is still vulnerable to catastrophic utility interruptions, if this winter is particularly cold.

Texas’ grid operator on Friday released its predictions for peak electricity use in Texas for this winter that showed steep shortfalls in power capacity in an extreme event, despite not accounting for February’s deadly freeze. 

ERCOT’s power demand projection known as the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy was already facing criticism for using data that did not account for climate change and did not take into account weather and outage data from February’s deadly winter storm. 

The main failure of the report, according to Texas A&M University professor Andrew Dessler, is that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas based projections of extreme demand on the 2011 winter event that left wide swaths of North Texas without power. 

Dessler, an atmospheric sciences professor, said the report shows that Texans have around a one-in-10 chance of seeing weather-related power outages this winter. “One in 10 years seems to me to be not a great worst-case scenario,” Dessler said. “That means that there’s a 10% chance we’re going to do worse than that.”

It's definitely criminal that the State Legislature, Governor, and regulatory authorities have basically done nothing in response to February's crisis, which also affected states outside of Texas, because they were dependent on natural gas supplies from Texas.

This means that residents that can afford it are likely to install generators ("Facing power grid anxiety, Texans are buying generators and bracing for blackouts," San Antonio Report), install converters if they have solar power systems, and buy vehicles, like the Ford F-150 truck, which if you buy the special electricity generation package can power their houses in case the utility distribution system fails, although it still needs gasoline ("Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout," Detroit Free Press).

But what about the people without the means to protect themselves by buying large stocks of water and generators?

And in any case, if water systems fail because of power interruptions, people will have to store large supplies of water as well.

======

States that frequently experience winter cold have long since weatherized their electricity generation systems.  It's the southern states, that before climate change became as serious as it has didn't worry much about "cold snaps," that haven't done this.  It's particularly important in Texas, since it is such a large energy producer.  When systems fail there, they don't just effect Texas, but all the other states that rely on Texas energy production.

 

Planning for heat/climate change | Public health

Yesterday, I really wanted to check out some parks in South Salt Lake, and I went for a bike ride to do so when the temperature was 106°.  

Not too smart (did help me lose some weight).  I was struck by how this one playground facility in Fitts Park was the only one I've ever seen with shade screens.

I doubt it was to deal with the heat specifically.  

More for design aesthetics probably, but increasingly these kinds of measures should be taken within parks and place planning, to make places more resilient wrt heat and sun. 

Las Vegas Boulevard, May 25th, 2017.  Photo: Richard Brian, Las Vegas Review-Journal.

For example, in bike planning, I keep mentioning misters. But misters probably should be deployed more widely as a matter of public space management.

I've discussed a few times, Heat Wave, the book by sociologist Eric Klinenberg which studied the impact of a heat wave on the vulnerable in Chicago, and the conditions and characteristics between neighborhoods with similar demographics concerning the poor and less resourced, and how these conditions shaped outcomes positively or negatively.

-- "Documentary -- Cooked: Survival by Zip Code | PBS Independent Lens"

There's been been writings recently on Phoenix especially, with summer temperatures over 120°, the impact on vulnerable populations, and their response ("As Phoenix swelters, the nights are even worse than the boiling days," "Unhoused in Phoenix’s perilous heat: ‘If I don’t keep cool, I’ll die’," Guardian).

Phoenix was one of the first cities to appoint a "heat officer," to coordinate municipal action and response on the issues ("Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers").

The Washington Post has three articles today on the topic:

-- "U.K. braces for record temperatures as ‘heat apocalypse’ hits Europe."  As Europe has experienced rising temperatures over the past 20 years, institutions are taking more measures to reduce the negative impact.  For example, 75% of housing in France doesn't have air conditioning.  French nursing homes are taking measures to provide for "extreme" cooling in the face of extreme heat, etc.

-- "Climate change is pushing hospitals to tipping point."  From the article:

Each of the organizations that signed onto the pledge — which included public hospitals, health-care centers, pharmaceutical companies, medical-device makers and suppliers — are expected to develop climate-resilience plans for their facilities, including plans to support individuals or communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

According to Ebi, any plan should mention what she called the “low-hanging fruit,” including:

• Understanding your patient base, and how it could shift with climate change
• Outlining community vulnerabilities to global warming (for example, care centers that are based in a flood plain)
• Planning personnel schedules around forecast weather events, or rescheduling surgeries to ensure anticipated surge capacity
• Providing opportunities for patients that benefit their health and the environment, such as a garden to supply fresh food for the cafeteria

-- "A Texas meteorologist warned of power outages. Then the lights went out." This has to do with managing energy demands in the face of extreme conditions.  It's interesting that as part of weather forecasting, television meteorologists report on electricity availability. 

Increasingly, Texas' energy generation system is stressed whether it's hot or cold.   But it's not just an energy production and regulation issue, it's a matter of public health.  

-- "Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"

For example, Texas public water systems were damaged by the power outage in the extreme cold, health facilities and their ability to provide services are affected, and of course, the weather-related deaths, which arguably totaled in the thousands.

Also see "Heat impact calculator: Not all neighborhoods suffer equally," Orange County Register.

===

Plus there are other climate change risks, like wildfires, flooding, etc.

Trains and emergency evacuation: Ukraine and freight/emergency transportation planning | Homogeneous versus heterogeneous transportation systems

 A couple weeks ago, charlie called our attention to a great article ("On board the mobile command that's keeping Ukraine's trains running," Business Insider) on how the Ukraine Ministry of Infrastructure has responded to managing its train network in wartime conditions, with special focus on the use of trains to evacuate Ukrainians to safer areas out of the country, and how the staff no longer operates from a fixed position as that would be a highly vulnerable target for attack.  

With regard to transportation in wartime, disasters, and emergencies, there are (at least) three issues: (1) heterogeneous transportation system; (2) managing railroads and road systems; (3) capable of being ingmanagerially flexible.

Kamyshin starting a conference call with the top managers 

of Ukraine's six regional railroads. 

Alan Chin for Insider

People crowding a train platform in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Twitter photo: Nexta_TV

People waiting for trains to take them from Lviv to Poland. 

On Sunday only two trains were running and only women and children were allowed to board.

Photograph: Vincent Haiges/Avalon

Around that time was an NPR article about a volunteer effort in Poland to restore an abandoned train line to facilitate refugee trains from Ukraine ("Poland rebuilds abandoned rail tracks to Ukraine to help refugees fleeing the war").  (Also see "12 hours on board a packed train out of Ukraine," BI, "‘Everyone was fighting to get on a train’: the desperation of Ukrainians trying to reach safety," Guardian).

Ukrainian refugees lining up for services at the Berlin Train Station on March 8, 2022

Michael Sohn, AP

Since there have been other articles on train stations as gateways for Ukrainian refugees ("Berlin train station turns into refugee town for Ukrainians," AP, "Berlin's main train station becomes Ukrainian refugee welcome center," Reuters).  From the NYT:

Now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is turning Europe’s trains and ornate imperial-era stations into a new refugee crisis network, putting them on a war footing yet again. At least a dozen state- and privately owned railway operators have opened up their services for free to refugees, and their cargo trains are being deployed to bring humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

When I first read the Insider article, I thought about how the US has built, for the most part, a homogeneous mobility paradigm, around cars and trucks and the "Interstate Highway and Defense System" network of high speed roads across the nation.

"The Evolution of the U.S. Interstate Highway System," Vivid Maps

Trucks and roads work well for flexibility, but have capacity constraints both for loads and the number of vehicles, aren't particularly energy efficient, and require lots of personnel.  And they can create significant congestion.

Trains operate with small numbers of personnel and are energy efficient, but can be slower, certainly are less flexible, and are definitely vulnerable in wartime to tracks and trains being bombed. (Bombed tracks can be repaired.)

But when the highway system was created, no one ever considered there would be a time when oil would be super high in price and labor availability would be seriously constrained ("Taking Europe's Trains to Escape, or to Teach, A Conflict's Front Lines." NYT).

Freight transportation planning.  But in any case, the current supply chain logistics problems we have in the US indicate a lack of an adequate and integrated freight transportation planning policy that includes all the elements, including shipping, ports, trains, trucks and related labor issues ("Port of Los Angeles Stops Short of 24-Hour Operations, Unlike Long Beach," Wall Street Journal, "Rigged: Forced into debt, worked past exhaustion, left with nothing," USA Today).

Emergency evacuation.  And I thought back to various hurricane evacuation efforts in Louisiana (Katrina) and Texas (Rita), how the road system was overwhelmed, leading to traffic deaths, and how some people called for train evacuations not realizing that we have so little resources available for passenger train service that unlike in Ukraine today or Europe more generally, for the most part in the US, passenger train service isn't a realistic option for emergency transportation.

Evacuation from Houston in advance of Hurricane Rita, 2005.

Photo: Stan Honda, AFP/Getty Images.

If there are multiple tracks, all railroad tracks can be used for unidirectional traffic, which for safety reasons, is not possible with freeways.

Heterogeneity versus homogeneity in transportation planning.  In any case, the Ukraine example, as sad and as horrifying as it is, demonstrates the importance of hetereogenity in transportation planning and the provision of infrastructure, that you need both train service and car/truck service for both passenger and freight mobility in times of emergency. 

Stepping up on response to local "disasters" that are small, but big to the victims

Emergency personnel on the scene of an apartment fire and possible explosion in the 2400 block of Lyttonsville Road in Silver Spring on March 3, 2022. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

There is a letter to the editor in the Washington Post ("What's next for tenants displaced by the Lyttonsville fire?") about the aftermath of a multi-building fire at an apartment complex in the Greater Silver Spring area of Montgomery County, Maryland, where two buildings were destroyed, and two still standing buildings have been condemned.

The letter makes the point that substantive resources and help aren't being provided to the tenants, who need a lot more than the ability to sign up for recreation classes--one of the offerings made available at a recent "community fair" aimed at helping the victims of the fire.

This piece, "Revisiting stories: the need to provide programs to step in and deal with multiunit properties as they age," focuses on building safety a bit more generally, not about providing assistance to tenants as a result of building failure.  That should be reconsidered.

FEMA is a behemoth, providing aid to disaster aid to victims of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, etc.  But it doesn't respond to localized disasters of a micro-scale.

But could it be a model for localities, organized perhaps at the state level, for a way to provide a coordinated response and substantive help in a case such as this, the Surfside condo collapse, condominium condemnations ("Residents of SE DC condo forced to move out due to unsafe conditions," WJLA-TV), etc.?

Resources to review for developing program models include those produced for large scale disaster management, victims of crime and terrorism, etc., for example:

-- "Helping Victims of Mass Violence & Terrorism: Planning, Response, Recovery, and Resources: Planning," US Department of Justice
-- "Disaster Relief: Help Now, Help Later, Help Better," University of Pennsylvania
-- "Immediate Relief/Individual Support," Disaster Philanthropy Playbook

In the post-9/11 world, most communities have created agencies for emergency management, separate from police, fire and other emergency services.  

This kind of function could be added to those agencies.  Although the advantage of organizing at the state scale is that in most communities such events are infrequent, meaning directing ongoing resources to such functions could be seen as "a waste," and people don't have the ability to develop substantive expertise.  Then again, at the state scale, concern and capacity could be pretty distant from local needs.  Definitely a conundrum on how to organize such programs.

Oil dependence | The US as a Petro-state and gasoholic | and war

 

People crowding a train platform in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Twitter photo: Nexta_TV

The Business Week article "The Petro States of America" dating to the Obama Administration made the point that the US is a petro state too, and it has built an economy dependent on oil, especially when it comes to transportation.  More than 90% of all trips are made by car.  

The development of hydraulic fracking in oil and gas production made the US one of the world's top producers, after production had been in decline.  But in response, Saudi Arabia and Russia lowered the price of oil to drive US fracking firms out of business, because they have relatively high production costs per barrel.  So US production has dropped.

Norway shows a different way.  By contrast, Norway, in the face of new riches from oil and gas production in the North Sea, maintained its hydroelectric-based energy economy, and instead of using royalties and other revenues to lower taxes (that's what Britain did) it invested the receipts in a sovereign wealth fund.   Although the US-based Tax Foundation, an advocate for low taxes, doesn't like it ("Norway’s Addiction to Taxes on Oil").

Norway's state-owned "gasoline" brand, Statoil, is installing EV charging points at their stations.

Again, because of  hydroelectricity, Norway is an early leader in the development of electric vehicles ("Why Norway Leads In EVs—And The Role Played By Cheap Renewable Electricity," Forbes, "Environment-friendly mobility: Norway’s high-voltage EV push offers a template for India," Indian Express).

Netherlands and Denmark shift to sustainable mobility.  Similarly, the Netherlands and Denmark, in response to the Oil Crisis of 1973, recognized that they put their countries at risk by shifting to a mobility paradigm dependent on cars and gasoline.  So they instead prioritized transit, biking, and walking, and the necessary land use, transportation and energy policies to shift the paradigm.  

For example, excise taxes on gasoline and automobile purchases are high, and significant monies are invested in transit and biking biking infrastructure.

Separately, Germany is a car manufacturer, but not an oil producer.  Regardless of the importance of car manufacturing to its economy, it has never deemphasized the primacy of transit (complemented by walking, and later biking) as the optimal mode for urban mobility.  (By contrast, the US has a more homogeneous approach to mobility, abandoning transit in favor of the car, when at one time the US had the densest transit network in the world.)

A gasoline-dependent economy is susceptible to disruptions in supply.  In the US, the recent cyberattack on a gasoline pipeline ("Automobility dependence and how the Colonial Pipeline gasoline transportation failure affects gasoline supplies on the Atlantic Coast") and disruptions in gasoline supply due to weather events.

For example, as a result of Superstorm Sandy, gasoline supplies were restricted and many states declared states of emergency, not just because of disaster damage from the storm, but because of reduced access to gasoline ("After Sandy, New York will hold strategic gasoline reserves," Washington Post, "After Sandy, gas lines stretch for miles," CNN). 

A Shell station without gasoline in 1973.

A gasoline-dependent economy is susceptible to changes in world conditions.   Even though the US is one of the largest producers of oil, it is one of the largest consumers of oil too, and because oil is an international commodity, the price for oil is not set based on local production.

If it were, gas would be cheap in Salt Lake City because there are five refineries in and around the city, and it is priced the same as everywhere else.  Instead, oil is priced globally, based on international demand and perceptions of future supply and risks.

In response to the Ukraine War, gasoline prices in Downtown Salt Lake City have risen more than $1 per gallon in less than one week.  Prices are significantly higher in California.  

And governors and US Senators are calling for temporary elimination of gasoline excise taxes to reduce prices slightly ("A pair of Senate Democrats want to suspend the federal gas tax through the end of 2022," Yahoo News, "Push to Pause Gas Taxes Increases as Prices Surge Amid Ukraine Conflict," Newsweek).

Even though the US was devastated at the time by the 1970s oil crisis, which crushed US automobile manufacturers, whose less efficient cars were supplanted by foreign manufacturers, for the most part the land use and transportation planning paradigm dependent on the automobile and gasoline did not change.

The major policy change was putting energy efficiency requirements for higher miles per gallon for car production, measured against an automaker's entire fleet of vehicles ("CAFE Requirements," NAS).  

But the business model for US manufacturers doesn't favor the production of small cars, and over time, foreign manufacturers dominated the market for cars while US manufacturers shifted to SUVs and trucks.

Demand for oil and natural gas empowers producing countries: Resource Curse, Pollution Paradox.  And because most countries are consumers not producers of oil, this gives disproportionate power to renegade countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, who end up with the double whammy of the "resource curse" and the "pollution paradox."  

The resource curse was coined to describe countries dominated by extractive industries and how few of the financial benefits from oil and mineral production end up fostering positive social and economic development in those countries, and the political structure is often authoritarian.

The pollution paradox, coined by Guardian columnist George Monbiot, describes how companies and people (like the Koch family of Kansas) all in on resources like oil and gas do everything in their power to prevent a switch to more sustainable methods of energy production or alternatives to the automobile.  

And they are super motivated, whereas advocates for change don't have the same level of self interest, and their efforts pale by comparison to the pollution caucus.  

For example, Koch interests fund organizations focused on supporting tax benefits for oil production, developing anti-regulatory state legislation, and opponents to transit and solar energy ("Charles Koch Personally Founded a Group Protecting Oil Industry Handouts," The Nation).

Energy dependence enables war: The Ukraine.  Other countries dependence on Russian oil and gas, especially European countries, is at the heart of Putin's willingness to go to war in the Ukraine.  He figured that Europe would back off because they need his oil and especially natural gas, which is the primary heating source across Europe.

Many US states show the effects of the Resource Curse and the Pollution Paradox.   In the US, many of the states that are large producers of oil and gas, California being a major exception, tend to have politics as fouled as countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia.  They too are victims of the double whammy of the resource curse and the pollution paradox.

For example, Texas has refused to winterize its natural gas production, and blamed last year's disruptions on renewable energy, even though the failures were largely due to natural gas production going off line ("Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off," "Texas largely relies on natural gas for power. It wasn’t ready for the extreme cold," Texas Tribune, "One Year Later: The Texas Freeze Revealed a Fragile Energy System and Inspired Lasting Misinformation," Inside Climate News).  

And because natural gas for Texas fuels the energy grid across the midwest, consumers in many states faced massive price increases and problems because of the disruption ("Minnesota gasps at the financial damage it faces from the Texas freeze," Washington Post).  Despite last year's debacle, which killed hundreds, the state is still delaying winterization.

Electric vehicles.  At the same time, shifting to electricity powered automobiles, in combination with a rise in the utilization of wind and solar energy, reduces demand for oil and dependence on other countries for supplies.  

While the total costs for EV power in the US may be higher than gasoline when you figure in the costs of adding infrastructure, that's only true when gasoline is relatively cheap.  If priced at European levels, $7 per gallon or more, EVs are cheaper.  

Fear of EVs is another reason Saudi Arabia aimed to keep oil prices lower.  But Russia has complicated this immeasurably, by invading Ukraine.  

US bans Russian Oil/Could it be a way to foster a shift to green energy?  The US has just banned the purchase of Russian oil--not a particularly large amount, but the heavier oil helps East Coast refineries run more efficiently, and there is talk that the US should accompany the ban with a greater focus on green energy production ("What Does the Russian Oil Ban Mean for the Clean Energy Transition?," Inside Climate News).

Automobile dependence is still an economic vulnerability.   But the cost of creating a national electric charging infrastructure is high, may be less environmental beneficial without the shift to renewable energy sources, and sustainable mobility has a variety of benefits in terms of health, costs, land consumption, environment, etc., that will still be negative even with an EV centric automobile dependent land use and transportation planning paradigm.

=====

Iraq War/Middle East destabilization.  After 9/11 there were Internet screeds about how the automobile manufacturers weren't donating enough.  I scoffed.  I said it was automobile dependence that created the stage for 9/11.  

As long as the US saw the necessity of protecting Middle Eastern oil supplies, strife would obtain as the resource curse meant the US supported authoritarian rulers, which in some cases ended up with them being deposed.

Invading Iraq only destabilized the Mideast further.  And in turn, outmigration spurred by the war and other strife destabilized Europe and in some respects, contributed to Brexit, because of the rise in the fear of the negative impacts of immigration, especially radicalized Islamists.

Annual household energy resilience planning: a new imperative?

 For the past 10+ years, in December, I usually publish an entry on winter weather and "maintenance of way" for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit, as most snow clearance planning and practice prioritizes motor vehicles.

-- "Snow, winter and the Sustainable Mobility City," 2019 (includes links to many previous entries)

While there is a fair amount of writing about how many households are installing generators in places where the electricity system is likely to fail, I haven't been in a situation, either in DC or Salt Lake, where utility interruption is a frequent occurrence, therefore the cost isn't justified.

But we all know what happened in Texas last February, a record cold snap, and the state's regulatory regime's failure to require winter hardening for critical supply and transmission infrastructure, in particular natural gas, led to massive failures across the state, blackouts, water system failure, and many hundreds of deaths.

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"
-- Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"
-- "It's not rocket science: 10 ways to fix the Texas power grid, according to experts (From the Houston Chronicle)"
-- "October is National Energy Awareness Month"

In response, mostly the State of Texas has done very little to mandate system hardening, even though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission once again has recommended that they do so, just as they did after a similar but less deadly event in 2011 ("Feds call for more regulation of Texas power grid, natural gas industry," Austin American-Statesman).

So what's up for Texans this winter?

The Dallas Morning News reports ("ERCOT report says Texans face steep shortfalls in power capacity if extreme event hits this winter") that the state energy coordination ERCOT, is warning Texas residents that the state is still vulnerable to catastrophic utility interruptions, if this winter is particularly cold.

Texas’ grid operator on Friday released its predictions for peak electricity use in Texas for this winter that showed steep shortfalls in power capacity in an extreme event, despite not accounting for February’s deadly freeze. 

ERCOT’s power demand projection known as the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy was already facing criticism for using data that did not account for climate change and did not take into account weather and outage data from February’s deadly winter storm. 

The main failure of the report, according to Texas A&M University professor Andrew Dessler, is that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas based projections of extreme demand on the 2011 winter event that left wide swaths of North Texas without power. 

Dessler, an atmospheric sciences professor, said the report shows that Texans have around a one-in-10 chance of seeing weather-related power outages this winter. “One in 10 years seems to me to be not a great worst-case scenario,” Dessler said. “That means that there’s a 10% chance we’re going to do worse than that.”

It's definitely criminal that the State Legislature, Governor, and regulatory authorities have basically done nothing in response to February's crisis, which also affected states outside of Texas, because they were dependent on natural gas supplies from Texas.

This means that residents that can afford it are likely to install generators ("Facing power grid anxiety, Texans are buying generators and bracing for blackouts," San Antonio Report), install converters if they have solar power systems, and buy vehicles, like the Ford F-150 truck, which if you buy the special electricity generation package can power their houses in case the utility distribution system fails, although it still needs gasoline ("Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout," Detroit Free Press).

But what about the people without the means to protect themselves by buying large stocks of water and generators?

And in any case, if water systems fail because of power interruptions, people will have to store large supplies of water as well.

======

States that frequently experience winter cold have long since weatherized their electricity generation systems.  It's the southern states, that before climate change became as serious as it has didn't worry much about "cold snaps," that haven't done this.  It's particularly important in Texas, since it is such a large energy producer.  When systems fail there, they don't just effect Texas, but all the other states that rely on Texas energy production.

It's not rocket science: 10 ways to fix the Texas power grid, according to experts (From the Houston Chronicle)

Image: Natalie Hee, Fox 26 via Twitter. 

Following up on "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure" and "Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off."  

I've been putting links to good articles in the comments of the two blog entries.   

Note that one of those articles, the Wall Street Journal's "Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation," makes the point that Texas electricity deregulation has cost consumers billions, rather than saved consumers money overall.  Extend that across the country, and the deregulation argument fails, at least for electricity.

-- article link

Meanwhile it's not clear that the Texas Legislature and Governor will do anything to help prevent this from happening again.  Some corporations made billions from the debacle, while others lost hundreds of millions of dollars or more.  And more than 200 people are dead, there are many billions of dollars in property damage, etc.

And this particular article, focused on the electricity system, didn't mention the need for resiliency steps for water systems, many of which were devastated by the loss of power, and the failure or nonexistence of backup power systems ("Texas water systems failed during February cold storm. Now, the challenge is making them stronger," Houston Chronicle).

1. [Generation and Transmission System] Weatherization standards.  

2. Buy reliability. 

3. On-site fuel. 

4. Label gas facilities “critical.” 

5. Housing efficiency.  [Reducing demand for electricity by consumers.]

6. Rotating outages.  [Through improvements to the grid and the creation of microgrids.  Interestingly in DC, I learned that areas are usually hardwired to particular transmission stations, rather than being able to shift to different connections by changing a switch.]

7. Invest in batteries. 

8. Drill, drill, drill. Get grid and utility operators in the habit of managing through power shortages with regular emergency drills simulating extreme weather events. 

9. Clear communication. 

10. Cheaper, not cheap electricity. While efficiency is an admirable goal, understand that a resilient power grid requires regular investment. That means paying a little more for electricity.

Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off

The media is full of articles and stories about the impact on Texans from the power outages, where as many as 4 million households were left without power in the face of bitter cold temperatures, such as this Washington Post article, "The power is back, but millions of Texans wonder what it will take to fully recover — and who will help them," which alerts us to particular tragedies such as a trailer park home to low income households having most of its water system wrecked, or people who died in part because of how the cold accentuated health conditions.

When I wrote the first piece on the failure of the Texas electricity transmission system a week ago

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"

which has caused billions of dollars of damages and dozens of deaths, I thought about how to position the article, and one of the ways was "Cold Wave," as an opposite of Eric Klinenberg's book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, which I had just mentioned because it was featured in a recent program broadcast on PBS.

-- Documentary -- Cooked: Survival by Zip Code | PBS Independent Lens"
-- book review

Heat Wave studied the extranormal number of deaths in Chicago during a heat wave in 1995.  The deaths were disproportionately a result of poverty, isolation, and lack of personal and community resources.

Brett Saint rests inside a Gallery Furniture store which opened as a shelter for those in need of food, water and heat Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021, in Houston. Millions in Texas still had no power after a historic snowfall and single-digit temperatures created a surge of demand for electricity to warm up homes unaccustomed to such extreme lows, buckling the state's power grid and causing widespread blackouts. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Cold Wave is pretty much the same thing.  

HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Karla Perez and Esperanza Gonzalez warm up by a barbecue grill during power outage caused by the winter storm on February 16, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Winter storm Uri has brought historic cold weather, power outages and traffic accidents to Texas as storms have swept across 26 states with a mix of freezing temperatures and precipitation. (Photo by Go Nakamura/Getty Images)

While in most cases, the well off--people with more resources--do better in troubled times, in this case people lost power whether or not they were well off, although many well resourced people had previously installed back up generators, bought trucks that could also double as generators ("Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout," Detroit Free Press), the reality is that the people who are suffering the most are people who are impoverished, people of color, people with health issues, etc. 

Meanwhile, the Ted Cruzes can fly to Mexico.

Example of neoliberalism overreach at a massive scale.  Neoliberalism has been the dominant political and economic ideology of the past 45 years. It argues that the market is the best arbiter and deliverer of services of all types, that the profit motive and competition yields the best results. And that government always fails.  

Both conservatives and liberals are adherents, although conservatives tend to favor minimal to no regulation, while liberals see the need for regulation to ensure a level playing field and some protections.  Neoliberalism is a separate phenomenon from globalization.  Combined, the two increased precarity without providing much in the way of backstop.

The Texas Legislature created an electricity market with limited requirements on firms, and encouraged "race to the bottom" business models that only worked without problem in normal, not extraordinary, conditions.

Extreme cold and extreme heat lead to significantly increased prices.  But at the same time stress the minimal reliability built into the system resulting from the lack of basic resilience requirements ("How Texas’ Drive for Energy Independence Set It Up for Disaster," New York Times).

Now Texas electricity businesses are declaring bankruptcy because they don't have the money to pay the high charges that were incurred during the peak of the crisis ("Texas Energy Co-Op Files For Bankruptcy After Storm, High Bill," NPR).

South Florida, Tulsa, and Santa Fe as examples of regulatory success and Texas as an example of regulatory failure

A bill from Griddy for a few days last week. 

Given the debacle in Texas last week, with more than 4 million out of electricity, wrecked water systems, four day electricity bills of as much as $16,000, 30+ dead people, and billions of dollars of damage to houses and businesses, it's clear that the State of Texas government--legislative, executive, and regulatory--built an electricity system for most of the state that accentuated risk, rather than reduced it.

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"

In a comment on an article someone likened it to Florida and hurricanes, always looking for FEMA and the federal government for disaster relief afterwards.

South Florida.  I didn't think that was fair, because, I guess given the increasing examples of government failure, shockingly, after Hurricane Andrew devastated so many South Florida communities in 1992, recognizing poor building practices accentuated damage and destruction, they fortified South Florida's building regulations to provide better protection against hurricanes ("After Andrew, Florida Changed Its Approach to Hurricanes," New York Times).

Not only did they improve regulations on paper, they built the inspection and regulatory regime to ensure that buildings were actually constructed to be stronger ("Fla. Building Codes, Revamped Since Andrew, Still Being Worked," Insurance Journal, 2007).

Today though, with climate change, Florida is discovering that stronger requirements need to be extended across the state, whereas before they believed the worst storm effects would be concentrated in South Florida.  

And some firms are building beyond minimum requirements out of a recognition that codes are behind the reality of climate change and ever worsening and extreme weather ("Lessons of Resilience From Hurricane Michael," Engineering News-Record).

Now, while we think of Florida as being Republican, the fact is the stronger building codes were enacted during a period of Democratic leadership.  

It's more likely that strengthening of the codes in the face of worse storms, such as demonstrated by Hurricane Michael in 2018, which severely impacted North Florida, won't be happening going forward, because anti-science Republicans control the state government ("South Florida’s Hurricane Building Code is Strong—And North Florida’s Could Be Stronger," Weather Underground, "Toughen Florida's Building Codes," Tampa Bay Times, "Florida’s building code is tough, but Michael was tougher. Is it time for a rewrite?," Miami Herald).

Because it was built far stronger than required by the building codes, this elevated house that its owners call the Sand Palace, on 36th Street in Mexico Beach, came through Hurricane Michael almost unscathed. [Johnny Milano for the New York Times]

Tulsa.  Historically, Tulsa was prone to bad flooding, resulting in deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage. While the city had been engaging in floodwater management initiatives since the 1970s, in 1984, after flooding which resulted in 14 deaths, the city created a Department of Stormwater Management and developed a Citywide Flood and Stormwater Management Plan, which provides for specific improvements across the city ("In Tulsa, a National Blueprint for Managing Floods as Cities Grow and Climate Changes," NPR). 

-- From Roof Top to River: Tulsa's Approach to Floodplain and Stormwater Management, City of Tulsa

 The primary focus of the plan is removing buildings from the flood plain and converting these spaces to greenways and parks as a way to absorb flooding while minimizing damage. The plan has been frequently updated--the latest iteration was approved in 2017--and since 1990, no structure built before 1987 has been damaged by flooding.

Unlike Florida today or Texas, this process occurred under Republican Administrations.  

Santa Fe, New Mexico. The watershed of Santa Fe's source of drinking water is particularly susceptible to wildfire. 

After nearby Los Alamos experienced millions of dollars of wildfire-related damage to their water resources, Santa Fe figured it would make sense to be proactive ("For a Warming World, A New Strategy for Protecting Watersheds," Yale, "Fire and Rain: The One-Two Punch of Flooding After Blazes," National Geographic). 

-- Municipal Watershed Management Program, City of Santa Fe

They created a watershed fire protection plan and a water fund to pay for various land protection initiatives. Originally, private and philanthropic donations paid for the program, now it's funded through dedicated taxes.

Conclusion.  It's possible for governments to react to disaster in ways that strengthen resiliency going forward.  (There are other positive and negative examples I could have included, from hardening buildings from earthquakes to ignoring coastal water rise and flooding.)

But Texas had two chances, in 1989 and 2011.  Now in 2021 there are 30+ deaths and $40 billion of damage which for the most part, could have been avoided had they responded like Florida after Hurricane Andrew, Tulsa after deathly floods in 1984, or Santa Fe, which acted proactively, after witnessing the devastating effects from fire on water resources in nearby Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Note that the US Government is taking a stronger position against construction in flood plains ("Climate Threats Could Mean Big Jumps in Insurance Costs This Year," New York Times), which has taken decades to come about, mostly as a result of legislative pushback.