When historic droughts threatened Texas in 2011 and 2012, Chief Daniel Kistner of the McKinney Fire Department knew he didn’t want to go it alone. He relied on a strong team to back him up. It’s understandable that Texas fire chiefs and other emergency responders would be looking for all the support they could muster for this historic drought. Kistner didn’t want to be operating from behind on a lengthy and evolving situation, so he turned to subject-matter experts to help plan for what was called a “creeping disaster.”
“As a fire chief, I don’t have a lot of time to go take all these classes,” Kistner said. “So I do a lot of reading and when I feel like I don’t know enough, I rely heavily on subject-matter experts here in the department for things like planning and mitigation. I am the general, but I have some very good specialists to do the detailed work.”
The scope of this dry spell was daunting, but the lessons learned are valuable for any emergency manager facing the prospect of very hot, very dry weeks and months.
The Symptoms
The Texas droughts brought with them a range of ills, including sporadic power outages, a common symptom of drought. In Spicewood with a population of about 7,600, the wells literally ran dry: The lakes that fed the town water supply ran too low, and the Lower Colorado River Authority had to truck in water.
The 80,000-acre Rockhouse fire blasted through Fort Davis, Texas, burning 21 miles of prairie. In Stonewall, King and Knox counties, at least 71,000 acres burned, while Midland County saw 16,500 acres on fire.
“I went to a drought meeting in Houston and as I was leaving there was a forest fire in one of the city parks, because everything was so dry,” said Robert E. Mace, deputy executive administrator of water science and conservation at the Texas Water Development Board.
With reservoirs less than 40 percent full, trees were dying, Mace said. “We went down to once-a-week watering of landscapes. People were having issues with their foundations in the parts of Austin that are built on clay. There were power outages because there was so much dust on electrical lines that if you had a dewy morning, it would short out the electrical lines.”
Given the severity of the situation, emergency managers found themselves in the unusual situation of fighting back in slow motion. When a hurricane is coming, people know, and they look to the disaster community for guidance. Less so, when the wells run dry.
“People describe droughts as a creeping disaster,” Mace said. “It’s not dramatic like a tornado or a flood coming into town. It’s more like the frog in the proverbial pot of water that’s slowly getting hotter and hotter. Eventually the community realizes it is going to be out of water in short order. That’s when there needs to be an emergency response.”
But what response? In Texas it went something like this.
All Aboard
To begin with, efforts to address the drought began with establishing working ties between many civic entities, coordinated in part by the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
The Emergency Drinking Water Task Force met weekly to strategize solutions and coordinate resources. The State Drought Preparedness Council published monthly status reports. The Texas Water Development Board makes loans to local governments for water supply projects. That agency also assists with agricultural water conservation, supports regional water planning and administers the Texas Water Bank, which facilitates the transfer, sale or lease of water and water rights throughout the state.
Leading the response effort was the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which held monthly training meetings to review water rules and regulations, along with hands-on training for stream-flow measurements, agency procedures and water right investigations. A TCEQ hotline drew about 450 calls on regulatory requirements, authorizations, contingency plans and water conservation resources.
For the public, TCEQ updates its Web page weekly with the governor’s latest disaster proclamations, meteorological maps, systems restricting water use, water rights information and conservation tips.
Even with all of these synchronized efforts, the drought tested emergency managers’ efforts to coordinate resources.
The Texas Living Waters Project described one scenario. During 2011, Houston imposed drought restrictions on homeowners buying water directly from the city. At the same time, those who got their water from another supplier were exempt from the restriction, even if that supplier also got its water from the city, according to the organization.
Such situations only serve to highlight the complexity of a crisis (albeit a slow-moving one) that cuts across all strata of society and falls under the jurisdiction of so many disparate bodies. The governor’s office may declare a crisis. Water authorities and public and private entities must at once respond to and enforce regulations. Agricultural groups face unique needs. Universities seek to drive policy.
Gathering Resources
For emergency managers, response begins with a local assessment. Despite the sometimes broad regional or even statewide nature of the crisis, the first line of defense is on the home front.
“The first question an emergency manager has to ask is: What is going to happen to my community?” said Frances Edwards, a professor teaching emergency management in the College of Social Sciences at San Jose State University. “It’s a specialized threat analysis. It’s a very local question once you understand that you are going to run out of drinking water.”
Once they have determined the magnitude of the local threat, emergency managers then need to take stock of available resources. This may go deeper than tapping into a nearby reservoir. Especially in drought-prone areas, control of water can be highly political and its transport highly regulated. It will likely be necessary to determine who has the legal authority to dole it out. State, county and city authorities may hold different pieces of the puzzle.
When the time comes to move into action, emergency managers will likely need to reach far beyond the usual round of supporting resources.
Certainly fire is an issue: For Kistner, response began with those whose needs were most pressing. “The forgotten contributors are the residents,” he said. “They need to be brought to the table, first to be made aware of what is going on but also to be made aware of how to mitigate a hazard, and what steps they can take to avoid becoming part of the problem.”
There should be a multitude of venues — email, Facebook, fliers, door hangers — and constant feedback. That produces a calming effect and trust factor with the public.
Although fire is the most visible hazard of drought, it’s just a starting point when it comes to mitigation, Edwards said. For example, one partner for emergency managers is the National Weather Service. Both as a predictor and as a source of ongoing status reports, the weather service can be an invaluable aid to planning and response.
The police are a traditional partner, of course, but first responders must tap into their services in unusual ways. Security may be needed to keep scarce water resources locked down tight during crises, for example. Police may also have to keep the peace at water distribution points.
In addition, public health officials must be in the loop to assist with community education efforts. “What do we tell people about the water in their swimming pools or in the irrigation canals? Here we are telling them to conserve drinking water, and there’s all this water just sitting there,” Edwards said. “We need a partner who will understand how to manage community expectations.”
Maybe call the state highway patrol while you’re at it. Water is heavy at 8.3 pounds to the gallon, and you’ll need overweight permits to truck the stuff in. You’ll also need support in charting a safe route for loads of that weight.
All the elements must be coordinated in the short term, as a drought unfolds and crises begin to break out in the form of power outages and fires. At the same time, any emergency manager in a drought-prone area ought to be looking ahead. These things tend to be cyclical: Another drought is potentially waiting in the wings.
In this regard, university researchers can be a powerful ally. They can calm fears and also help to generate realistic expectations.
“Often we talk about things qualitatively — ‘drought increases electricity demands’ — but if you don’t know how much, it is difficult to gauge the importance of that data,” said Bridget Scanlon, a senior research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin in the Bureau of Economic Geology.
Hard numbers can make a big difference in long-term planning. “You have economics, you have regulations, there are all sorts of drivers,” Scanlon said. “But I think this research information helps people to put things in context and then hopefully make better decisions based on that.”
