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Exit This Way: Research informing upgrades in hurricane evacuation planning. · Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations

• 0:15
  Bernie Fette (host): Welcome.
• 0:16
  Bernie Fette (host): This is Thinking Transportation-- conversations about how we get ourselves and the things we need from one place to another.
• 0:25
  Bernie Fette (host): I'm Bernie Fette with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
• 0:30
  Bernie Fette (host): Climate experts tell us that tropical storms are becoming more intense than ever, and that we can expect that trend to continue.
• 0:39
  Bernie Fette (host): That prediction places even more importance on the need for smooth and efficient evacuation.
• 0:46
  Bernie Fette (host): Those efforts call for precise coordination between federal, state, and local jurisdictions.
• 0:52
  Bernie Fette (host): They require careful planning that begins long before extreme weather strikes, and continues long after, in the storm recovery phase.
• 1:00
  Bernie Fette (host): Altogether, that means a lot of work for researchers at TTI and their partners at the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University.
• 1:12
  Bernie Fette (host): TTI Research Scientist David Bierling is with us to talk about that work.
• 1:18
  Bernie Fette (host): Thank you for joining us, David.
• 1:20
  David Bierling (guest): Thank you for having me, Bernie.
• 1:22
  Bernie Fette: Before we consider the hurricane season that just started and the work that you're doing, let's talk a little bit about hurricane history, if we could, particularly in Texas.
• 1:33
  Bernie Fette: Can you give us a quick review?
• 1:36
  David Bierling: You know, hurricane season just started here on June 1 and it runs up into November, but that being said, there's definitely peaks in the season.
• 1:46
  David Bierling: About a quarter of the tropical cyclones that affect Texas in some way or another-- and this is not necessarily even getting to a hurricane level storm-- we can have a tropical storm like Allison that has a major impact.
• 1:58
  David Bierling: Of course, tropical storm Allison came in early June 2001.
• 2:02
  David Bierling: Dropped a lot of rain in southeast Texas and really screwed things up.
• 2:06
  David Bierling: So we've got about a quarter of the storms that impact Texas in July and June, and about another 60 percent impact Texas in August and September with most of that impact coming in September.
• 2:19
  Bernie Fette: And that's a pattern that typically follows from year to year or season to season?
• 2:23
  David Bierling: The short answer, Bernie, is yes.
• 2:24
  David Bierling: That's a typical pattern that tends to hold out.
• 2:26
  David Bierling: Hurricane season runs from June through November.
• 2:30
  Bernie Fette: It's helpful for us to understand that pattern.
• 2:32
  Bernie Fette: And it sounds like that that pattern typically, or generally speaking, follows from year to year from season to season.
• 2:40
  Bernie Fette: Considering that history again, are there any ways that tropical storms, hurricanes and other storms have changed over that time?
• 2:51
  David Bierling: Well, climate researchers are seeing evidence that storms seem to be intensifying over time.
• 3:00
  David Bierling: So if you look at some of the research that the folks at NOAA put out and other researchers, they're saying that given changes in climate, we can expect to see more intense tropical cyclones.
• 3:12
  Bernie Fette: Okay.
• 3:13
  Bernie Fette: And that quick review brings us up to now.
• 3:16
  Bernie Fette: And most of the predictions that people can find online about the 2022 tropical storm season say that it's going to be a more active than usual few months.
• 3:28
  Bernie Fette: More storms that will be intense enough to earn a name, and of those, more that will reach hurricane intensity.
• 3:34
  David Bierling: Right.
• 3:35
  Bernie Fette: So to help agencies prepare and help people prepare for that emerging reality, you and your colleagues have been pretty busy with your research.
• 3:46
  Bernie Fette: Please tell us about the work that you're doing.
• 3:49
  David Bierling: Sure.
• 3:49
  David Bierling: Yeah.
• 3:49
  David Bierling: A lot of the work we've been doing is focusing on updating the plans for hurricane evacuation zones.
• 3:58
  David Bierling: Of course, TTI does a lot of research on different aspects of climate and resiliency and those tie in with the tropical cyclones as well.
• 4:07
  David Bierling: We've got folks that are studying infrastructure vulnerability.
• 4:10
  David Bierling: When a roadway is damaged because of a storm event, how can we diagnose what that is?
• 4:16
  David Bierling: How can we rehabilitate it better?
• 4:18
  David Bierling: How can we use intelligent transportation systems to understand where roadways are gonna flood?
• 4:22
  David Bierling: So we've got a lot of things going on here at the agency.
• 4:25
  David Bierling: What we do is we take the latest information from NOAA and the National Hurricane Center about for example, storm surge, how high might the water get.
• 4:35
  David Bierling: And we overlay that with other information to help communities better understand where the hazards are.
• 4:43
  David Bierling: And then we work with them to update the evacuation zones that they can use to plan and implement a response for a storm that comes in.
• 4:55
  David Bierling: And then we look at more intense storms that might come in and look at the storm surge, where it's going to impact who's there.
• 5:02
  David Bierling: What is the infrastructure?
• 5:03
  David Bierling: And we we're working with communities to help update these evacuation zones.
• 5:07
  David Bierling: We're going to now is identifying recognizable geographic boundaries.
• 5:12
  David Bierling: And often those are roads, right?
• 5:14
  David Bierling: Major roads in an area, cuz people are gonna know those.
• 5:16
  David Bierling: They travel those every day, so they can recognize that.
• 5:20
  David Bierling: And that's kind of a direction we've moved toward rather than if you've seen maybe some of the old evacuation zones where it's kind of guided like this curvy area, you know, it's nice and smoothed out and it might follow exactly the topography of the forecasted surge impact, but that's not as useful for decision making.
• 5:39
  David Bierling: We need to give folks a recognizable geographic landmark that they can understand.
• 5:45
  David Bierling: Our work has been in partnership between TTI and Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center.
• 5:54
  David Bierling: And we've been working on projects funded through Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA in partnership with State Division of Emergency Management, other state agencies, and most importantly with local communities and jurisdictions.
• 6:09
  David Bierling: And that's been to understand what are the impacts due to hurricanes, particularly storm surge.
• 6:20
  David Bierling: If you look in terms of life risk and life safety is always a priority.
• 6:25
  David Bierling: In terms of life risk, about half of the fatalities from tropical cyclones tend to come from storm surge with the others from other related impacts-- drowning and those sorts of things.
• 6:35
  Bernie Fette: And, and whenever you mention storm surge, just so we can be sure everyone understands, the storm surge is the water as opposed to the impact that comes from the wind.
• 6:46
  Bernie Fette: Is that oversimplifying?
• 6:48
  David Bierling: That's close.
• 6:49
  David Bierling: Uh, so storm surge, if I think about that, I have a storm, a cyclone, and it's rotating over water.
• 6:57
  David Bierling: And as a result of the winds and the rotation, it builds up a wall of water.
• 7:04
  David Bierling: And typically that wall of water is greatest on the northeast quadrant because of the way the rotation is of the storm.
• 7:10
  David Bierling: Right?
• 7:11
  David Bierling: And it's not the, the, the level of water.
• 7:15
  David Bierling: So the storm is building up this water and it comes in and it hits land.
• 7:18
  David Bierling: And as it hits land, that wall of water comes up and it envelops the coastal areas, the lower coastal areas that are adjacent to the coast.
• 7:27
  David Bierling: Of course, then the storm might also drop precipitation, right?
• 7:32
  David Bierling: And so we had this, for example, it Harvey's a recent example that comes to mind.
• 7:37
  David Bierling: So it hit the first landfall in Texas hit as a hurricane, a category 4 hurricane, went back over the water, moved up the coast a little bit, came in as a tropical storm and dropped lots and lots and lots of rain.
• 7:50
  David Bierling: So that was a precipitation event.
• 7:52
  David Bierling: Both of them are water.
• 7:53
  David Bierling: One is where I'm driving this wall of water from the sea surface or the Gulf surface here in Texas.
• 7:59
  David Bierling: Another one is I'm dropping a lot of precipitation.
• 8:02
  David Bierling: It collects and has to go somewhere.
• 8:04
  David Bierling: And if there's too much precipitation, or if I'm getting precipitation that comes from a place that's upstream and flows downstream, and then the river comes out of its banks.
• 8:13
  David Bierling: Those are two types of water-driven events that can also affect, but there's certainly other impacts.
• 8:19
  David Bierling: Wind, hurricanes can also spawn tornadoes.
• 8:23
  David Bierling: We have impacts called na-tech disasters where I have a natural disaster, like a hurricane that comes in and here in Texas, we've got lots of energy and petrochemical infrastructure.
• 8:34
  David Bierling: So it comes in and then it impacts a facility of some sort.
• 8:39
  David Bierling: And now we've got a technological disaster.
• 8:41
  David Bierling: So those are called na-tech events.
• 8:44
  David Bierling: So it's not necessarily that a tropical cyclone only causes storm surge events, even though that's where a lot of our work has been on these projects.
• 8:52
  David Bierling: There's a great variety of hazards that kinda happen from them.
• 8:55
  Bernie Fette: So tell us a little bit more about the focus areas that you're working on in terms of, again, this all kind of revolves around the notion of evacuation, correct?
• 9:06
  David Bierling: Mm-hmm Yeah.
• 9:08
  David Bierling: Well, as storms and storm forecasting has changed over time, NOAA and its other partners have been able to update their storm surge forecast.
• 9:19
  David Bierling: So they do modeling where they look at what is the maximum level that they expect for water to get based on a storm.
• 9:28
  David Bierling: And it's important to recognize here that just because a storm has a higher category of wind speed doesn't mean necessarily that's gonna have a greater level of surge than a lower category storm.
• 9:44
  David Bierling: Ike is a good example.
• 9:45
  David Bierling: Katrina's another good example, where you've got a storm out there in the Gulf and it's a big, big storm, builds up a big amount of surge.
• 9:54
  David Bierling: You know, you've got this big wall of water that's sloshing out there in the Gulf and it comes in and it drops down in intensity, the wind speed drops, but it's still got this big wall of water.
• 10:04
  David Bierling: There's a lot of momentum in there.
• 10:06
  David Bierling: And so just because the storm's a lower category in terms of wind speed doesn't necessarily mean that the storm surge effect is reduced as well.
• 10:16
  Bernie Fette: So does that then mean that a lower category number storm could produce more damage, more mayhem than a higher numbered category storm?
• 10:31
  Bernie Fette: Let's say just for conversation, it's possible that a category three hurricane could be more destructive than a category five, depending on other circumstances, like the degree of storm surge, et cetera.
• 10:44
  David Bierling: Yeah.
• 10:44
  David Bierling: I, there's not a direct relationship.
• 10:46
  David Bierling: A lot of that depends on the history of the storm.
• 10:49
  David Bierling: What did it do before it got here?
• 10:51
  David Bierling: How long did it have to build up?
• 10:53
  David Bierling: What is that history of the storm that affects it?
• 10:56
  David Bierling: So just because it makes landfall at a lower category doesn't mean that it's lost that intensity that it might have had before.
• 11:03
  David Bierling: Then I might also have a very small storm that has a very high intensity around the, uh, eye of the hurricane, for example, but it might not be very large geographically.
• 11:14
  Bernie Fette: Okay.
• 11:14
  David Bierling: It might be relatively compact.
• 11:16
  David Bierling: And then if I compare that to, for example, a category of wind speed, lower, but as much bigger now I'm moving a lot more water.
• 11:25
  David Bierling: I've got a lot more energy in there even though it's wind speed.
• 11:28
  Bernie Fette: Right.
• 11:29
  Bernie Fette: And location, you mentioned could be again, a lower category storm striking one area of the coast producing more damage than a higher category storm that perhaps made landfall in an area without as much petrochemical activity, refineries and population.
• 11:47
  Bernie Fette: Right?
• 11:49
  David Bierling: Yeah, sure.
• 11:49
  David Bierling: And you know, talking about category that that's actually an area that forecaster storm surge, modelers emergency managers are trying to get a little bit away of thinking about these storms only in terms of categories.
• 12:01
  David Bierling: And so that's why when we've used the most updated information available through NOAA and National Hurricane Center, they're looking at all sorts of different scenarios about if I have a storm that comes in from the south or from the southeast, you know, all that direction of how it impacts the coast, the topography of the coast is a big factor.
• 12:22
  David Bierling: You know, a place that's flat for a long, long, long way.
• 12:25
  David Bierling: Water can go a lot more distance over there.
• 12:28
  David Bierling: If I've got this storm surge that's coming in.
• 12:31
  David Bierling: Then if I have something that's for example, a big change in the topography right near the coast.
• 12:36
  David Bierling: So that we've got a big change in elevation.
• 12:38
  David Bierling: I've got some sort of protection there.
• 12:40
  David Bierling: Think about manmade protection on the Galveston sea wall is a good example.
• 12:44
  David Bierling: So the water just, it can't go inland as far.
• 12:47
  David Bierling: And so topography plays a factor there, too.
• 12:50
  Bernie Fette: One of the things that I noticed in your research and that I wonder about is how demographics figures into the work that you've been doing and into the considerations that local communities and agencies have to take into account.
• 13:09
  David Bierling: Yeah.
• 13:09
  David Bierling: So we're pulling together a lot of information from a lot of different places, and we're consolidating that into a resource that we've put together under our projects that we're calling the hurricane evacuation study atlas.
• 13:24
  David Bierling: And these atlases, they're available to the public, they're available to local agencies.
• 13:29
  David Bierling: They are a data and information resource that local agencies can use to understand where are their risks, who's in those locations and what are their vulnerabilities?
• 13:42
  David Bierling: So for example, I might have a neighborhood or an area of my community that has a greater number of folks that have vehicle limitations.
• 13:51
  David Bierling: They don't have a car, or I might have folks there that are elderly.
• 13:54
  David Bierling: They might have medical concerns.
• 13:56
  David Bierling: I might have folks there that have language barrier issues.
• 13:59
  David Bierling: How do we get communications out to them?
• 14:01
  David Bierling: How do we get notifications out to them?
• 14:04
  David Bierling: And so when we take that information about where are impacts, who is there, we can start to look at what might my demands be for an evacuation, or if not an evacuation, what are my community needs going to be when we're trying to get things back up and running, we've also included the information there from workforce.
• 14:25
  David Bierling: Where are people working at?
• 14:26
  David Bierling: Where are the workers living?
• 14:28
  David Bierling: One of the main drivers of a community's recovery after a major storm or a major disaster is getting that local economy back running.
• 14:37
  David Bierling: People need resources, folks need food.
• 14:39
  David Bierling: They also need jobs.
• 14:40
  David Bierling: They need income.
• 14:42
  David Bierling: They're really important.
• 14:42
  David Bierling: So we need to be thinking about, in addition to just, how do I implement the evacuation?
• 14:48
  David Bierling: How do I get things running again, once we're starting to recover.
• 14:52
  David Bierling: So we've put this information tool together.
• 14:54
  David Bierling: And by the way, we've put an address search tool in there that the public can use.
• 14:58
  David Bierling: And if they have a question about, okay, well I live in this location and this address, they can look that up.
• 15:04
  David Bierling: What's my risk zone.
• 15:06
  David Bierling: Might my location be affected by storm surge?
• 15:08
  David Bierling: They can type in that address, turn on that storm surge layer and find out what the storm surge impact for their community might be.
• 15:15
  David Bierling: Right now.
• 15:16
  David Bierling: We've got the storm surge projections for the full Texas coast.
• 15:19
  David Bierling: So if someone is concerned about storm surge in their location, farther up the coast, they can type in their address and see what the surge impacts are.
• 15:27
  David Bierling: We'd like to be able to update that information, to include flood zones, as well as wind for higher up the coast as well.
• 15:34
  Bernie Fette: You've covered a lot of territory here, David.
• 15:37
  Bernie Fette: What are the main two or three points that you hope that people would take away from our conversation today?
• 15:42
  David Bierling: Well, I think number one is there's lots of great resources out there that people can look at to take initial steps for their evacuation plans.
• 15:50
  David Bierling: Follow the guidance, given on Texasready.gov, FEMA's preparedness website, National Hurricane Center, National Weather Service.
• 15:59
  David Bierling: There's very good guidance out there on how to be prepared.
• 16:03
  David Bierling: In addition, they need to think about their own situation, their own family, their own friends, their own community.
• 16:10
  David Bierling: So if I have to evacuate, where am I gonna stay?
• 16:12
  David Bierling: This is a big one.
• 16:13
  David Bierling: What am I gonna take with me?
• 16:15
  David Bierling: What do I need to do to get my home ready?
• 16:17
  David Bierling: What kind of resources do I have to get for that?
• 16:19
  David Bierling: Where am I gonna get those resources from?
• 16:21
  David Bierling: How many trips am I gonna be taking?
• 16:23
  David Bierling: Am I going to send a group ahead?
• 16:26
  David Bierling: And we have, uh, one or two people that stay behind to get ready and leave separately?
• 16:30
  David Bierling: And this is all part of preparedness.
• 16:31
  David Bierling: It's very important.
• 16:33
  David Bierling: Three.
• 16:34
  David Bierling: I need to understand that I might not be able to come back just because the storm's come and gone in two or three days.
• 16:40
  David Bierling: And if I've been able to get out and evacuate, I might not be able to get back right away.
• 16:44
  David Bierling: So I need to be prepared a little bit for the long haul, recognize that local and state officials and federal officials are doing their best to get communities back online.
• 16:53
  David Bierling: But that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's going to be able to just come back to their residence just because the storm's gone.
• 17:00
  David Bierling: These are things that we've looked at in some of our research and understanding these things helps us develop the models for assessing what are the evacuation times.
• 17:09
  David Bierling: That in turn helps provide local officials and state officials with information that they can hopefully use to make better evacuation decisions.
• 17:18
  David Bierling: If I have an area, let's say it's a major urbanized area and it's gonna take 72 hours, 96 hours to evacuate folks.
• 17:27
  David Bierling: And I get a rapid storm.
• 17:28
  David Bierling: Harvey spun up very fast, right?
• 17:31
  David Bierling: We remember 2017.
• 17:32
  David Bierling: Harvey wasn't expected to reach near the intensity that it did, but it spun up really fast.
• 17:38
  David Bierling: And when that happens, because of the time needed to implement things like contraflow, it's not like somebody just flips a switch and okay, well, three hours we're doing contraflow.
• 17:48
  David Bierling: Takes a lot longer to coordinate that.
• 17:50
  David Bierling: It's a major, major change in how transportation systems operate.
• 17:54
  David Bierling: And so I think that's a major consideration that people should have is that our local officials, elected officials, state officials, federal officials, they can't just make a decision on a dime, and two hours later, okay.
• 18:08
  David Bierling: Everything's all hunky dory.
• 18:09
  David Bierling: So people need to think about in advance.
• 18:11
  David Bierling: What am I going to need to do to help protect myself, help protect my family, my community, my friends, and how can we work together?
• 18:20
  Bernie Fette: Okay.
• 18:21
  Bernie Fette: Last question.
• 18:22
  Bernie Fette: In 50 words or less, if you can, what motivates you to get up and come to work every day?
• 18:30
  David Bierling: One, helping communities.
• 18:31
  David Bierling: Working with great partners, working with great people, working on interesting puzzles.
• 18:37
  Bernie Fette: David Bierling, research scientist at TTI.
• 18:40
  Bernie Fette: This has been very enlightening, David, and very timely.
• 18:43
  Bernie Fette: Thanks for sharing your time and helping us understand this.
• 18:47
  David Bierling: Thank you, Bernie.
• 18:47
  David Bierling: It's been great to be here.
• 18:52
  Bernie Fette: Most of the predictions about the 2022 tropical storm season say that it's going to be more active than in years past.
• 19:00
  Bernie Fette: More storms intense enough to earn a name, and of those, more that reach hurricane intensity.
• 19:07
  Bernie Fette: Thanks to increasingly sophisticated modeling, hurricane forecasting has improved over time.
• 19:14
  Bernie Fette: And along with it, so have the steps for evacuation and recovery-- altogether aimed at helping states and communities get back to the routines of life as quickly as possible after a tropical weather disaster.
• 19:30
  Bernie Fette: Thank you for joining us.
• 19:31
  Bernie Fette: We hope you'll do so again next time for a conversation with aviation experts-- Jim Halley from the Texas Department of Transportation and Jeff Boroweick from TTI.
• 19:44
  Bernie Fette: We'll talk about the community airports that have been central to our history, and the electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that promise to shape our future.
• 19:53
  Bernie Fette: Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of the Texas A&M University System.
• 20:04
  Bernie Fette: The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau.
• 20:07
  Bernie Fette: I'm your writer and host, Bernie Fette.
• 20:10
  Bernie Fette: Thanks again for listening.
• 20:12
  Bernie Fette: We'll see you next time.