Mitigating Personal Risk (Part 2)

I couldn’t help but stare in wonder at the pictures of US Hwy 24 between Woodland Park & Manitou Springs, Colorado, from a few days ago.  Less than 12 hours after posting my article on the importance of investigating all hazards that you are vulnerable to, my point was driven home by mudslides along a stretch of highway I used to drive on a relatively frequent basis while I lived in Colorado Springs.  

 

Waldo Canyon was the epicenter to one of the numerous wild fires which ravaged the mountains near Garden of the Gods last summer, and the loss of ground cover made erosion a serious concern when heavy rains began to fall a few weeks ago.  That erosion occurred in great volume with little warning, sending mud across a divided four-lane highway that winds between the shallow canyon of the Arkansas River on one side, and cliff faces on the other.  

Mudslides aren’t something we normally think about in terms of dangers that are present in our daily lives, and in general, the consensus of Americans tend to believe that they are events reserved for third-world countries such as El Salvador.  Yet, here, in America’s heartland, the potential for mudslides obviously exists when the damage from wide-spread wild fires is unable to repair before heavy rains occur.  

Most jurisdiction emergency management offices, whether it be municipal, county, tribal, or state, have a list of all environmental hazards prepared for general use.  FEMA has a list which is a little broad for my taste, allowing me to look at what threatens each state.  

As I mentioned in Part I, knowing what threats are out there allow us to plan how to meet the challenge of increasing our personal and familial resilience to disaster.  Some aspects of it, honestly, are extremely common sense.  When I lived in Kansas, the threat of tornado-spawning thunderstorm was a part of our culture.  This was so much the case that, in 1999, while awaiting a briefing in Montgomery, AL, before departing for Latin America, a tornado warning sent approximately 200 Reservists packing into a “safe” briefing room.  The eight members of the Kansas contingent all went outside to watch the storm, telling the locals that if you couldn’t see or hear a tornado, it wasn’t a concern (the storm, we later learned, had dropped a funnel cloud for about 250 yards some 12 miles away.)  

Most people in Florida are well-versed in planning measures for hurricanes and flooding.  After all, Andrew has only recently been eclipsed by Horatio Cane as the biggest deal to hit Miami.  We also have our share of wild fires, because the sub-tropical vegetation burns fast and hot, and the density makes it hard to control.  Yet we don’t bother preparing for mudslides because, to put it simply, there’s not much for mud to slide off of.  

I urge the readers to talk to the local landmarks, those neighbors who have spent decades within a few miles of their current location.  Communicate with the local officials, Red Cross, and other knowledgeable sources to find out exactly what the major and moderate threats are to your community.  Only then can you begin to mitigate your risk of loss, and increase your disaster resilience before you become a survivor.