A Nigerian Irene comparison

Oka Obono writes an editorial in Business Day (Nigeria): According to the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development (ACMAD), Nigeria has the highest flood-related mortality rate on the continent. Heavy rainfall is accompanied by the fall of heavy tears as people mourn friends and family members who needlessly perish in her raging floodwaters. It is a governance challenge.

Over the weekend, world scientists and politicians watched carefully as Hurricane Irene made a beeline for the United States. Obama cut short his vacation to lend presidential weight to evacuation plans that were more or less standard protocol. He encouraged New Yorkers and people in the two Carolinas to take Irene seriously, to stay out of harm’s way. The situation demonstrated the use of empirical meteorological data in official planning; a conjunction in which one community generates early warning of impending disaster while another provides an effective early response to it.

...In New Jersey, where the last deadly storm hit in 1903, Governor Christie reported the evacuation of more than a million people and deployment of 1,500 members of the National Guard. Princeton University made contingency plans for staying open and possibly closing. In New York, Mayor Bloomberg shut down the subway and related city services. People stayed indoors.

In Nigeria, by contrast, an untenable complacency was the response to warnings of Irene. This routine attitude, which is the leading cause of the nation’s security predicament, was on full show. When it mattered most, there seemed to be no coordination between the meteorological services and political leadership....

A flood expert banned in Scotland

Rob Edwards in HeraldScotland rakes some pertinent muck about officialdom’s eagerness to ignore risks: An expert on flooding has been banned from criticising Scottish ministers for ignoring the risk of widespread chaos the country would face after a storm surge in the Firth of Forth. Leading insurance and risk specialist, David Crichton, was due to tell a government-backed conference in Scotland on climate change this week that the country’s vital supplies of fuel, food and power would be seriously disrupted by a flood in the Forth.

He was going to accuse ministers of “denial and complacency” because they had failed to consider the need to build a flood barrier to protect the oil and gas facilities, food distribution depot and power station that line the estuary.

But hours after the Sunday Herald started to make inquiries about his criticisms, he was instructed by organisers to withdraw them and focus instead on giving practical insurance advice to businesses. “They told me it was not suitable,” Crichton said. “I thought it was too good to be true to let me say what I wanted. I have no axe to grind, no bosses to suffer.”

The conference in Edinburgh is due to be opened on Thursday by the climate change minister, Stewart Stevenson. It is being organised by the government-funded Scottish Climate Change Impacts Partnership.

Crichton, from Perth, has spent 25 years in the insurance industry, and advises governments and international agencies on flood risks. He is an honorary professor at University College London and a research fellow at the University of Dundee. His prepared presentation to the conference warns that the consequences of a credible flood in the Forth would be disastrous, and could end up causing billions of pounds worth of damage: “Imagine a situation in which the whole of Scotland suddenly has power cuts, no petrol or diesel supplies, no gas, and only limited food supplies. Imagine this continues for months.”…

A view of the Firth of Forth from Calton Hill in Ediburgh Scotland.gren supplied this shot for the public domain