Hurricane Florence 2018: Flooding in the Carolinas Analysis
This paper examines the organizational and situational concerns surrounding the catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas caused by Hurricane Florence in 2018. Drawing on systems approach management theory and bureaucratic organizational frameworks, the paper analyzes how legislative inaction following prior vulnerability assessments—conducted after Hurricane Matthew in 2016—contributed to the scale of devastation in Horry County, South Carolina. It reviews the collaborative emergency response among FEMA, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other agencies, while identifying key challenges in prevention, community impact, and interagency coordination. The paper concludes with recommendations for infrastructural prevention measures, including debris cleanup and the construction of dry dams upstream, emphasizing that effective disaster management must prioritize prevention alongside response planning.
- Introduction: Scale and scope of Hurricane Florence's flooding
- Organizational and Situational Concerns: Management theory applied to legislative inaction
- Challenges and Problems: Community devastation and social tensions post-Florence
- Analysis and Evaluation: Interagency response evaluated against management frameworks
- Recommendations: Infrastructure and prevention measures for future storms
- Conclusion: Call for legislative action and preventive planning
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its argument in a personal connection to Horry County, South Carolina, giving its policy critique a concrete, local anchor while maintaining academic framing.
- It effectively applies organizational theory — Weber's bureaucratic approach and the systems approach — to a real disaster event, demonstrating how abstract management models explain real-world failures.
- The paper balances multiple layers of analysis: individual human tragedy (the Dazia Lee case), community-level social tension, and broad policy-level critique of legislative inaction.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative case analysis by drawing sustained parallels between Hurricane Katrina (2005), Hurricane Matthew (2016), and Hurricane Florence (2018). This longitudinal comparison allows the author to show how repeated failures in the mitigation-preparedness cycle — despite available evidence and prior studies — led to preventable harm. This technique strengthens the policy argument by showing a pattern of institutional neglect rather than isolated error.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a clear problem-analysis-solution structure across six sections. The introduction establishes the disaster's scale and scope. The organizational section applies management theory to explain systemic failure. The challenges section addresses human and social costs. The analysis section evaluates the interagency response against established frameworks. The recommendations section offers concrete preventive measures, and the conclusion reinforces the call for legislative action. Each section builds logically on the previous one, guiding the reader from context to critique to prescription.
Introduction
Since the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the poor response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the aftermath of the flooding in 2005, adequate and effective management of natural disasters has become a central concern for leading emergency management agencies at both the local and federal levels. A need for greater interagency collaboration has been established, and by the time Hurricane Florence struck the Carolinas in 2018 there had been plenty of discussion about safety. Still, not enough was done to prepare the community for the devastation that occurred.
In Horry County, South Carolina, major flooding occurred as a result of Hurricane Florence. The storm was responsible for approximately 40 deaths across three states, and the total estimated damage caused by flooding was approximately $20 billion. Described by the National Weather Service as "one of the most significant rainfall events on record in the Carolinas, producing widespread, catastrophic flooding" — flooding that lasted for several days and left more than 340,000 people without power (Siegel et al., 2018) — Florence was deemed the cause of one of the deadliest floods in the history of the United States. It was estimated that more than 10,000 people had to take refuge in state shelters, while several others stayed with family and friends or in hotels. In addition, the rainfall led to the closure of over 1,100 roads, including major highways and interstates. In the course of the deadly flooding, many people were stranded and hungry in their homes before food could reach them.
This paper describes the organizational and situational concerns associated with the flooding in the Carolinas, the challenges and problems that arose, an analysis of the flooding problem in the area, and recommendations for addressing the concerns associated with flooding of the kind seen after Hurricane Florence.
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