Crime & Safety

Baltimore Prepares for Intense Weather with Emergency Planning

By Kate Andries and Sandra Mueller

From a windowless office in the basement of a Northwest Baltimore firehouse, a staff of seven manages the city’s response to emergencies. Tornadoes, hurricanes, heat, cold, floods, wind: C.P. Hsia coordinates city agencies as they respond to disasters.

And in recent years, many of those emergencies have been linked to intense weather.  Last summer, 13 people died of heat-related causes across Maryland—with at least two of those deaths in Baltimore. The summer before that, Hurricane Irene brought widespread power outages. Last June, a derecho—a violent windstorm that most Marylanders had never before heard of—ripped off roofs, uprooted trees and tore down power lines in several Baltimore neighborhoods.

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“We’re expecting these events to happen more severely or more often, and so we need to do better at preparing for these events,” said Hsia, preparedness program manager at the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management.

Now Baltimore has organized the Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project, or DP3—a committee that’s considering how City Hall, neighborhoods, businesses and institutions should confront climate change, with its violent weather and rising sea levels.

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The DP3 is working on a multi-agency plan—that city officials say is unique—that will help Baltimore and its residents cope better with floods, heat waves and storms.

The preparedness project includes a wish list for structural improvements—including green roofs to defend against summer heat and new water pipes to better withstand the damage of seawater that may occur during floods.

Hurricane Sandy flooded New York water mains with seawater last fall. Some of the cast-iron water mains in Baltimore’s 4,500-mile underground system date back to 1861. They crack routinely, done in by age and the elements—leaving homes and businesses without water and tying up streets with repair crews.

Baltimore is a city of limited funds and plenty of problems—failing schools, poor families, persistent crime.  Dealing with the effects of climate change often is not at the top of city officials’ to-do list.

But at City Hall, members of the DP3 expect to have recommendations ready by the fall. Hsia says the committee’s report will not end the city’s work. Making change is much harder than simply acknowledging what needs to be done, Hsia said.

“When it comes to any government, political will matters a lot,” he said.

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Disaster costs add up quickly.

Hurricane Irene cost the city $1.3 million to clear away debris alone. The derecho last year cost $2.5 million. Officials estimate that the emergency response for Hurricane Sandy will come to another $3 million.

Power lines were downed after Hurricane Irene, leaving some neighborhoods without electricity for a week or more.

Hsia’s office is small, with a budget of about $300,000 a year.  It coordinates city agencies as they plan for disasters and it organizes community volunteers.  The Community Emergency Response Teams program recruits Baltimore citizens to educate their neighbors on emergency planning.

The CERT members do everything from delivering food and water after storms to checking on the elderly to going door to door when the electricity goes out.

One neighborhood that knows the issue well is Wyman Park, near Johns Hopkins University.

“We are the president of power outages,” Joe Jackson said of the neighborhood, where he serves as the community association’s president.

But Wyman Park is a community of just 600 homes, so “we’re not a particularly high priority,” Jackson added. “We know that if [the city doesn’t] get to us early, then we’re going to be late to the game getting our stuff back.”

Jackson, a CERT member, gets to work when power lines go down—which means the city’s system of text messages, media alerts and voice mails may not be working.

“A lot of it’s knocking on doors,” Jackson said. “It’s really very much word of mouth.”

In Wyman Park, power outages have spoiled freezers full of food, ruined medication and killed pet fish. Families take turns running to supermarkets to get supplies for the elderly and other community members when it’s difficult or dangerous to navigate the downed trees and wires, while homes with generators string extension cords from their units to homes in need, Jackson said.

For business people, weather emergencies put bigger investments at stake.

At Belvedere Square, in North Baltimore, Greg Novik sells bagels. After 24 years in business and countless hand-rolled bagels served, Novik said he hasn’t had to deal with extended power outages.  But one bad storm, he said, could put Greg’s Bagels out of business.

“I would lose literally thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of food,” Novik said. The loss of electricity for more than a single day would mean losing “at least a week’s worth of work.”

In Wyman Park, Jackson knows that although his community has heavily struggled with the weather, many citizens still don’t think about planning for emergencies.

“[It] is a lot like an insurance policy,” Jackson added. “It’s only when I actually need it that I wish I had it.”

But future emergencies are inevitable, Jackson added. “The cost of reacting to the damage is much higher than the cost of preparing for the damage.”

In Southwest Baltimore’s Morrell Park, Carol McCoy, a CERT member, agrees.

“We’re near Fort McHenry; Washington, D.C; the Naval Academy,” she said. “We have a lot of places near us where problems could happen, so you have to be prepared.”

In her neighborhood, McCoy is in charge of a newsletter, updating residents not only on important community events, but also on crucial things to have in an emergency kit—keeping in mind that climate change will affect the frequency and severity of floods, storms, heat waves and snowstorms.

“We have to realize that this is what’s happening,” McCoy said. “And this is going to happen to us.”


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