Hurricane Florence 2018: Flooding in the Carolinas Analysis

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.

Organizational and Situational Concerns

Organizational theory according to Weber's bureaucratic approach has long been a staple of American emergency agencies' planning when it comes to natural disasters like the flooding following Hurricane Florence. The purpose of this approach is to keep all stakeholders interconnected in order to ensure a unified, cohesive, and coordinated response. Following Katrina, extensive investigations showed exactly what was needed and what should have been done to ensure a better response: FEMA had inadequately trained staff, while the local incident command system was woefully underprepared. Organization had been lacking in the response and there had been no substantial "spirit of mission" among leaders of the various agencies working to stabilize the situation (Samaan & Verneuil, 2009). The same problems existed to some degree locally in Horry County.

Indeed, some believed the effects of the destructive flooding could have been reduced if necessary preventions had been in place. In May 2018, three months before Hurricane Florence, Governor Cooper's office released extensive studies that raised concerns stemming from the 2016 Hurricane Matthew (Campbell, 2018). The publication detailed prevention projects on the three rivers that had flooded during the 2016 disaster. Unfortunately, little attention was paid by legislators to the hundreds of pages of studies prepared by North Carolina Emergency Management in collaboration with other state agencies and experts from N.C. State and East Carolina universities — studies containing approaches to reduce the effects of flooding from the Lumber, Tar, and Neuse Rivers (Campbell, 2018).

This was a major problem in hindsight. According to the systems approach model of management, Horry County was simply not receiving the attention it required because preparedness was not following mitigation. The community's leaders — particularly its legislators — had stalled and failed to provide funds to address the issues identified in the vulnerability assessment. Had local legislators adopted the recommendations of those assessments, actions could have been taken in advance to reduce the risk of flooding. This would have been an example of classical organizational theory in action: structure, specialization, predictability, stability, rationality, and democracy would have been its hallmarks (FAO, 2018).

A modern management example is, of course, the systems approach, which links communication among agencies and departments with organizational balance and decision analysis. The systems approach is based on a continuous loop of four phases: 1) mitigation, 2) preparedness, 3) response, and 4) recovery. The recovery process feeds back into the mitigation phase — and this was true for the Carolinas following Hurricane Matthew in 2016. The local government, however, failed to proceed onward with preparation, and that played a part in the extent of devastation following Hurricane Florence two years later.

Ultimately, understanding non-linear relationships among systems — rather than a simple cause-and-effect understanding of events — is an important part of the systems approach. Leaders and managers need to view their interaction with systems as dynamic and always subject to change; therefore, they should give special attention to the process rather than simply the moment of transaction and transformation. That was not the case in the two years between Matthew and Florence.

Conclusion

In conclusion, government at all levels needs to review the studies that were provided to local legislators prior to Florence's landfall. They need to act to prevent a reoccurrence of the extensive damage from this storm and to be better prepared for future events. Recommendations include debris cleanup and the construction of several dry dams upstream from Lumberton so that communities downstream could be protected from overflow. The cost of the recommended preventive measures is nothing compared to the potential loss of lives and property that could result from another such event.