Introduction

According to the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council report to the Secretary of Agriculture on Catastrophic Storms and the Urban Forests, a storm’s impact on the urban forest is a national problem and its consequences affect our urban forests and our communities. [1]

It should not come as a surprise that we are in a new era of catastrophes.[2] There is a concentration of more people and assets in hazardous areas while at the same time new vulnerabilities and new hazards are emerging.[3]  In fact 91% of Americans live in places at a moderate-to-high risk of earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, or high-wind damage according to an estimate calculated for TIME by the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.

Slightly more than 50% of the population lives in coastal areas and lessons learned from Katrina in the Gulf have not deterred construction and both the Gulf and Florida continue to boom.  This dense coastal construction is the main reason storms are causing more and more damage every year.  — Amanda Ripley, “Why we don’t Prepare for Disaster”, TIME, in partnership with CNN, August 20, 2006.

In 2009 the Friends of Hawaii’s Urban Forest was awarded a Forest Service National Urban and Community Forest Advisory Council (NUCFAC) Grant to develop this Urban Forestry Emergency Operations Planning Guide for Storm Response.

The project was driven by a growing awareness of the devastation that happens to the urban forest after a natural disaster such as a hurricane, ice storm or wind event.

The question posed:

“How can the urban forestry industry be equipped to respond to natural disasters?”

The solution:

“Develop an urban forestry emergency operations planning guide for storm response.”

Methodology

This project includes four phases which are described in this report:

• Phase one – Survey

• Phase two – Interviews

• Phase three – A meeting of experts

• Phase four – Compilation of  data

[1] Forest Service, National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, (February, 2008) Report to the Secretary of Agriculture on Catastrophic Storms and the Urban Forest.

[2] Kunreuther, H.C.; Michel-Kerjan, E.O. At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes; The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2009; p. 416.

[3] Gall, M., Borden, K., Emrich, C., Cutter, S., (2011, November 14), The unsustainable trend of natural hazards losses in the United States. Sustainability, www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability.  Retrieved on July 26, 2012.