Is ideology to blame for disasters?│ The Science of Disasters with Ilan Kelman

Does our ideology affect the way we prepare for disasters? In this episode of the Science of Disasters we're going to look at how Texas’ historic aversion to taxes left the state ill-prepared to face Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Ideology refers to ideas and doctrines ingrained within society and driving prevalent values. Ideologies create vulnerabilities, such as determining where and how to build and manage settlements, tax rates to charge and to whom, subsidy rates to offer and to whom, how to deal with inequities, and whether or not sectors of the population such as homeless people prisoners and people without formal documents are included in disaster prevention and response plans.

Hurricane Harvey in 2017 deposited the most rain from a single storm yet recorded in the continental US. Harvey killed devastated Houston and surrounding areas and turned the lives of millions upside down through property damage, interrupted livelihoods, and disruptions to children's schooling. Since statehood, Texas has often, in effect, encouraged flood vulnerability, being dissuaded only briefly and infrequently by disasters over the decades. For Houston, so much could have been achieved before Harvey had the city in its sights, especially considering the experiences of past storms.

An elementary rule is that not building on floodplains helps us to stay dry. Although, all locations experience some hazards, meaning that avoiding all possible threats of damage is impossible. Instead, a balance of potential hazards can be sought while designing and building for this balance and combination of hazards, which means tackling vulnerabilities. Techniques include land use planning and zoning regulations, but these have long been slack in Houston. We can develop on and live in flood-prone locations without creating flood disasters. Car parks, streets and pavements can be permeable, allowing rainwater to soak through them rather than running off immediately to pond in the low points.

The city could have supported cheap, reliable, frequent, and safe public transport to reduce the need for multi-lane roads and huge car parks, which blanket green spaces. Buildings and roads can be orientated to funnel rainwater into low-lying areas designated to catch and store it. Examples are parquets that could turn into temporary reservoirs, ravines to be used for walking and cycling instead of living, and lakes or ponds with room to expand, which could otherwise be places for picnicking and boating. Some tree species are good at soaking up water.

At the time of Hurricane Harvey, Houston was implementing many initiatives to support green space, to improve runoff management and to reduce ponding of surface water. The city was also fighting to overcome an antithetical legacy generating vulnerability. Its population had increased by 40 percent since 1990, while the state, like many other places in the US and around the world, displayed ingrained racism and desperate social inequalities that made people vulnerable.

Voting records across Texas often favour lower taxes and oppose tackling prevalent social and economic disparities, thus making it difficult for marginalised people to help themselves, even when they want to. It was these choices to create and maintain vulnerabilities which caused the hurricane to become a disaster. The implications were foreseeable and known and became manifest when Harvey swept through and matched the long-standing reality of disasters across the state.

Voting for creating disaster vulnerability is an ideological choice, and voters have the right to make these choices. No storm tells people what taxes can and cannot achieve, no wind speed confers racism, no flood depth selects an oil-based boom and bust economy, no storm surge dictates where to settle and how to build. Changing storm regimes due to climate change and natural variations do not force people to vote in a certain way. All these creators and reducers of vulnerability occur through human choices. They represent vulnerability by ideology.

Why are poorer people often the worst affected by disasters? In our next episode, we'll be looking at the influence which economic circumstances have on preventing disasters. Subscribe to keep up with this series. See you next time.