Beyond Nature
Embracing our Role in Shaping Disaster Risk
The lone surviving house in the wildfire in Lahaina (Hawaii) in 2023
In August 2023, Lahaina, a town on the northwest coast of Maui in the U.S. state of Hawaii, was devastated by one of the worst wildfires in the region. The fires, claiming over 100 lives, turned the historic town into ashes burning down over 2000 houses and causing an estimated $5.5 billion in damages, making it the worst disaster in the recorded history of Hawaii.
After the fire, a poignant image emerged – a red-roofed house standing undamaged amidst charred neighborhoods. The house owners described it as looking unreal, akin to being "photoshopped," in a news article. The photo of the red-roofed house sparked fascination because of its stark contrast with the surrounding neighborhood that bore the brunt of the fires.
This image, however, provides an opportunity to delve deeper into the key drivers of disaster risk and identify factors that resulted in such different impacts from the same fire. In the academic literature, disaster risk is conceptualized as the convergence of three processes: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability.
The fire itself is the hazard for the Maui fire, whereas people and assets exposed to the fire constitute the exposure. And the potential for damage and harmful impacts from the fire becomes the vulnerability. The intensity of the hazard, i.e., the fire, is arguably quite similar for the entire town of Lahaina, where all of the houses and people staying in them were exposed. However, the difference in the consequence is evident from the photograph of that one house. This can be attributed to the different levels of vulnerability of this particular red-roofed house as opposed to others in the neighborhood. As widely reported, many of the maintenance-related upgrades that occurred upon changing ownership of this house resulted in reduced vulnerability. Although these actions were not targeted at fire protection, they made a difference in reducing the vulnerability of this house to fire.
Are disasters “natural” then?
Out of the three processes that contribute to disaster risk, hazard is often a natural environmental event while exposure and vulnerability result from human actions (or lack thereof!). This challenges the conventional notion of "natural" disasters, since two-thirds of the disaster risk equation is, in fact, not inherently natural. Framing disasters as purely "natural" provides no incentives for proactive risk reduction initiatives. However, by dissecting disaster risk into the three components, we can understand the root causes, identify key drivers of disaster risk, and explore opportunities to address them. This shift in perspective acknowledges our role in shaping exposure and vulnerabilities to various natural hazards, that ultimately shape disaster risk.
Hazards are often natural and dynamic
Natural hazards, like floods, earthquakes, wildfires, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. have resulted in large-scale disasters throughout history. Many of these hazards are climatic, meaning they are weather-related and often referred to as extreme weather events. The changing climate affects the frequency and intensity of such hazards both temporally and geographically. The dynamic nature of these hazards and their evolution is important to understand in order to assess disaster risk appropriately. For example, the frequency of heat domes in the Pacific Northwest in the last five years has been record-breaking, which has consequences in the communities in terms of increasing chances of wildfires, changes in agricultural patterns, heat-related health emergencies, etc.
The dynamic nature of hazards results from not only the changing climate but also advancements in technology and knowledge. For example, the widespread adoption of paleoseismology, a field of study that looks at geologic sediments and rocks for signs of prehistoric and pre-instrumental earthquakes, has transformed our understanding of earthquake hazards. For example, the Cascadia subduction zone, a thousand-kilometer-long earthquake source, was only discovered in 1985 and is now known to contribute to significant earthquake and tsunami hazards in the Western United States and Canada. With the advancement in sensing and instrumentation technology and its spread across the world, it is bound to provide new knowledge and insights, thereby contributing to the dynamic nature of such hazards.
Exposure is not natural and dynamic
The second process of disaster risk, i.e., exposure, is perhaps the most unnatural out of the three. With population growth coupled with the growth in infrastructure, the landscapes of the physical spaces of the world have been changing and evolving over the years. The rate of these changes has increased leaps and bounds over the last century and continues to change rapidly. The world's urban population has increased significantly over the last century. According to a report from the World Bank:
Since 1985, about 76,400 square km of newly urbanized land was added in locations with inundation depths of over 0.5 meters during severe floods – this corresponds to about 50 times the area of Greater London.
In most countries, zoning laws control how settlements occur in urban areas. With increasing population, denser and taller buildings are constructed to accommodate the increasing population. The urban landscape is ever-changing, so the exposure to natural hazards is dynamic. These changes, however, could be controlled with zoning laws, and without that, more and more of the population is put at risk. For example, devising zoning laws such that more settlements do not occur in known floodplains so that no more people are put in harm’s way and also finding ways to reduce settlements that already exist in such areas can greatly manage and reduce future risks.
Vulnerability is not natural and dynamic
Vulnerability is a multi-faceted concept shaped by social, technical, cultural, institutional, and financial circumstances that shape the lives of people and the entire environment. The concept of vulnerability has a wide variety of meanings for people from different backgrounds. Regarding the vulnerability of infrastructure to natural hazards, it describes the potential for harmful impacts for the given hazard intensity. At a regional scale, vulnerability addresses a much wider spectrum of issues that impact response and recovery from any disaster. In engineering analysis, methods are developed to understand the level of vulnerability of physical infrastructure as it relates to the intensity of hazard.
As all these three processes that shape disaster risk are disentangled, a more nuanced understanding of the cause and effects could be made. And that empowers actions that could reduce risk rather than terming disasters as “natural” or “acts of god”.
How vulnerability is accidentally reduced in the Lahaina house
As we turn our gaze back to the red-roofed house in Lahaina, the narrative could be built on hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. As shared by the new owners of this house, originally built in 1925, underwent renovations after their new ownership in 2021. To upgrade the conditions of the house, the aging wooden roof was replaced with steel roofing materials. The house’s surroundings were curated, with river stones replacing potentially combustible bushes, creating a buffer against the encroaching fire. Although these efforts were not targeted at making the house safer for wildfires, they certainly reduced its vulnerability to fire. Therefore, even with the same intensity of hazard (fire) and exposure, the reduced vulnerability of the house resulted in a completely different post-fire condition compared to others in the same neighborhood.
What does successful risk reduction look like?
The question arises – is this a success story? On an individual level, it resonates as a triumph in safeguarding personal property. However, juxtaposed against acres of burned houses, the narrative transcends individual success to underscore the importance of system-level safety and resilience in protecting communities.
The red-roofed house, standing lonely amid the devastation, becomes a reminder of the collective resilience needed in the face of disasters. It invites us to contemplate not just individual triumphs but the imperative of ensuring the safety and resilience of our communities. Acknowledging that disasters are not merely natural but intricately woven into the fabric of our societal choices, we can recognize our agency to build a future that is defined by addressing disaster risk through proactive actions.
Well articulated. Was eager to know about the vulnerability prevention technique taken by the owner of the red roofed house. Keep it up