Bouncing Back Even Better: Resilience Thinking and Hurricane Igor

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Bouncing Back Even Better: Resilience Thinking and Hurricane Igor MEMORIAL PRESENTS THE 37TH IN A SERIES DEVELOPED FROM PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT INITIATIVES SPONSORED BY THE LESLIE HARRIS CENTRE OF REGIONAL POLICY AND DEVELOPMENT. BOUNCING BACK EVEN BETTER RESILIENCE THINKING AND HURRICANE IGOR BY STEPHANIE SODERO ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN RICKS “We went down to Random Island and it hit us. Total destruction over there … [It] wasn’t gaps–there were just roads just sort of gone, right? My thoughts were, “My God, we’re going to be years putting this place back together.” – Research participant Hurricane Igor 2010 Movement is central to our society. Like oxygen, Igor was a record breaker. Measuring almost 1,500km we both rely upon it and take it for granted. Whether in diameter, it was the largest recorded storm in the commuting to work or shipping freight, attending Atlantic Basin until Hurricane Sandy (2012). It was the destination weddings or academic conferences, driving third wettest hurricane in Canadian history, deluging school buses or ambulances, mobility punctuates the the Bonavista and Burin Peninsulas. Combine this with story of our lives, and the social implications of such Newfoundland’s thin soil and steeply sloping rivers, and movement range from Newfoundland workers who we were quickly out of our depth. States of emergency commute to Alberta to temporary foreign workers who were declared in 22 communities, roads and bridges travel from the Philippines to the local Tim Hortons. were breached isolating more than 100 communities, The rise of mobility also has environmental and approximately $200 million in infrastructure and implications. Approximately 95 per cent of transport property damage was incurred. One life was lost. energy comes from fossil fuels such as oil and gas. The failure of the road system resulted in the blockage When we burn fossil fuels they release greenhouse of diverse flows of people and goods. From the utility gases that warm the atmosphere. Picture down feathers crews reconnecting electrical services to flows of oxygen pluming from your car exhaust or billowing in airplane to people with personal ventilations systems, from contrails. Each feather–or molecule of greenhouse gases– people commuting to work and school to patients traps heat. Warming the atmosphere triggers a cascade of travelling for medical care such as dialysis, the transport climatic changes: rising sea levels, acidifying oceans, and of even basic goods such as food, water, and fuel became increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather. a challenge. Igor tested our resilience. The United Nations reports a doubling of severe weather events in the past two decades, from about 200 Heavy traffic and heavy weather in the 1990s to about 400 in the 2010s. Such global Resilience is a core concept in disaster response and trends are mirrored by local experience, with severe climate change adaptation. These fields extend the flooding occurring almost every year in Newfoundland commonly understood definition of resilience–bouncing since 2001, from tropical storms like Gabrielle (2001) back–by asking: how can we bounce back even better? and Chantal (2007) to the Stephenville floods (2005) Renewal, innovation, and continual learning are core and the Northern Peninsula storm surge (2007). Due to characteristics of resilience thinking. What does resilience a lack of historical data, it is difficult to determine how look like in the face of two intersecting trends that help climate change impacts hurricane frequency and severity, define our age: the increase in severe weather events and but it is a safe bet to brace for stormy weather ahead. the rise of mobility in our daily lives? How do we bounce To explore the intersection of severe weather events back even better when heavy weather meets heavy traffic? 40 VOLUME 107 NUMBER 3 2014/15 and mobility I conducted a comparative case study of sitting of the House of Assembly was in December, Hurricane Igor and Hurricane Juan, which hit Nova more than two months after Igor. Igor was mentioned Scotia in 2003. I interviewed transport providers and in half of the House sittings the following year, for governmental and non-governmental representatives, example acknowledging the role of volunteers and and analyzed print media articles and House of Assembly discussing the closure of Port Union fish processing transcripts. Three types of resilience emerged in the plant, damaged by the hurricane. By comparison, context of Newfoundland and Labrador. Nova Scotia’s Legislature met two days after Hurricane Juan, and Juan was discussed in three-quarters of the ‘The resilient Newfoundlander’ sessions. The discussions were also more substantive The concept of the ‘resilient Newfoundlander’ was used by in Nova Scotia, including links with climate change, politicians and other public figures in media coverage of impacts on workers and landowners, and the status of Igor. For example, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated emergency preparedness. The lack of discussion in NL’s that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians “are facing the House of Assembly about big picture issues such the aftermath of the storm with their characteristic resilience integrity of road infrastructure, disaster preparedness, and determination,” while former Premier Danny Williams and climate change implies the perception of an observed that “Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have a unproblematic status quo despite the experience of Igor. reputation for being some of the kindest and most resilient people in the world, and this past week was certainly a Engineering resilience testament to this claim.” Williams reflected on one scene: Engineering resilience is defined as getting things back “there were at least 20 people on their knees in the mud, to normal as quickly as possible, and it characterized the cleaning up so these elderly people could get back in their governmental response to Igor. In terms of reconnecting home ... You know, we turned this around. We turned this the road network, the province excelled at returning to around because we’re resilient, we’re tough.” normal. A prominent theme that emerged in the dataset Such praise is deserved. But it risks focusing attention was a ‘ten day’ narrative. For example, one participant on the experience of individuals and their homes, and stated, “so over the next few days (and it was ten days directing attention away from the House of Assembly. This really), we had our goals set. We wanted to make sure is reflected in the House of Assembly records. The first that we connected every community in as short a possible NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY 41 WEATHER EVENTS IN NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR THAT HAVE TRIGGERED THE FEDERAL DISASTER FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE ARRANGEMENT PROGRAM, 2001-2010 (Fire and Emergency Services-Newfoundland and Labrador) YEAR EVENT FEDERAL ASSISTANCE ($M) 2001 Tropical Storm Gabrielle 6.1 2003 Badger Flood 8.2 2003 West Coast Flood 9.6 2005 Stephenville Flood 28.3 2006 North East Coast Flood 4.6 2006 Burin Flood 1.3 2007 Northern Peninsula Storm Surge 2.9 2007 Daniel’s Harbour Landslides 2.7 2007 Tropical Storm Chantal 24.5 2008 North East Coast Flood 1.8 2010 Hurricane Igor 95.0 TOTAL $185M time. And everybody stepped up. I mean we had There is a sense that we are entering new territory. our workers working 18-20 hours a day.” Another The case of Igor begs for consideration. Given a participant reflected, “the estimation was weeks, if not changing climate, what is the prospect of returning months, to put it all back together, and we did it in to normal? As one participant stated, “It’s like we ten days. Now, I mean, let’s face it, it’s three years later are having a 100 year storm every two months.” before we got it all straightened out.” In the span of ten Storms like Igor–and Juan and Sandy and Katrina– days, some form of physical connection was made with are surpassing engineering design limits. Do we the more than 100 communities that were isolated continue as is and rebuild if needed? Do we build by road and bridge washouts. Over the course of the to a higher design standard in communities already following years, permanent measures replaced the experiencing infrastructure deficits? Do we question temporary repairs. our societal reliance on mobility? However, the theme of ‘getting things back to Social-ecological resilience normal as quickly as possible’ is in tension with When asked about the relationship between society another dominant discourse that emerged in the and ‘Mother Nature,’ participants uniformly replied dataset: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ This that Mother Nature is boss. How do we incorporate conceptual gap is mirrored by the literal gaps that more environmental sensitivity into our daily practices, Igor caused in the road network. policies, and designs given that fossil-fueled transport An editorial in the Clarenville Packet newspaper is integral to our society? If getting back to normal is read, “in this province, we’re used to being at the unwise, how do we transition to something new? mercy of the weather, but rarely has the weather been The central premise of social-ecological resilience so merciless.” Likewise, a participant stated, “I’d never is that the human and the ecological are intertwined– seen anything like it that severe … I realized how changes in one necessarily affect the other. Relative to forceful nature could be, but I’d never seen it.” Nova Scotia, the concept of social-ecological resilience Another participant noted “we’ve been through was more peripheral in the Newfoundland dataset wind and rain … but nothing like this … we didn’t compared to individual and engineering resilience. anticipate the seriousness of it because we’d never It was expressed as ‘we need to change the way we seen anything like this before.” do things.’ 42 VOLUME 107 NUMBER 3 2014/15 NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY 43 Here are just a couple of ways that social-ecological contributing to this change.
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