(Bloomberg) -- With Hurricane Helene gathering strength as it heads for the west coast of Florida, Victoria Salinas, acting deputy administrator of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Thursday that the stepped-up pace of climate disasters in recent years is challenging the nation’s ability to respond.
“Every three days we have a federal disaster or some type of emergency declaration,” she said at the Bloomberg Sustainable Finance Forum, held during New York Climate Week. Salinas was standing in for FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who had returned to Washington to manage hurricane response.
Helene is a very large storm, with tropical-storm-strength winds extending over some 300 miles. It is expected to bring 20 feet or more of storm surge to parts of the Florida coast, as well as extreme rainfall across the South and into Appalachia. “Catastrophic flooding” is possible in many states, according to a specialist at the National Hurricane Center.
The damage is likely to cost billions of dollars. The Biden administration has already declared Helene a federal disaster. That means after the storm clears, federal dollars will flow to help cleanup.
One thing is different from previous hurricane seasons, though: FEMA earlier this month enacted a new rule for its Flood Risk Management Standard. Now communities that want to rebuild with the agency’s money must account for future climate risk in their plans and build accordingly. The faster “speed” of disasters, Salinas said, is why the agency is emphasizing resilience more, and helping towns and cities better withstand the impact of storms before they hit.
“The recovery itself is predicated on building resilience to flood risk, so that we’re really stopping that cycle of ‘rinse and repeat,’” she said, referring to repeated rebuilding in flood-prone areas. The cycle “is only going to get faster if we don’t take action,” she added.
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