(ExpressTelegraph.com) — In the wake of major hurricanes that battered the southeast, Georgia lawmakers focused on resilience and storm recovery.
Parts of Georgia continue to recover from Hurricane Helene, which battered the southeast, including Georgia and North Carolina. Moving forward, the most significant opportunity for Peach State leaders could be increased communication and coordination among agencies.
“I can tell you with high confidence that there is a strong appetite in Georgia, even before these recent events, for state-level coordination on resilience, to build things up, also at the local and regional level,” University of Georgia professor Brian Bledsoe said during a Georgia Senate Natural Resources and the Environment: Disaster Mitigation and Resilience Subcommittee meeting.
The committee hopes to improve processes to be more prepared for the next disaster, state Sen. Lee Anderson, R-Grovetown, said.
“FEMA defines resilience as the ability to prepare for threats and hazards, adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions,” Stephen Clark, a Georgia Emergency Management Agency hazard mitigation officer, told the committee.
“Hazard Mitigation is a specific type of resilience,” Clark added. “Resilience really goes on to many more things beyond mitigation, to include preparedness and … improving the ability to recover.”
One issue is the floodplain maps that local authorities use to help guide development. However, considering Georgia is among the fastest-growing states, development stresses local planning commissions and new housing encroaches on floodplains.
“Our floodplain maps are not mapping even the present, let alone the future, and they miss a lot of hazards,” Bledsoe, the founding director of UGA’s Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems, said. “A lot of people will build up to that bright line on the map right up to the edge, but in fact, the vast majority of damages and losses happen outside the regulatory flood plain.”
Bledsoe used the most recent Whitfield County flood study from 2007 as an example.
“That was mapping conditions that they thought were happening … before 2007,” Bledsoe said. “A lot’s happened … around Dalton since 2007, and there’s going to be more rain and more development.
“Things are changing,” Bledsoe added. “We need better information.”
Compounding the response is how hazards interact with one another, which can have a multiplying effect on disasters.
“In the past, we’ve just thought about addressing one hazard at a time,” Bledsoe said. “Now, we realize that we’re dealing with a multi-hazard world where maybe we’ll have a drought that leads to fire, and then we get a deluge after that, which increases the runoff and the debris that goes down to the bridges and the culverts and all of those things.
“These hazards interact with each other,” Bledsoe added.