Resilience and recovery

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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The title of professor Susan Cutter's speech is “Disaster resilience: a local and national imperative.” The University of South Carolina's national expert in hazards vulnerability and other researchers, in a recent National Academies report, describe a nation at higher risk. They called for a “new national approach to facing natural and human-caused disasters.”

While dictionaries define resilience as the ability to recover from severe misfortune or change, Cutter - the keynote speaker at Friday's flood symposium in Cedar Rapids - is referring to a different definition. It means developing plans and best practices that help communities and state and federal agencies improve their response capabilities before a disaster strikes. The overall goal is to reduce the impacts of disasters and build safer, more economically stable communities.

MORE DISASTERS

Certainly this kind of resilience can be appreciated by an increasing number of our state and nation's communities being hit by weather events that are more extreme and occurring more often. They carry a high price of personal devastation and hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in private and public losses. Just ask Oklahoma City area folks, for one.

And a majority of the nation's climate scientists say this trend is very likely to continue.

Cedar Rapids residents who suffered and lost so much in the historic 2008 flood understand the traditional definition and importance of resilience. Our community sustained the most damage and loss of any single disaster in the state's history. More than 18,000 residents, 5,000 homes and 1,100 businesses were affected in 10 square miles of severe flooding. Overall losses were estimated at $5.4 billion. More than 300 pieces of public property, including City Hall, the public library and critical infrastructure such as wells and the wastewater treatment plant were knocked out.

The first couple of years after the flood strained and tested our community as never before. The early days and months of recovery also produced many examples of neighbors and strangers pulling together. Thousands of volunteers from other communities and states showed up to help. City officials and elected leaders worked countless hours to navigate the maze of a revised federal disaster bureaucracy and provide assistance on an unimagined scale.

Those years were extremely difficult and, not surprisingly, mistakes were made. City officials drew criticism for moving too slowly and focusing too much on planning and following rules - rules often dictated to them by federal and state officials.

OPTIMISM GROWS

Linda Seger is president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association and one of three community members who regularly meet with and provide input to The Gazette Editorial Board. She recalls the second year post-flood as an especially dark time for many residents in the friendly, stable blue-collar Time Check neighborhood of modest homes and small businesses. Seger says it sometimes seemed that the city's “emphasis on rebuilding” didn't always serve well some of the flood-impacted residents. Yet signs of resilience and a can-do approach were also common.

Voters pitched in by approving a local-option sales tax primarily for flood recovery in 2009. Then a new mayor and city manager took office in 2010, and city plans and rebuilding projects moved ahead at a faster pace.

But then community support for assisting flood victims showed signs of waning. And two additional sales tax votes toward funding the city's share of permanent flood protection were narrowly defeated.

Now, “It's time to get over the anger,” Seger said.

“Most of the people (in her neighborhood) just wanted to move on,” not game the government assistance system.

Today, Seger sees renewed energy and optimism in the Time Check area. City and non-profit agencies have teamed to build new affordable housing, “which brings life to the neighborhood,” she said.

Most Cedar Rapids public rebuilding projects and new ventures such as the convention center have been completed or will wrap up this year. Private developers are following up with investments in housing and new businesses in the city's core area. New Bohemia and Czech Village are in a renaissance of sorts. And the momentum has flowed as far out as the long-struggling Westdale Mall, where a striking new redevelopment plan has been launched.

Not everyone or every flooded property or neighborhood has been made whole. Some holes remain. Government can't fill all of them on its own.

MANAGING WATER

But clearly, five years out, our recovery in Cedar Rapids, as well as Iowa City and elsewhere, is robust overall - and a testimony to resilience. Cedar Rapids and the corridor continue to be recognized nationally as a desirable region to live, work and do business. The future is much brighter.

Still, there lingers the specter of “what if we have another major flood disaster” in the next decade or so - a possibility not as far-fetched as once thought. Without permanent flood protection or other strategies upstream to substantially reduce runoff, could this city or others withstand another such event - especially given the growing demands on an already overtaxed federal disaster relief system?

Even with Iowans' high levels of reactive resilience, we need to better manage water and watersheds. So how best to do that?

Those are among the questions that the flood symposium endeavors to address. We hope many residents, business leaders and landowners, not only government officials and academia, will attend, listen, learn and question the status quo.

We hope the event is more than dry speeches. We hope it raises awareness and public understanding. And that it produces clearer consensus on what should be done to improve our region's long-term disaster resilience.

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