The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force was charged with preparing a report with recommendations on its findings with specific instructions to think ahead and consider long-term needs for the vulnerable Atlantic Coast states. And to recommend ways to reduce not only the devastation but also the high costs likely with respect to future disaster events.
After working for roughly six months, the task force issued its report in August and also made plans to track the implementation actions by agencies and to work on ways to reduce the future federal outlays for future major weather events.
Among the special features of this endeavor is the first-time use of an executive order to require 24 federal agencies to consider the long-term recovery process; the task force effort was linked with ongoing White House directives to deal with climate change and to foster more resilient communities; and follow-up processes were included to implement the recommendations provided by the report.
Given all of these special characteristics of the task force and its report, the results should be of interest to emergency management personnel. Of particular interest are: have the art and science of disaster recovery been highlighted and enhanced, and are the recommendations likely to result in progress in recovery from and resilience to disasters?
Is this just another federal report or are there some unique and compelling new directions and directives in the works? The preparation of this report was unique in several respects:
- The president issued Executive Order 13632 in December 2012 to initiate the involvement of high-level representatives from 24 federal agencies to consider long-term recovery from the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.
- The National Disaster Recovery Framework, issued in September 2011, was fully implemented on a large scale for the first time in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
- Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan was selected as chair, rather than someone from the Department of Homeland Security.
- The report links disaster recovery with climate change, in particular the president’s Climate Action Plan, and it links recovery with resilience, particularly the White House Initiative on Resilience. The task force report makes operational the mission of these initiatives.
- It is primarily a document written for action by and for federal agencies involved in disaster recovery and does not call for legislative actions. Also, it does not extend to state and local governments or organizations in the private or nonprofit sectors.
- It called for “Giving governments and residents the best available data and information on current and future risks to facilitate good decision-making for recovery and planning.”
The Reach of Hurricane Sandy
The destructive impacts of Hurricane Sandy were huge, making it the second costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, after Hurricane Katrina. The enormous cost of the disaster is one of the reasons for federal action, since no one wants to see or pay for another similar disaster.
One interesting fact was that Sandy affected 24 states across the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic U.S., although most of the destruction was centered on the dense population and infrastructure of the coastal areas of New Jersey and New York. The greatest ratio of damage occurred in housing and in public transit systems. Also of great significance is that the area impacted was an economically important and vulnerable part of the country, with many essential industries and dense population centers.
Sandy’s aftermath differs from that of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, in that the region’s relatively expensive and unusually low-availability housing market raised special challenges. “Affordable temporary housing units close to Sandy-affected neighborhoods were in short supply. This forced federal, state and local authorities to employ an array of policy tools to provide displaced individuals with places to stay,” according to the report. Also, the density of housing, zoning and land use patterns precluded the use of mobile homes for temporary housing.
The report provides a series of guidelines for spending and allocation of the Congress-approved Sandy relief funds, and these guidelines have gained approval by elected officials and private organizations. Of the $50.5 billion approved by Congress in the Sandy aid package last January, about $9 billion already has been spent. A portion of the money was applied to cleaning up the New Jersey and New York shores, and rebuilding homes and businesses.
And data regarding the federal outlay for this disaster are available to the public to allow interested persons to track the progress of the actions proposed.
The Report’s Recommendations
The report makes 69 policy recommendations across several policy areas. They are designed to “align funding with local rebuilding priorities, eliminate barriers to recovery while ensuring effectiveness and accountability, coordinate across levels of government, facilitate a regionwide approach to rebuilding, and promote resilient rebuilding so that the region will be better able to withstand the impacts of existing risks and future climate change,” according to the report.
Among the key recommendations:
- Facilitate the incorporation of future risk assessment, such as sea level rise, into rebuilding efforts with the development of a sea level risk tool.
- Create a design competition to develop innovative resilient solutions that address the Sandy-affected region’s most pressing vulnerabilities.
- Mitigate future impacts to the liquid fuel supply chain like those experienced during the Sandy recovery.
- Encourage federal and state cooperation to improve electric grid policies and standards.
- Develop a resilient power strategy for wireless and data communications infrastructure and consumer equipment.
- Consider green infrastructure options in all Sandy infrastructure investments.
- Support efforts to reduce consumer confusion regarding risk and insurance coverage while working to increase hazards preparedness.
- Improve National Flood Insurance Program policyholder awareness of factors that affect flood risk and insurance rating decisions.
- Encourage hazard mitigation activities, including elevation, in order to protect property against future losses.
- Implement and support regional rebuilding initiatives in both New York and New Jersey that promote multijurisdictional approaches to problems/issues that are shared by communities with similar demographics, geography, infrastructure and social concerns.
“Consequently FEMA issued updated Advisory Base Flood Elevation maps in the immediate aftermath of the storm and the administration released a sea level risk tool designed to provide communities in the Sandy-affected region with timely information on how various scenarios of sea level risk would be expected to impact them.”
What Will Happen Next?
Several major professional and trade organizations watched with great interest as the task force conducted its work, and some were asked to participate in an advisory capacity by the federal agencies. Predictably organizations concerned with various aspects of the damage — such as floodplain management, insurance and infrastructure — are interested not only in the report findings and recommendations, but also will watch with interest as implementation occurs.
While the sharing of science-based data strengthens the technical aspects of risk reduction, the ability of local governments to incorporate and use this information in their land use decisions is still in question.
The consensus is that many of the 69 recommendations could have and, in fact, have been made in previous hurricane after-action reports. No mention is made in the task force report about the findings and recommendation of the many federal government reports issued after Katrina, which presently holds the record for the most costly disaster in our nation’s history.
The lead role of HUD’s Donovan was understandable in that he had housing experience in New York City prior to his current position, and HUD is responsible for disbursing the largest single agency portion of the multi-billion dollar supplemental funds package voted for Sandy recovery.
So, will this be a milestone report, particularly in terms of achieving implementation of its recommendations? How well will the required follow-up by the task force members proceed, since it is an unprecedented effort? And will this task force process be a model for future catastrophic events or is it a one-time prototype? It will probably be a few years until the answer to that question is clear.
As noted in the NJ Spotlight, since the task force was created by a presidential executive order, the report is nonbinding and unenforceable at the state and local level. There are no mechanisms in place to enact penalties if New Jersey or other states were to violate any of the findings.
Furthermore, the federal agencies may not be able to implement many of the recommendations addressed to them if the sequester currently in place continues into 2014 and beyond.
Nevertheless, the same article noted that Donovan said many of the recommendations will be carried out on the federal level, with or without the participation or cooperation of state and local officials. Donovan also said various mechanisms are in place to guarantee that all of the findings are put into practice, including detailed action plans for each one and quarterly meetings of the cabinet to provide oversight.
Full and effective implementation of the recommendations will be expensive, since it requires federal outlays for buyouts and environmental compliance measures. Watching the implementation phase unfold in the coming years will reveal whether this report truly matters.
Claire Rubin heads the small firm Claire B. Rubin & Associates in Arlington, Va. She is the editor of Emergency Management; The American Experience, 1900-2010 and blogs at RecoveryDiva.com.
