Category Archives: Disasters and Disaster Preparedness

Governing by Edict

Posted on March 14, 2022 by | 113 comments

Jason Miyares, Attorney General of Virginia

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Although the issue of school mask mandates is now behind us, it is instructive to examine the legal arguments advanced by Attorney General Jason Miyares in a court case seeking to overturn the mask mandates instituted by the Loudoun County School Board (“school board”).  Not only does Miyares advocate judicial activism and misread statutory law, the breadth of the power he asserts for the governor is breathtaking.

At issue was whether the school board could continue to mandate the wearing of face masks by students despite the provisions of Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order No. Two (EO-2) that students are to have the option of wearing masks in school.

The state circuit courts have divided on this issue. The state Supreme Court dismissed, on technical grounds, a suit by Chesapeake parents challenging EO-2. A group of seven school boards filed suit in Arlington Circuit Court challenging the legality of EO-2. The court there issued a temporary injunction barring the enforcement of the mask-option policy set out in EO-2. The result was just the opposite in Loudoun. The court there issued a temporary injunction barring the mask mandate. Because there are no standards to guide Virginia courts in the issuance of temporary injunctions, it may be difficult to infer from that action how a court would ultimately rule. The order issued by the Loudoun County judge did not provide any specific grounds for granting the request for a temporary injunction other than “the reasons stated in the briefs, pleadings, and on the record at the…hearing.” The Washington Post reported that the judge said that the plaintiffs, consisting of parents and the Commonwealth, were likely to prevail in a trial. He was quoted as saying, “The executive order is a valid exercise of the governor of Virginia.” Continue reading →

113 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Culture wars, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Governance

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COPN’s Regional Monopolies Helped Boost Virginia Hospitals’ Operating Margins to more than 3x National Median in 2020

Posted on February 6, 2022 by | 23 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Virginians have been assured forever by the hospital lobby that the non-profit regional monopolies established and protected by COPN nearly everywhere but Richmond:

  • are benign public servants with a charitable mission;
  • certainly don’t drive up costs;
  • that competition does not matter;
  • that the State Medical Facilities Plan on which COPN is based, like government 5-year industrial plans everywhere, is both well- managed and prescient; and
  • that limiting capacity is the key to cost containment. (It turned out that limiting capacity was also the key to hospitals being overwhelmed by COVID. Clearly disaster preparedness is not among COPN criteria.)

Well. The median operating margin for Virginia’s 106 hospitals in 2020, the latest year for which data are available, was 9.2%. Nationally, that margin was 2.7%.

Virginians paid over $1.5 billion more for hospital visits than they would have if our hospitals had cumulatively posted a 3% operating margin, which has been at or near the national median  for years. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Antitrust, Campaign finance reform, Charity, Philanthropy and Nonprofits, Consumer Protection, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, General Assembly, Governance, Health Care, Regulations and Government Oversight

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A Price of COPN — Sentara Pleads COVID Capacity Shortages

Posted on January 7, 2022 by | 7 comments

Sentara Norfolk General Hospital

by James C. Sherlock

Sentara Health, once described by The Washington Post as “playing COPN like a violin,”  yesterday went statewide with an acknowledgment that its system is out of capacity for many who seek its help.

On a Zoom press conference yesterday, Sentara reported seeing a huge surge in hospital admissions. Hospitalizations have more than tripled since Dec. 26. That is combined with a depletion in hospital staff caused by illness.

Dr. Jordan Asher, Sentara’s chief physician executive, said:

We take care of people that are sick. You’re coming around unvaccinated versus vaccinated does not come into play as we think about it. As resources get scarce, do you triage differently? Obviously the answer to that is yes … but we have a very strong way of going through all that, of looking at that. We’re used to that.… How we think about the utilization of resources and how we think about triaging is part of our everyday work. (Bolding added by author)

So you might find yourself on the down side of emergency room triage. Not good being you. Continue reading →

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Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, General Assembly, Governance, Health Care, Regulations and Government Oversight

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Northam Apologize? LOL

Posted on January 6, 2022 by | 80 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

You would expect that Governor Ralph Northam, in the final two weeks of his governorship, would engage in a little self-reflection, maybe even a bit of humility and admit that he and his “team” made colossal mistakes on Monday that left hundreds of travelers stranded on a frozen 50-mile stretch of highway for more than a day.

Shoot, a normal person might even — dare I say it — apologize for the endangerment of so many people.

Ha.

If there’s one thing all Virginians know about Northam by now it’s that this guy is incapable of admitting he was wrong and he never apologizes. Continue reading →

80 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness

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Northam’s Frozen Failure

Posted on January 5, 2022 by | 86 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Let’s face it. Lots of us are cranky as we start the New Year.

Thousands — shoot, probably hundreds of thousands — of air travelers were stranded around the country this week after flights were cancelled because of weather or staffing shortages.

Including me.

As our taxi approached the New Orleans airport Monday morning my phone beeped. There it was: A text saying my flight to Norfolk was cancelled. Snow and ice at BWI.

Saw that one coming. I’d been watching the Baltimore weather the night before with growing alarm. Continue reading →

86 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness

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Stuck in a Snowstorm: Better to Have a Gas- or Electric-Powered Car?

Posted on January 4, 2022 by | 71 comments

Here’s what Interstate 95 looked like near Fredericksburg yesterday. Both northbound and southbound sections were closed due to snow and ice. Photo credit; Virginia Department of Transportation via the Associated Press

by James A. Bacon

Hundreds of motorists were stranded on Interstate 95 in freezing temperatures last night after two tractor-trailers jackknifed in a snowstorm and triggered a chain reaction as other vehicles lost control. Both lanes of the Interstate were closed. As night fell, reports the Associated Press, motorists posted messages on social media about running out of fuel, food, and water. Senator Tim Kaine, who was commuting between his residence in Richmond and the Capitol, said he was stuck in his car for 21 hours.

NBC News correspondent Josh Lederman, who spoke on NBC’s “Today” show by video feed from his car, had this observation: “You really start to think if there was a medical emergency, someone that was out of gas and out of heat — you know it’s 26 degrees, and there’s no way that anybody can get to you in this situation.”

People can live without food and, for a time, without water. If worse comes to worse, they can pee on the side of the road. But the potential killer is hypothermia. The AP account tells of one motorist who stopped his car engine at least 30 times to conserve gas and run the heat just enough to stay warm.

I’m wondering how many of the stranded cars were electric vehicles and what happened to them. Continue reading →

71 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Transportation

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Tornadoes: December Devastation

Posted on December 13, 2021 by | 19 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

It’s the drone footage that gets you.

Those silent video clips showing mile after mile of unimaginable devastation. Flattened homes and factories, overturned railroad cars and trucks, trees reduced to toothpicks and debris fields full of the colorful remnants of ordinary peoples’ lives.

And wandering through the Armageddon are people, eyes down, slowly searching. Are they looking for loved ones, mementoes or pets? Impossible to know from the drone’s eye view. Continue reading →

19 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness

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Youngkin Takes the Lead

Posted on October 29, 2021 by | 9 comments

by James C. Sherlock

The Real Clear Politics poll average has Glenn Youngkin in the lead for the first time.

Nice job, Glenn.

Terry, thank you for being perhaps the worst retail politician Virginia has seen since Ken Cuccinelli.

9 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Money in politics, Politics, Uncategorized

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The Economics of Flood Control in Virginia

Posted on September 15, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Hampton Roads base flood – 1% annual risk

by James C. Sherlock

We have work to do, and need to do it quickly and well.

  • If we want to get storm defenses built before major storm damage rather than after; and
  • if we want the federal government to pay 65% of the costs.

Let’s assume we do.

The “Virginia Coastal Resilience Master Planning Framework” appears to be heading in a direction that may miss important pieces of any benefit/cost assessment. And those assessments drive federal interest.

The assumption in Framework going forward appears to be that the value of flood protection is in loss avoidance. Exclusively. 

Indeed, all of the work that I can find in flooding assessments Virginia is put towards the goal of understanding the costs of such losses.

Not sufficient, but fixable. Continue reading →

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Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Flooding, General Assembly, Uncategorized

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Louisiana Shows How Flood Control Can Work at Massive Scale

Posted on September 13, 2021 by | 10 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Louisiana has half the population of Virginia. Virginia is ranked the 18th richest state in per capita income, Louisiana 48th.

So, why has Louisiana been so phenomenally successful in flood control efforts since Katrina while Virginia writes its own framework for action that it is too expensive here?

Primarily because Louisiana figured out after Katrina that:

  1. the feds simultaneously have all the flood control resources — money, expertise, experience, scale — that states do not have, and both write the regulations and regulate flood control.
  2. the state had to organize both the state and local governments to deal with the federal government with a single voice.

The new agency charged with that monumental and immediate task, while quickly and iteratively creating itself, was the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) of Louisiana.

There is much for Virginians to know about and learn from Louisiana’s success. You will see that the Bayou State has way bigger flooding problems to solve than does Virginia.

Their success must be a model for us.

Yet the Commonwealth seems hell bent on ignoring the methods that enabled that success. Our leaders also deny that engineered defenses, “castles,” are even affordable as part of the solution set in Virginia. Each idea is both ill considered and dangerous.

I will describe briefly how Louisiana has done its part in this. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Flooding, General Assembly, Governance

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Development and Sea-Level Rise in the Tarheel State

Posted on September 11, 2021 by | 40 comments

by James A. Bacon

People love living on the water. They just can’t get enough of it. If they can’t afford to live on the waterfront, they will pay a premium just to live near it. Signs of the human proclivity for water views are evident all around Beaufort, N.C. (pronounced Bow-fort, not Bew-fort), a waterfront town of 4,000 to 5,000. The heart of Beaufort is a charming hamlet dating back to the 1700s. The walkable small-town core with restaurants, boutiques, marinas and quaint historical buildings is the nucleus from which development radiates in all directions.

Coastal North Carolina in these parts, just south of the Outer Banks, is as low-lying and vulnerable to flooding and hurricanes as Tidewater Virginia. I know nothing of what preparations the Tarheel state might be taking in anticipation of the kind of extreme weather events that Jim Sherlock has described in recent posts. I will simply observe that whatever restrictions exist, they don’t seem to be slowing the pace of development on the state’s barrier islands and along its sounds, channels and estuaries. Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Land use & Development

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Virginia Has a Rising Sea Problem, Relatively

Posted on August 31, 2021 by | 92 comments

Ninety years of relative sea level rise (SLR) at Norfolk’s Sewells Point gauge, with mean lines added by Kip Hansen. It is about two-third due to sinking land, one-third due to long term absolute SLR, and in no way due to modern CO2 emissions.

by Steve Haner and Kip Hansen

When discussing sea level rise, on Virginia’s coast or anywhere else, watch the terms being used very carefully. Absolute sea level is the height of the ocean compared to the center of the Earth. Relative sea level is the height of the ocean compared to a specific point on the shore. They are not the same. Continue reading →

92 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Environment, Flooding, Resilience

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The Other Side of the “Intensifying Rain” Claim

Posted on August 30, 2021 by | 35 comments

Prepared by Kip Hansen. Data sources cited. Click for larger view.

by Steve Haner and Kip Hansen

With the rainy remnants of another hurricane heading for Virginia from battered Louisiana, the stories of a coming Climate Armageddon will again ramp up. A couple of good examples of what to expect recently appeared in Virginia Mercury, the main one quoting numerous sources claiming Virginia is seeing more and more intense rainfall and will suffer more flooding as a result. Continue reading →

35 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Environment, Flooding, Infrastructure, Resilience

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Herd Immunity from the Delta Variant – “Mythical”

Posted on August 12, 2021 by | 82 comments

Image by Spencer Davis from Pixabay

To vax or not to vax? I’m vaccinated. I think everybody who is eligible to be vaccinated should get vaccinated.  Jim Bacon makes the excellent point that people who are vaccinated may still get COVID but are far less likely to die from the virus. Others believe that vaccinations will confer herd immunity to the population as a whole if only enough people get vaccinated. Not so claims a world renowned virologist. Sir Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group and a leading epidemiologist, calls herd immunity from the Delta variant “not a possibility” and “mythical.” If herd immunity really is “mythical,” is there a public health basis to mandate vaccines? The pro vax mandate crowd has continually compared the COVID vaccinations to vaccinations against diseases like polio. But if herd immunity is “not a possibility,” where do we stand? Continue reading →

82 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Public safety & health, Science & Technology

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Coming to Virginia – a New State of Emergency?

Posted on August 6, 2021 by | 24 comments

Why is this man smiling?

by James C. Sherlock

The Governor’s 15-month emergency powers expired June 30, and, God, does he miss them.

From The Virginian-Pilot:

“School districts that aren’t requiring masks, including several in Hampton Roads, are running afoul of state law, Gov. Ralph Northam said Thursday.”

OK.

The bigger questions are

  • how long the governor will put up with the lack of emergency powers;
  • when he will start to follow Virginia’s Pandemic Emergency Annex to its Emergency Operations Plan; and
  • is the General Assembly even interested?

Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance, Money in politics, Political Influence, Public safety & health, Virginia Law

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