A pair of recent storms caused significant damage in North America and some Caribbean islands. In September, Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico and the Atlantic provinces of Canada. Hurricane Ian weeks later did some damage in Cuba and then tore through Florida and North Carolina.
In terms of dollars, these storms were costly. Fiona could cost up to C$700 million in insured losses in the provinces of Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The economic impact on Puerto Rico is still being tallied. Hurricane Ian could cost an estimated $67 billion in insured losses, reported Moody’s Analytics company, RMS, with an additional $10 billion loss to the National Flood Insurance Program.
The loss of life was also high, by the measuring stick of natural disasters in the developed world. Fiona cost about 30 lives in Puerto Rico and Canada. Ian saw a death toll of about 130 between Florida and North Carolina.
Set against historic deaths from natural disasters, however, the body counts were quite low. The way the developed world does infrastructure likely has something to do with that.
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By putting more money and especially effort into infrastructure, many countries have created buildings that hold up better, barriers that hold back water more effectively, roads that don’t buckle or wash out easily, and rapid response capabilities when all of the above safeguards fail.
A report on natural disasters in Our World In Data says that globally, natural disasters kill an astounding average of 45,000 people a year. That number gets pushed up by a few high-impact events, such as the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 that killed over 200,000 people.
The OWID natural disaster report can make for depressing reading, but it does contain some good news. First, the overall trend in deaths from natural disasters is down. Second, mortality from certain kinds of natural disasters is way down, and there is a road map for driving it down further.
In the 20th century, death tolls “in the millions” were often caused by “major droughts or floods” that, in many cases, led to famines. Deaths from floods, such as those caused by Ian and Fiona, are down significantly. Famines are also pretty rare. The report chalks this up to “improved food security, resilience to other disasters, and better national and international responses.”
Because of these factors, “the world has not experienced death tolls of this scale in many decades,” the report states. In fact, “Famines today are usually driven by civil war and political unrest.”
When the stuff hits the fan globally, however, things still tend to go very badly for nations with fewer resources. “Those at low incomes are often the most vulnerable to disaster events,” the report states. And thus, “improving living standards, infrastructure and response systems in these regions will be key to preventing deaths from natural disasters in the coming decades.”
That’s not something that can easily be mandated, cautions Greg Brooks, president of the Better Cities Project think tank.
Brooks reminded the Washington Examiner that complying with the building code and related regulations in the United States adds a significant amount to the sticker price of new construction.
A 2021 study by economist Paul Emrath for the National Association of Home Builders found, “On a dollar basis, applied to the current average price ($394,300) of a new home, regulation accounts for $93,870 of the final house price. Of this, $41,330 is attributable to regulation during development, $52,540 due to regulation during construction.”
A 2022 joint report by the NAHB and the National Multifamily Housing Council found the cost of regulations on multifamily developments was a notch higher, at 40.6%. Brooks remarked that the multifamily data were “even worse than I thought.”
He said that if poorer countries tried to adopt immediately such building codes as the U.S. and other developed countries currently have, one of two things would happen. Either people would ignore the law and go about their business, or “nothing would get built.”
Brooks argues that in the long term, more wealth can help to improve the problem of natural disasters in the developing world.
“In poor countries, regardless of the infrastructure, people are likely to have less mobility,” he said. In richer ones, they have more ways to get around, including their own vehicles or a larger surplus of vehicles that can be tapped in an emergency to evacuate people. Economic growth can help to nudge people in poor nations closer to the options that those people in developed nations currently enjoy.
The same is true for construction, Brooks argued.
“A richer society very naturally puts more safeguards in place,” he said, and those rules help more buildings not to fall down.
The issue isn’t just money, though that is part of the puzzle. The U.S. also has a widespread construction industry culture that takes pains to make buildings more durable.
Codes in many states insist that even the soil a building is set into must be prepared and “compacted” to exacting standards. Testing often takes place with every single foot of soil laid down. If the existing, or “native,” soil isn’t up to the job, fill has to be brought in.
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Building codes also insist that highly important buildings be built to even more stringent standards than domestic construction, rendering them less likely to burn or fall down or be washed out by a natural disaster. Thus, most hospitals can still function even in dire circumstances, and school auditoriums and sporting arenas can serve as shelters in a pinch.
These additional infrastructure safeguards cost a lot of money to put in place, but they can sure come in handy when a hurricane tears through a state, leaving people without clean water or power, or food.
