The Social Inequities and Injustices of Urban Flooding

The Spring of 2020 is a chapter in our story that will be remembered, studied, and written about for a long time. It feels like we are all living in a very important moment. A moment when the marginalized people of this nation collectively all stood up and said “Enough. This system is broke.”

Normally I try to make the content of this blog somewhat lighthearted with some humor mixed in but now is definitely not the time. For me personally, I have not been in much of a laughing mood of late anyway.

I despise all forms of injustice, hypocrisy, lies, and deceit – all of which feel like they are ratcheted up to a full 10 out of 10 right now across this nation. For me, it’s difficult not to get very angry. Angry at our leaders that we’ve elected to represent us. Angry at our police and military we count on to protect us. At the moment, both seem out of touch with the people whom they claim to serve.

Listening to Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia earlier this week he mentioned that rarely ever does anything good come from a clenched fist. It was a good reminder that I needed. Words maybe everyone should heed. I’m pretty sure I can’t type this blog post by punching my fists at my keyboard. My hands need to be relaxed and flexible. So does my mind. It was a good reminder that I needed to take a deep breath and channel my anger into something purposeful and constructive. Something that could help in the national effort in challenging the status quo; rather than turning me into the status quo.

This blog at it’s core is about the engineering, science and history of urban flooding with a bit of a Pittsburgh flavor. I am a bit hesitant about drifting too far into subjects that I personally have no understanding. I am a semi-youngish adult straight white male. I’ll never understand the emotionally damaging impacts of racism and discrimination and what that truly feels like. But I feel it is my duty to do something to help in the best way I know how. I have a blog with small yet somewhat dedicated following. I need to contribute.

Racism and discrimination have all the ingredients I loathe wrapped into one: injustice, hypocrisy, lies, and deceit.

Now is not the time to be silent.

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Natural disasters and flooding negatively and unjustly impact at-risk and marginalized people of this nation.

Unfortunately, the history of flooding is pot marked with scars of inequality and injustice. The memories of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina still linger for many. I’ve previously linked to some national studies on this blog. See here. Or here. Within both of these reports, research is beginning to show that flooding across this nation, not just New Orleans, disproportionately affects marginalized populations. Consider this snippet:

The people who live in dense, aging urban cores and low lying inundation areas—their neighborhoods served by undersized and deteriorating infrastructure—are the low income, elderly and other socially vulnerable people who have the highest risk of urban flooding and the fewest resources to combat it. Those who can afford to move to less flood-prone areas retreat, and the marginalized are left behind.

One of the most eye-opening research papers on these types of impacts was released in October of 2018 from Junia Howell from the University of Pittsburgh and James R Elliott from Rice University. The paper is titled: Damages Done: The Longitudinal Impacts of Natural Hazards on Wealth Inequality in the United States. The full paper is free and open access for anyone to read (thank you!). The paper is a bit technical but I am going to try to explain it in plain language for this blog as best I can.

But before I get into the results of the paper, we need to first understand the underlying data that went into the research. There are three datasets that were used to conduct the study.

1. Panel Study of Income Dynamics Data – This data is the longest running study of household family economics. It tracks and measures the wealth of families over multiple generations. It currently consists of over 9,000 volunteer families of wide ranging diverse backgrounds. The data allows researchers to understand how individual families are financially progressing over the years. It also allows to separate the data by race, location, and other factors such as level of education and marital status.
2. Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States – This database tracks the total cost of damages from natural disasters across the nation. The damages data can be extracted by the type of disaster, the date of the disaster, and the location/county in which it occurred.
3. Federal Emergency Management Agency Public Assistance Grants – Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides financial public assistance to communities after disasters to help in recovery efforts. The grant data is publicly available at OpenFEMA where anyone can extract the data and determine how much funding is disbursed each year, by type of disaster, and by county.

Using the Income Dynamics Data (Dataset 1 above), the research team looked at the years between 1999 and 2013 and determined all families that were impacted by a disaster using the Special Hazard Events Data (Dataset 2 above). Combining these datasets, they determined that over 3,400 families in the Income Dynamics Data were impacted by a disaster in their county of residence between the years 1999 and 2013.

For all of the identified 3,400 plus families the research team then calculated three things between 1999 and 2013:

• The net change in total wealth of each family.
• The total dollar amount of disaster damage of each family’s county.
• The total dollar amount of FEMA public assistance grants received of each family’s county.

The research team then compared the net change in total family wealth of each family to:

1. The total dollar value of disaster damages in their home county.
2. The total dollar value of FEMA grant assistance in their home county.

The research team then broke the comparison down by race of each family to determine the following:

Question 1: Does a greater amount of disaster damage a county experiences impact family wealth and do the results differ by race?

Question 2: Does a greater amount of FEMA aid a county receives impact family wealth and do the results differ by race?

Question 3: When a disaster occurs, does the wealth of a family decrease or increase and do the results differ by race?

The results:

For Question 1, the research team determined the following:

Whites who lived in counties with very little hazard damage ($100,000) over the 1999–2013 period gained, on average, $26,000 in wealth. By comparison, similar whites living in counties that experienced $10 billion in hazard damage gained nearly five times that much, or $126,000. For blacks, results cut the other way. Those who lived in counties with just $100,000 in hazard damage gained an estimated $19,000 on average; whereas those living in counties with $10 billion in hazard damage lost an estimated $27,000. For Latinos, these numbers are $72,000 versus negative $29,000. And, for other race (mostly Asian) individuals, the numbers are $21,000 versus negative $10,000. 

Here are the results in graphical format (annotations by me) that indicate that white families get wealthier and people of color get poorer the greater the disaster.

Question 1: Does a greater amount of disaster damage a county experiences impact family wealth and do the results differ by race? Yes. White families gain wealth and families of color lose wealth the greater the disaster damage value.

For Question 2, the research team determined the following:

Whites living in counties that received $900 million in FEMA aid during 1999–2013 accumulated $55,000 more wealth than otherwise similar whites living in counties that received only $1,000 in FEMA aid. Conversely, blacks living in counties that received $900 million in FEMA aid accumulated $82,000 less wealth than otherwise similar blacks living in counties that received only $1,000 in FEMA aid. Similarly, Latinos accumulated $65,000 less, and other races (mostly Asians) accumulated $51,000 less. 

The research team did not reproduce a similar graph as above but the graph below illustrates the point that white educated families benefit more from greater amounts of FEMA grant assistance and black uneducated families actually suffer.

Question 2: Does a greater amount of FEMA aid a county receives impact family wealth and do the results differ by race? Yes. White families gain wealth and families of color lose wealth the greater the amount of FEMA grant assistance.

Finally, Question 3:

Question 3: When a disaster occurs, does the wealth of a family decrease or increase and do the results differ by race? They increase for white families only and the worse the disaster, the greater the increase in family wealth. For all other races, family wealth decreases the worse the disaster.

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I’m presenting these results to help amplify the message that is ringing out in the world at this moment. In no way am I trying to compare police brutality to flooding. They are completely separate issues that pose their own set of challenges and solutions. But the results of this study points to a larger systemic issue that is somewhat similar in nature. When disasters occur to families, why should people suffer more hardship just because the color of their skin? Or their education level? Or whether they own or rent a home?

I’m not writing this article to downplay or discredit the notion that when disaster strikes that white families should not be helped. They most certainly should. When flooding disasters strike, everyone who needs and wants help should be helped, regardless of their background. I am writing this blog post to maybe help get us toward the long held ideal “that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” The results from this research are anything but that – maybe men are created equally, but certainly are not treated equally when it comes to disasters.

The data shows that white families gain wealth when disaster strikes and people of color spiral down into financial distress especially as the disaster increases in magnitude.

This isn’t a small sample size either. This is from over 3,400 families with 15 years worth of data. Results that were proven to 95% statistical confidence.

We obviously have to do better. We have to acknowledge these types of social problems in our nation or otherwise history will continue to repeat itself. The waves of racial unrest and riots will continue to ebb and flow in this country. Years like 1968, 1992, and 2020 will continue with periods of calm stillness and bursts of violent storms.

I’m a civil engineer by profession. The American Society of Civil Engineers has a code of ethics and Canon 8 is Treat All Persons Fairly. It is the engineer’s duty to consider these types of injustices in our line of work.

I just sometimes wish others would do the same in theirs.