CLEARWATER, Fla. — Hurricane Ian is now the third costliest storm on record, and experts are sounding the alarm about where we build and how we build for a future that will include rising sea levels and more powerful storms.
At the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Leadership Summit, hundreds of leaders and concerned citizens from across our region met to share ideas about what comes next.
Making Florida more resilient is something ABC Action News has covered extensively in previous reports.
"There's a lot to do. I guess that's the main message," said Rob Young, Director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University.
Young flew into Tampa for the summit and was part of a panel of experts warning communities about best practices and what not to do.
"From my perspective, long-term sea level rise is potentially a greater problem for most coastal communities than the next storm is. We can rebuild after the next storm. But with long-term sea level rise, we're going to see changes to flooding that are not reversible, that will be unidirectional," Young said. "We're going to have areas flooding that have never flooded before. And this isn't just at the immediate coast; it can also be inland because one of the hidden things that sea level rise does is raise the water table under the land. So if you bring up the level of the Gulf, it takes the water table inland and raises it as well. So when it rains, there isn't as much room for that rain to go into the ground."
Price of Paradise
Hurricane Ian victims sue insurance company for underpaying damage claim
Central Florida experienced that during Hurricane Ian. The jarring and heartbreaking images of boats stacked on top of each other on land are seared into our collective memories. But, communities far from the coast will be impacted just as much or worse by future events.
"The oceanfront is going to be fine. You know, those folks typically have the money to rebuild. And we view those areas as being such strong economic engines that a lot of funding is going to flow into the oceanfront communities to rebuild," Young said. "The people I worry about are people who are inland of the coast, people who didn't even realize they were in a flood zone, or that a hurricane might wipe out their house. Those are the parts of our communities that don't get enough attention. And those are the parts that often get changed the most dramatically by a big storm."
Young said we can't rebuild the same way following a destructive storm.
"People seem to think that we can protect the entire map. Well, we can't. And if we try to, we're going to waste money that we could be spending in places that are more sustainable. And so this is what good decision-making is all about. It's like being honest about the places that are really vulnerable and hazardous, making sure we're not spending a ton of public money, just throwing it into the Gulf and spending that money in the places that can sustain the community and the economy over the long run," Young said.
Young also had some thoughts when it came to bulldozing homes or letting go of places that aren't sustainable.
"I don't think anybody ever likes the idea of bulldozing homes. But, for example, every storm is an opportunity, right? Ian bulldozed homes; the government didn't. How we rebuild following Hurricane Ian will say a lot about how we view the future. If we just put absolutely everything back exactly where it was, then we missed an opportunity to take a baby step back, save money and spend money in places where it's a lot more sustainable."