The Shape of the Future

E M Risse

Fire and Flood

Much of the damage from natural disasters like Isabel is entirely preventable. Rather than subsidize scattered habitation in exposed locations, public policy should cluster people in areas that can be protected efficiently.

During late July and early August, the town where I grew up came within a grizzly whisker of burning down. The urban enclave at the west entrance of Glacier National Park, Montana, would have been incinerated but for backfires and aerial bombardments. The fires in Glacier and the Flathead National Forest were unprecedented in extent since modern equipment has been available to measure and manage forest fires.

On the day in September when western Montana residents could be assured that the worst of the fire season was over, Hurricane Isabel come ashore in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Though only a Class 1 hurricane by the time it reached the mainland, Isabel wrought havoc in the Mid-Atlantic States. Disruption was extensive; the cost of damage mounted into the billions of dollars.

During the cool, calm days of November, it would be wise to come to a dispassionate understanding of how these two events illuminate the way humans are despoiling the surface of the earth. 

The fires. In a two million-acre area of the Northern Rocky Mountains west of the Continental Divide, over 300,000 acres were burned by 23 named fires and fire complexes. It does not take a rocket scientist or a regional planner to know that burning 15 percent of an area larger than Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Fauquier and Stafford Counties combined is a lot of fire.

Weather conditions set up the woods to incinerate. Fuel moisture levels in the forest were at record lows. Major burns started by lightning would have been impossible to avoid. Many argue that forest fire is a natural process and should be managed, not “fought.”

As one who grew up with Smokey Bear and put himself through college working on forest fire control, I find that new perspective basically correct. Whatever forest fire strategy is employed, the major cost –- tens of millions of mostly federal dollars – amounts to “structure protection.” The U.S. Forest Service spent over a billion dollars on forest fire suppression before the fires erupted in the Los Angels New Urban Region. In the Northern Rocky Mountains , air ship, dozer-skidder, gypsy crew and municipal engine resources were spent primarily on protection of scattered urban swellings–first and second homes of urban citizens. 

The majority of the expense could have been avoided had not urban land uses been scattered through the forest.  Other expenses could have been eliminated by intelligent management of the land around urban enclaves that support tourism, forestry and “wilderness experiences.”

The climatic conditions and settlement patterns in the Los Angles New Urban Region are different but the same general principles apply.

Wind and water. Hurricane Isabel cut a swath through the Mid-Atlantic Region and brought normal life to a standstill. The impacts can be summarized by considering trees, flooding and utilities.

Trees in the wind. The first storm damage coverage focused on downed trees. There were a lot of blocked roads, downed power lines, crushed cars and damaged roofs. One can still see the evidence along streets and roads in Isabel’s path. During the summer, walking up Culpeper Street to the Warrenton-Fauquier farmer’s market, we noted numerous dead and dying trees and even more with dead limbs. Most are now gone along with items the owners would have preferred not be crushed. Intelligent letters to editors and op eds since the storm have pointed out the idiocy of planting and saving big forest trees in “sub”urban settings. This is a theme stressed in The Shape of the Future, see Chapter 11, Box 11.

Unfortunately, none of the wise council on trees noted the overarching contextual problem: scattered urban housing.

The water is less murky. Engineers and marine architects know how to build near, in and under water. Hardened structures and demountable amenities are the answer for those who want or need to be close to water. But everyone knows, or should know, that it is silly to build in floodplains and areas subject to tidal surges because building there is very expensive. Take an umbrella to the beach, but put the house and the shop in a safe place. 

Scattered urban dwellings took the biggest hit from Isabel’s flooding. Tidal surge took out scattered, cheaply constructed buildings along with urban areas that have been “improved” or “restored” without necessary protection.

Please turn on the lights. The biggest problems, however, related to the urban utility infrastructure. Overflowing sewers, inappropriate storm drains, unprotected water intakes, leaking water mains and the failure to provide backup power for vital functions cost billions of taxpayer dollars directly and indirectly. Citizens were most extensively impacted by loss of electrical, cable and telephone service. Deregulation, competition and pressure to build the most extensive but lowest cost infrastructure have resulted in vulnerable utilities. Electric power enterprises seeking short-term profit and lowest-price services have endangered long-term performance and reliability as the Northeast Blackout of 2003 documented.

There is a common theme that runs through the impact of fire, wind and water: scattered urban land uses and the failure to define and respect a Clear Edge between Urbansides and Countryside.

A port in the storm. One of the most compelling stories in the days immediately following Isabel was that during and after the storm, “downtown Washington” –- the core of the federal District of Columbia -- was an oasis with power, water and civility. The surrounding “sub”urbs were a mess. That is exactly why they are called “sub”urban.

Just as there is an exorbitant cost for providing urban services to scattered urban land uses, there is a very high cost to protect scattered facilities from fire and storm. There is a cost to hold nature at bay, and it gets much more onerous in dysfunctionally distributed locations.

Where to from here? There are two choices: Humans can work to reduce the incidence of ‘natural disasters’ or they can take action to protect themselves from impact of these occurrences. 

An oft-heard bromide heard in response to ever more intensive storm systems is to “stop global warming.”  Global warming may or may not be a cause. Even if it is, the responses now on the table (e.g., the Kyoto Agreement) would be too late and too feeble. Whether the cause is global warming or the end of a benign interlude in weather patterns, storm events are becoming more extreme and more frequent than in the recent past. The intensity and frequency is not, however, unprecedented in recorded history, much less geologic time frames.

The answer to fire and storm damage lies in limiting the vulnerability of structures and facilities. That means making more intelligent location and design decisions. 

Citizens must become smarter and take actions to make humanity’s ecological footprint smaller and protect urban structures and utilities from natural events.

The most important collective, long-term strategy to diminish the ecological footprint is to reduce the human population. The church with the most souls in Heaven does not win. The market with the most consumers does not win either. In the United States of America , making the ecological footprint smaller will solve many problems. 

A reasonable goal would be to significantly reduce the population over the next 100 years, but there is an easier strategy. The U.S. devotes far more land to urban land uses – about five times too much -- than can be efficiently used for the foreseeable future, even if the population continues to grow at current rates. The priority should be designing a process to create settlement patterns that make citizens safe and happy. As luck would have it, the cost savings of functional human settlement patterns over scatteration will more than pay for the structure and utility hardening necessary to protect structures and facilities from fire, wind and water.

A first step will be to recognize the necessity of a Clear Edge between the Urbansides and the Countryside. How do we get there? In a society driven by economic competition, the answer is simple. The path to implementation will be easy and collectively painless if we create a fair, equitable and fact-based:

·         distribution of the costs of converting land from extensive, nonurban use to urban use

·         allocation of the location-variable cost of urban services required to maintain urban activity.

At first blush this may seem hard. But not necessarily so. CNN ran a number of informal polls during Isabel’s run through the Mid-Atlantic Region. 

The first we saw was scary. Fifty-six percent of 130,000 respondents said “government should not restrict building in hurricane-prone areas.”  

The second poll restored our faith in citizens and in the economy. Over 166,000 answered the question: “Who should pay for rebuilding homes and businesses damaged by Isabel?”  Only five percent said “government,” while 22 percent put the burden on the property owners and 73 percent said insurance companies. 

Right on! Like owning a car, everyone should have insurance for any structure they own or occupy. Let the insurance company calculate a competitive cost of hazard insurance. There may be a need to subsidize some insurance during the transition. The federal flood “insurance” program has demonstrated the weakness of the current process. We should be able to learn from our mistakes and do a better job with comprehensive coverage of all location-based risks.

Before the “victims” get their damaged property repaired by grants or government-subsidized insurance, they should stop making bad location decisions that expose them unnecessarily to natural hazards.  

Back to the western front. Brush and forest fires are obscured by even more myth and disinformation than are wind and water. Before recommending “clear cut logging” as a solution to “save” the forests, we need to understand the interaction of logging, urban dwellings and managed fires.

The way we read aerial photos, several of the Northern Rockies fires started in areas, already managed for timber production, that had been clear cut. That is why a road existed for a 4X4 to drive to the fire ring where the Robert Fire started. The Robert Fire is the one that burned over 55,000 acres and almost destroyed West Glacier.

The modest per-acre fee Montana now collects for forest dwellings does not begin to cover state, much less federal and municipal and not-for-profit expenses. It is, however, a step in the right direction.  With fire, wind, water and other “weather hazards,” raise the fee to cover all cost of the location decisions and watch the behavior change.

We also need to move beyond negative treatment of bad location decisions. We must start creating sustainable human settlement patterns nationwide. Dysfunctional human settlement patterns are caused by counterproductive policies, programs and subsidies.  Charging citizens and their organizations full price for energy and non-renewable resources and stopping the subsidy of consumption is the place to start.

-- November 3, 2003

Ed Risse, and his wife Linda live inside the "Clear Edge" of the "urban enclave" known as Warrenton, a municipality in the Countryside near the edge of the Washington-Baltimore "New Urban Region."

Mr. Risse, the principal of

SYNERGY/Planning, Inc., can be contacted at spirisse@aol.com.

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