Director's Corner

The final session at the Natural Hazards Workshop follows a tradition, established 50 years ago, where the director of the Natural Hazards Center issues a summary during the closing plenary.

This Director’s Corner offers a lightly edited version of the comments I shared at the 50th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop. To write this, I attended some portion of every session and listened for remarks that advanced this year’s theme of The Next 50 Years: Charting a Course for the Hazards and Disaster Field. I then woke early on Wednesday, with the moon still hanging high in the sky, to begin synthesizing key ideas in these closing remarks. I’m happy to share the written as well as video recorded comments with you.

Please take care of yourself and others.

Lori Peek, Director
Natural Hazards Center

Closing Comments

What does it mean to have a vision for the future?

It is certainly about having a goal and a sense of purpose. But at its root, having a vision requires imagination. That is, an ability to mentally conceive and to dream of a desired future possibility.

On Monday afternoon at the Workshop, Jim Buika of the County of Maui Planning Department, said: “I think what has always made this Workshop special is that it brings together this whole world of academics who are up there floating around in the clouds… Then you have the practitioners who are on the ground. We’re in different places, but every once in a while, lightning strikes, and that’s where the magic happens.”

Indeed, it’s in that flash of bright light when our imagination takes flight.

At this 50th annual meeting, we came together to chart a course for the future. Although we have met many times before, this year we gathered at a time like no other.

Natural hazard losses are accelerating at an unprecedented pace as more costly disasters are occurring in closer and closer succession. Simultaneously, systems—the very institutions—that were created to advance science, public health, and public safety are being rapidly dismantled.

This is, if there ever was, a disaster by design.

In a matter of months, we’ve lost data, funding, information, and programs. Perhaps most importantly of all, we’ve lost so many people from this community who have been effectively silenced, fired, or pressed to retire. On Sunday, at one of the roundtable sessions, Matthew Crane of the University at Albany proposed that perhaps why our community is hurting right now is because on top of it all, “there is also moral injury, or a trauma caused by a violation of our most deeply held values.”

The storm clouds hanging over this community are real. But just as a bolt of lightning can in a flash illuminate even the darkest of skies, you have come together again to articulate and reaffirm what we value most.

• Science in service to society.
• Disaster survivors.
• Environmental justice and the fair and equitable distribution of disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery dollars.
• Hazard mitigation, and even more broadly, disaster risk reduction.

At our core, we are the community that is dedicated to stopping natural hazards from turning into disasters.

We are the people who recognize that floods may be acts of nature, but flood losses are almost entirely due to acts of human beings. Thank you, Gilbert White.

We are the people, as Bill Hooke of the American Meteorological Society observed, who ask the question: “What was the cause of that disaster, and how can we keep it from ever happening again?”

We are the people, as Shannon Van Zandt at Texas A&M University said, “who care the most about those who have the least,” because we recognize that marginalized groups have the fewest resources to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disaster.

We are also the people, as Yvonne Castillo of Victor Insurance said, who “use data like a headlamp to guide us down a path and ready ourselves and others for what’s coming in the future.”

These are expressions of who we are and what we value and stand for in the world. Now the question in front of us is how will we advance this vision for a truly just, durable, and disaster resistant future?

Nnenia Campbell of the Bill Anderson Fund encouraged us, in this moment of great upheaval and uncertainty, to begin not with what’s wrong, but instead by asking what could and should be.

In response, Hans Louis-Charles of Virginia Commonwealth University proposed that we both “widen our lens of vision to better see and address the true range of disaster threats and everyday crises that people are confronting” while also “centering human dignity in all that we do.”

This emphasis on human dignity was uplifted by many throughout this meeting.

Darrin Punchard of Punchard Consulting called for “compassion and civic engagement” in planning efforts.

Maggie León-Corwin of the University of Oklahoma advocated for “radical kindness” and a clear-eyed focus on what we can do to ensure “the best possible outcomes for all.”

Paula Akerlund, former superintendent of the Ocosta School District, observed that “Education is a people business. Hazard mitigation is too. You must have the trust of the community to do this work.”

Walt Peacock of Texas A&M University underscored that it is “incumbent on us to stand together so that we can help current and future generations.”

It is clear, as Jessica Jensen of RAND articulated, that “so many more people need to be involved in the solution to the challenges that we face.”

What is also now clear is that if we are going to build this coalition—if we are going to bring the millions upon millions more people that we need to promote this cause of disaster risk reduction—we must focus intently over the next 50 years not just on what we do but also on how we do this work.

This is your charge. To center science as well as care, compassion, radical kindness, and a fierce commitment to disaster risk reduction in all that we do. We also must, as Marccus Hendricks of the University of Maryland reminded us, “use the words that allow us to tell the truth.”

Let this 50th Annual Natural Hazards Workshop be your jolt of lightning. Please, though, do not let this energy dissipate. Go forth from here and plant the seeds for the future that we want to grow. As you continue the vital work that you do, please remember to take care of yourself and others.

With that, I declare your 50th Annual Natural Hazards Workshop adjourned.