How to Rebound After a Disaster: Move, Don’t Rebuild, Research Suggests

You let NJ Gov. Chris Christie's "Rebuild Madness" off the hook. You let Obama's HUD off the hook for failure to condition financial assistance on sane land use planning and Obama's own Executive Order on adaptation to climate change.. We've been writing about strategic retreat for a decade. Glad to see the NYT finally publishing something.

Perhaps step one would be telling developers “No, you can’t build there, it’s a flood plain”. This basic advice has been ignored on a multitude of occasions and almost invariably at a great cost to residents who trusted that nobody would be stupid/ greedy enough to build in a dangerous place. The same logic applies to low lying shorelines.

A scientific study finding what should be obvious to anyone.

So Andrew Yang saying (paraphrasing) "we need to do all we can, invest hundreds of billions of dollars and trillions of dollars over time to combat climate change, but the hard truth is that we're too late--10 years too late--and need to start moving our people to higher ground" isn't so crazy, huh?

As someone who trained and researched the panoply of "natural hazards" and their assessment and preparation and recovery (degrees in geography), and who also actually studied with the guy who developed the flood insurance program...only to see it corrupted by politicians, I cannot be impressed by a single piece in Science some fifty years after the obviosities were..completely obvious. In other words, this is just one of a huge number of radically accelerating crises involving humans whose causes and cures have been well known for many decades (when not actually centuries). And what all of these paltry, tardy, puny approaches to our actual situation always demonstrate is the utter refusal of humans to get real about reality, and most fundamental in this regard, an absolute inability/refusal to acknowledge that anthropocentrism is guaranteed to create and magnify ever worse and more catastrophic consequences. Anyone who imagines that anthropocentrism leads to anything but misanthropy is a contributor to more and more psychotic behavior....and more and more miserable human beings.

I thought the federal flood insurance program REQUIRED the policy holder to rebuild in the same location in order to pay on the claim.

Andrew Yang was criticized by some (large piece in the Atlantic) in the last debates for his comments that climate change is somewhat inevitable, so we urgently need to move higher ground. This and other analyses by experts prove that Yang is just stating the facts, even though they may not be politically popular. Even if the US goes carbon neutral (which it should), we are only 15% of the world's emissions, so we still have to deal with worsening climate change, which should include moving out of high risk areas as this article points out.

The real estate company Zillow accepts the 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100, and on their website lists the value of real estate at risk. The problem is immense and cries out for honest political decisions. Rebuilding on site on the salt water/100 year flood plane interface should not be insurable with public money. FEMA needs to morph into a relocation agency. The future will demand it.

After every major flood or hurricane I've seen online comments stating that FEMA money is only available if you apply to rebuild in the same location. In other words, FEMA won't help you if you want to relocate. Is this true? If so, it seems obvious that FEMA policy needs to change.

"a number of communities applied for buyout programs to relocate but that only two of them actually got funding." Herein lies the problem. Lower income families have a tough time moving even when facing the result of the hurricane. Not only does the gov't not follow through on its promises, but I would expect that there are all sorts of hurdles to jump over before and if you ever got money. How about an organized and dependable process for not rebuilding and let's start with not funding rebuilding or at least phasing it out. Or perhaps do something in advance. Given government's track record, slim or no change of that to happen.

It looks to me like Soldiers Grove moved their business district to line the highway that runs just outside of town, which is interesting, but seems less flood-driven than it sounds here. Maybe the flood catalyzed everything.

The problem is, after a devastating event wipes out the entire wealth of a low income family, how are they supposed to just move? After Hurricane Harvey destroyed swaths of Houston, tens of thousands of people saw their only valuable asset, their homes, destroyed. They obviously can’t sell a mold infested house. And no one in the middle or wealthy classes is going to pay to live in an area that’s basically the retention pond that saves the rest of the city. Move makes incredible logical sense. But telling a person if modest means to “just move” is like telling an astronaut “just get to Mars.” Okay... how?

A popular definition of a fool: One who repeats the same behavior but expects a different result. Abolish FEMA or at least set limitations on rebuilding and one might expect a rational choice.

In only a few years most at-risk communities won't have the option to remain anymore. The clarion call to rebuild is a luxury of the occasional disaster, not annual climate catastrophes. The nation should be investing resources now to handle the inevitable necessity of relocating hundreds of thousands in the near future. That of course will require parsimonious states like Texas to start taxing her wealthy citizens fairly and the Feds to stop doling out fat election year cuts. Not going to happen though. We're doomed to wait until it's an ugly crisis and house people semi-permanently in sports stadiums Grapes of Wrath style.

A very logical article ! Too bad Americans are not smart enough to see ahead. Our climate change is deteriorating living environments, especially in coastal areas. We are bound and determined to ignore it. Best of luck...

The US alone has 1,400 cities and towns threatened by sea level rise. We have a lot of "strategic retreat" to plan for because the seas are likely to rise quite a bit faster this century than most people are aware of. Here is Richard Alley, the glaciologist who the MIT atmospheric physicist Kerry Emanuel described as the world’s foremost expert on the relationship of ice and climate, discussing recent ice sheet model results in 2016.
At Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, “once you get off of the stabilizing sill, whenever that is in West Antarctica, the time scale of getting rid of the West Antarctic [3.3m GMSLR, 4m in the Northern Hemisphere], it’s not centuries, it’s multi-decadal. This is not maybe the best case, it’s not the worst case.” At 31:40 in this presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7MNA44RMNA 
And when might Thwaites get off its stabilizing sill? 
From the NY Times recently: 
 "When I asked Richard Alley, almost certainly the most respected glaciologist in the United States, whether he would be surprised to see Thwaites collapse in his lifetime, he drew a breath. Alley is 58. ‘‘Up until very recently, I would have said, ‘Yes, I’d be surprised,’ ’’ he told me. ‘‘Right now, I’m not sure. I’m still cautiously optimistic that in my life, Thwaites has got enough stability on the ridge where it now sits that I will die before it does. But I’m not confident about that for my kids. And if someday I have grandkids, I’m not at all confident for them.’’"

The logic of allowing any rebuilding in a city that is built on sinking land, already below sea level, and in hurricane country, escapes me.

This is something people in coastal and river sites around the country should be thinking about, especially since insurance companies already are, and because the financing for FEMA is going to have to be fixed to deal with heavier rainstorms and higher sea levels for the forseeable future. For those who say we can't reduce impacts (which is wrong) and should just adapt, consider the cost to homeowners nationwide if FEMA updates flood maps every ten years and then changes cost of their flood coverage to match actual risk. Here's a great article about how New Jersey is starting to deal with this issue. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surrendering-to-rising-seas/ For people who still think just adapting is a feasible option, please explain, since nobody builds homes in the ocean, why we'd want to keep homes once they are in the ocean. Also the roads, sewer systems and other parts of our infrastructure.

Before you know it Bismarck, North Dakota will be a mega-city of millions of people because of extreme climate change. Detroit will be a city of the wealthy and back in the millions of people due to it's access to the lakes. Of course this take 50 to 100 years to happen because people hate change until it's forced on them.

I feel a warm glow at the thought that it's the millionaire beach houses that will be the first ones submerged.

This Science article is full of abstractions, broad generalizations and rapid assumptions. For decades, disasters experts have studied different forms of post-disaster relocation. Authorities have always considered it as an option. Most cases, however, have been disappointing. There are many cultural, social, political and economic reasons why people are attached to neighborhoods and territories. Relocation has often been seen by authorities as the easiest (and more profitable) way to deal with disasters, with dramatic consequences for the most vulnerable. The authors neglect decades of studies on this area. It’s unfortunate that they show no serious empirical evidence to support their claims. Gonzalo Lizarralde, Professor. Universite de Montreal

The Science article in its conclusion nails one major hurdle, individual psychology. However, they don’t elaborate excepting having mentioned in their essay that persons and communities have reluctance to relocate for community establishment reasons such as tradition, lifestyle and even burial grounds. But, to be more blunt - people are stubborn and cannot see the forest from the trees or look over the hill and accept smart alternatives. They are burros which stick to asinine habits and assumptions. They are ostriches with their heads in the sand. They are deniers of inevitability who depend on the bailout of moral hazard enabling politicians. They believe in God but Mother Nature is God’s daughter who flexes her physics regardless of prayer.

Thank you. This ridiculous statement we hear every time there is a disaster, "we're going to rebuild!", is nuts. Besides the threats from climate change, it's the usual coastal, flood plane, fire zone chant after a community or some rich guys house gets wiped out. These areas should have been left as nature buffer areas to begin with and definitely should be after they've shown how vulnerable they are to repeated destruction. Now if we could just get population growth under control and reduce the pressure to build everywhere especially as our cities become less livable and the well to do move out to the vulnerable natural areas...

Move where? The coasts are flooding, the West is burning, the Midwest is inundated, and the South is drying up. No matter where you go, climate change is ravaging everything. You have an option between water and fire. Which would you rather lose your home to?

" . . . God willing and the creek don't rise!" New York, Miami, New Orleans, just the beginning of the move to higher ground.

There is only one solution. Get the federal government out of the flood insurance and disaster rebuilding business. FEMA should be there for immediate assistance/relief only and the states are then on their own. Down here in Florida the developers own the place and build pretty much where they want aided by corrupt local governments reaching up to the state capital. They will never act responsibly unless they are forced. Now it is the job of every congressman to scream bloody murder when natural disaster strikes and procure federal dollars to rebuild so we can do it all over again. It is very nice to read about these small efforts and all, but you are sticking a finger in the leak when the whole dike is ready to go. Of course, stupid is as stupid does, and money and corruption is all we know.

The reality of a changing climate really hits home when those displaced by new unnatural, natural disasters realize they can’t go home again. The coastline is now 25 miles inland. Tis pity, tis, and, tis pity tis, tis true...

This is an important contribution to the conversation about what to do after catastrophic loss. As I watch the clamor around rebuilding Paradise, CA after that disastrous fire I can't help but think a more rational conversation would be helpful. Relaxing building requirements rather than strengthening them will not ensure people have their community for long. It looks like insurance companies are going to have the biggest say in the matter as many cannot get policies renewed. It would be nice to see a community intentional approach such as you describe in this article.

This strategy option is not only for climate related natural hazards, but pertinent to other types of risks, particularly tsunami. The Maki tribe in Washington is in the process of moving their community above the inundation zone. Counties in Oregon are creating tsunami hazard overlay zones seeking to control development in tsunami inundation zones. The challenge is making these communities resilient before the hazard occur, which can include plans for transformation after the inevitable happens.

I read the Science article. Surprisingly, there was no science in it. There was no quantitative comparison of improved infrastructure versus relocation, no cost/benefit analysis of architectural improvements that may mitigate impacts - such as elevated foundations or fire-proof building materials. No risk assessment or decision matrices. Not to mention - with climate change EVERYONE is at increased risk. History is no guide for potential impacts, and there are no 'safe' places. That is the point. Hard to believe it was published in Science.

I evacuated from the big island eruption last year. Fortunately, I did not lose my home. My community is tight and 30 years strong - we all raised our children together here who are now marrying and raising their own. The first days and weeks of evacuation were spent taking care of ourselves, independently and selfishly. It seemed natural to me. Some left (me), some stayed and we all made choices for our selves individually. Then after a couple of months, many of us came to realize the value of the “us”, our community. We quickly came to realize that our community will not easily be replaced. We started to miss each other sorely. Now the eruption is over and we are trickling back, but many of us are not coming back. The fracture in a community is devastating to our hearts. It’s so much more than any of us realized - how much we need each other. How much we love and know each other. Leaving one’s community cannot be trivialized - it can be devastating.

While most of the emphasis is on our oceanic shorelines, a good percentage of the disastrous flooding occurs along inland waterways on floodplains. We exacerbate the problems on floodplains with flood walls and levees. We should have long term programs to restore floodplains and move people and structures off of them so they can do their jobs. In many older cities we built factories along the rivers to take advantage of the water power. Residential areas were built near the factories so employees could walk to work. Commercial areas were built adjacent to the residential areas. Those conditions no longer exist that require us to populate the flood plains. Many of those areas are derelict and declining. We can relocate and revitalize at the same time with buyouts and other imaginative programs. We also need to update the maps. How many times of late have we heard, "The water never got this high before!" Welcome to global warming and climate change.

I recently (early 2018) relocated to Salem, Oregon, an area of localized, historic, non-climate-change flooding. I found copious flood maps of the city, putting houses into 100-year and 500-year flood zones, but I know how little that is worth! "500-year floods" seem to hit twice a decade. Nowhere could I find a simple piece of data: how often if ever had a flood insurance claim been made for a house. If you want people to retreat rather than rebuild, give people the information to retreat before they buy, by providing the flood claim history at the individual property level. This will lower the value of at-risk houses, giving the current owners an incentive to think before rebuilding. Flood insurance should also give the owners an opportunity to use the payout to build elsewhere.

It's really amazing to stop and think how much more mobile people are now. Smartphones make it easy, the US is huge and easy to travel across, for now, and we're definitely capable of bouncing back. We don't have to build dikes like the Dutch except in certain cities (NYC and Miami come to mind). But as a political matter, perhaps it's best to just not insure flood areas like we used to. Let the market decide, so to speak, we do enough to subsidize rich peoples' housing in this nation without fixing problems they choose to have repeatedly.

The cost to move the first village in the US due to climate change impacts is estimated to be $180 million for around 600 people. The US alone has 1,400 cities and towns threatened by accelerating sea level rise. And some complain about the cost of addressing this problem …

It is about time that Government’s step in and start helping people move out of these areas. Even if we start fighting the Climate change, the current path of sea rise is not going to slow down anytime soon. A planned exit will help the people to relocate and allow Architects and planners to create new buffer zones between houses and the sea.

I wish this piece got a bit more into the costs and benefits of managed retreat. This is such a hard sell for local governments and communities, and inevitably relies on individual property owners and other residents to make extremely tough decisions about tax revenue, cultural and social legacy, and equity. For example, low income neighborhoods are often the portions of town at most risk. Should communities force these vulnerable people to abandon their family asset? How will that play in the media? Governments have deployed buyout programs that offer pre-disaster home value for properties to soften the economic blow, but these can be piecemeal and still do not address losses in tax revenue that arise when there is net loss of taxable properties. We need more clarity on the costs and benefits of managed retreat (the short term as well as the long term) to promote this in communities. We need support mechanisms beyond a buyout transaction that foster both economic and social outcomes. We need whole-community buy-in that makes managed retreat a pragmatic response that is driven by choice, and not by eviction or desperation.

San Antonio TX, after a huge flood in 90s, bought the worst-flooded neighborhoods and turned that space into parkland. Here in Florida there's a small program to to do the same.

Sure, moving seems sensible in the short term; however, in the long term, unless we mitigate, stop, then reverse global climate collapse, there will be no where to run and no place to hide.