Worldwide Robust Weather Warnings Would Save Lives

People in the U.S. have easy access to warnings for
dangerous storms, like this weather radio. Many 
places around the world don't have access to
weather warnings, causing needless deaths. 
The UN and other organizations are 
trying to change that. 

 The United States has a lot of the worst weather in the world. Every time you turn around, there's a life-threatening flash flood, tornado, giant hail, hurricane, winter storm, wildfire and storm surge. 

Or, seemingly, all of the above at once. 

Some recent deadly disasters notwithstanding, the United States has some of the lower per capita fatality rates in the world. A lot of the reason for that is our robust warning system.

It's why you see on the news that an entire town has been turned into grim confetti by a tornado, but maybe only one or two residents have died, and everybody else is basically uninjured. 

The reason is because everybody in town got a tornado warning 15 minutes or even a half hour before the storm hit. That warning bought everybody in town time to hunker down in a safer place.  

Many other places in the world don't have the luxury, or actually the necessity of have a robust warning system for severe weather.

Much of the time, the overseas death toll in storms and floods is victims didn't have the information needed to get out of the way of an  impending disaster.

  .As NPR notes:

"One reason for the high death tolls in such disasters is a lack of basic weather warning systems. 

'Early warnings are not an abstraction,' said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a speech last year. 'They give farmers the power to protect their crops and livestock, enable families to evacuate safely and protect entire communities from devastation."

Too many people lack access to weather warnings. 

As Al Jazeera reported in October:

"Nearly half of all countries lack early-warning systems for extreme weather events, leaving millions - especially those in developing nations - vulnerable".

The World Meteorological Organization has said that weather, water and climate-related hazards have killed more than 2 million people in the past 50 years. About 90 percent of those deaths occurred in developing countries. 

As climate change drives storms to new extremes adequate weather warnings are more important than ever. 

TRYING TO HELP

Back in 2022, the United Nations set a goal to extend severe weather warmings to even person on Earth by 2027. The effort would cost $3.1 billion. 

It doesn't look like the UN will reach that goal in time. It never does. But at least the effort is underway. 

One major reason the effort is behind schedule is,  of course, the United States.  Namely, Donald Trump. I swear it seems like the more needless deaths he causes, or at least fails to prevent, the happier he is.  The Trump administration said last month it will no longer participate in the effort. That erases some billions of dollars from the weather warning plan.

Other sources are stepping up to the plate, including thy Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, which have together spend $2.5 billion on weather warning projects, NPR reports. 

 The number of nations using some form of early warning systems for multiple types of severe weather has jumped from 52 to at least 108 over the past decade. However there are still dozens of nations that still don't have any kind of sophisticated warning system for people at risk for storms and floods. 

One success story appears to be Cambodia, notes NPR.

Cambodia is one of the most flood-prone countries in the world. Between 2023 and 2025, agencies affiliated with the UN upgraded the country's flood forecasts and warnings to the tune of $5.8 million. An additional $7.8 million will be spent on this Cambodian warning system over the next few years.

Last November, the water level in the Mekong River in Cambodia reached one its highest levels on record. In the past, this type of flood would kill many people. This time, the people, and their livestock were gone by the time the water started rising. They'd received flood warnings, and were on high ground when the Mekong went over its banks. 

Since they'd made preparations, people living along the Mekong pretty much resumed normal life shortly after the water receded. 

Much of Cambodia's new warning system is pretty basic. Warnings go out on cell phones. But since many people don't have phones, trucks drive back and forth through towns, blaring the warnings from speakers. The speaker also instruct residents to tell anyone else who might not have heard the broadcast about the problem .

The November, 2025 Mekong flood led only to a few casualties.

We in the United States take for granted weather warnings. Sometimes, we even have waves of complaints when tornadoes warnings pre-empt the season finale of "Real Housewives Of Enosburgh Falls" or whatever dumb show is on. 

But the U.S. warning system has saved countless lives. Lives in other countries are worth the same as ours, whether you like that fact or not. So I really don't want to hear that weather warnings as dangerous storms appear are just "too expensive" to deal with 

 

Vermont Still Struggles With 2023 Montpelier Flood Damage To State Buildings.

The Pavilion Building in Montpelier in the
immediate aftermath of the July, 2023 flood.
The pipes were for moisture and mold
remediation. The building still needs
a lot of work bringing the HVAC
and electrical systems out of the basement.

In yet another instance that proves it can take forever to recover from a catastrophic disaster, Vermont is still struggling to finish financing and repairs to state buildings from flooding two and a half years ago. 

Extreme flooding hit Vermont on July 10-11, 2023.  In that flood, downtown Montpelier was inundated. That flood affected 17 state office buildings in Montpelier, which is the state's capitol. 

According to Vermont Public, Gov Phil Scott's administration is asking for more time to determine how much it will cost to fully upgrade the state buildings affected by the flood. 

There's a deadline coming up in a few days (January 10) to accept a fixed cost for the work. But the state is going to ask FEMA for six more months to come up with a cost. 

FEMA has already given the state $30 million to clean up the mess left by the floods and to install temporary infrastructure to keep the buildings running. 

Chief Recover Officer Douglas Farnham told Vermont Public the total cost of the project will probably go over $200 million. FEMA would cover as much as 90 percent of those costs.

A main reason for the expense is some of this work is going to be expensive. The five-story Pavilion Building's heating, cooling and electrical systems are all in the basement. Turns out that's a bad place for that stuff when Montpelier floods. They're going to move all that equipment out of the basement, which is a great idea, but it will be a complex and expensive job. 

As Vermont Public reports, three buildings at 132, 134 and 136 State Street are still unoccupied. A fourth flood-damaged building at 144 State Street will probably be torn down. Unlike most of the other buildings involved,  The one-story building at 144 State is not considered a historic structure. so nobody will have to go through hoops to get rid of that building.

Even if the FEMA money comes through after the requested six month delay with that federal agency, it's going to take a long time to get Vermont state buildings up to snuff before the next flood. You need design plans, permits, equipment purchases. Then you have to install and construct everything. 

Another building, at 87 State Street in Montpelier, was flooded and never reoccupied. It's owned by the federal government. Officials this past summer announced the feds are putting that building up for sale. the Vermont state government has expressed interest in buying the building. 

The whole epic is just another example of how long it takes for state governments to fix all the infrastructure taken away by climate related disasters. This is going to keep happening. Perhaps over and over in the same states.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

That has already been the case here in Vermont. We've been through this before.  During Hurricane Irene in 2011, the State Office Complex in Waterbury was trashed by flooding. Some buildings had as much as eight feet of water in them. 

Twenty buildings had to be torn down due to the damage and the fact they were especially prone to additional floods. All the rest had to go through extensive repair. And a new, 86.000 square foot, more flood resilient building was added.  The renovated buildings and the new one were raised to above the 500-year flood level. 

Getting the whole 100-acre back together - and more flood proof - cost $130 million, which was up until now the largest state building project in Vermont  history, reports WCAX. 

Vermont taxpayers paid for most of that renovation. FEMA contributed $36 million and the state's insurance company paid roughly $15 million.

Some of that Waterbury reconstruction went toward projects that didn't have much to do with the flooding, but was still worthwhile. For instance, single-paned glass were replaced by weather-efficient windows. 

The grand re-opening after all this work didn't hit until December, 2015, more than four years after the flood. Between the 2011 flood and the late 2015 reopening, about 1,500 employees had been displaced, dealing with a big blow to the town of Waterbury's economy. 

I imagine this type of saga could happen in Vermont again. And in other states, As the federal government keeps reducing aid to states, it'll be harder and harder for some states to even function if a major disaster hits a state Capitol.  

Bill Gates Gets Waffly On Climate Change; Activists Get Nervous

The influential billionaire Bill
Gates has done some rethinking
on how to fund the battle against
climate change. That has climate
activists nervous and has 
the Trump people falsely
crowing they've "won" the
battle against the climate
change "hoax."

Bill Gates caused a stir this past week with his latest hot take on climate change. Climate scientists were not impressed. And they worried the influential Gates would help gut efforts to combat the issue.  

They also worried - correctly - that the Trump and MAGA crowd would twist Gate's words and declare some sort of "victory" over climate change activism.  

Gates' statements weren't radical, and unlike people of a certain political persuasion, he certainly has a firm grasp on facts. 

But Gates' latest thoughts could upend where and how much money is spent combating climate change, and the crises that are caused in part, but not entirely on climate change. 

Basically, Gates is saying that climate change is important, but in the near future, you'll get more bang for your buck if you pour money into global poverty relief than climate change. 

He put his thoughts into an essay he released Tuesday. 

 Gates wrote:

"Although climate change will have serious consequences - particularly for people in the poorest countries - it will not lead to humanity's demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.

"Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it's diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world."

In short, Gates stated what he said was this truth: "Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization."

He said near-term resources should prioritize erasing poverty and disease, and improving the overall wellbeing of humankind. Climate change needs attention, he says, but there are bigger fish to fry, figuratively speaking. 

The bottom line, Gates said, is, "How do we make sure aid spending is delivering the greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable people?"

What's really needed, Gates says, is to increase the wealth of nations to make their people healthier and safer. True, when nations get wealthier, their energy use, and thus carbon emissions go up. But Gates believes we can innovate our way out of spewing these greenhouse substances into the atmosphere. 

However, many climate scientists, like Kristie Eli of the University of Washington, told the Associated Press that faster deployment of green technologies alone is not enough to overcome the rising effects of climate change.

Others said Gates raises good points, but he's framing the question of  climate change incorrectly. 

 Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said on Bluesky: 

"If you take the time to read the whole Gates memo (which I did), the bulk of the content was mostly solid and encouraging. Really!

It was the FRAME that was off -- very, very THAT'S the problem."

"Climate change is not a separate bucket" Hayhoe told Axios. "The reason we care about climate change is that it's the hole in every bucket."

What she's saying is climate change represents a threat that makes all those other problems worse, or creates them when they weren't there originally. 

Other climate experts, like Bill McKibben, note that climate change is already costing a LOT of money and is impoverishing people throughout the world. So if you really want to fight poverty, you have to go full bore on climate change, along with all the other forms of aid out there. 

Another worry is that Gates, who has such influence as one of the world's wealthiest men, might shift too many resources away from climate change. Worse, it might encourage people with an agenda to misconstrue Gates' opinion piece into a call to ignore climate change.

At the same time, Gates; thoughts on climate change and other philanthropic needs might be a victim of changed political realities caused by the very people who deny climate change. 

Like the Trump administration. 

Trump predictably mischaracterized Gates' statements right away. 

"I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax.... Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, ,and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!," Trump blathered on his social  media site Truth Social.

Never mind he didn't win anything, that Gates never made any admission he's wrong, and the billionaire founder of Microsoft doesn't suddenly think climate change is a hoax. 

It also appears that Gates is reacting to the Trump administrations horrifically deep foreign aid cuts, which is making the crises of poverty and death and conflict worse.  So, other groups need to step in, Gates indicated. 

In the absence of the U.S., foreign aid, help from organizations to combat poverty, hunger and disease is greater than ever. 

Critics Gates's essay say such funding is important, but so is money for climate change efforts. Again, it's a matter of not one or the other, but both. 

"Both are utterly feasible, and readily so, if the Big Oil lobby is brought under control," said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. 

Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field also has a dual priority approach. "We should invest for both the long term and the short term....A vibrant long-term future depends on both tackling climate change and supporting human development," he said in an email response to the Associated Press. 

Money isn't unlimited. But Gates at least is the only big billionaire I'm aware of who is giving large portions of his wealth to help others. I'm not seeing the likes of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg doing the same thing. 

Maybe Gates isn't quite right in his analysis of climate change funding. And his essay didn't do any favors for those in the trenches trying to combat climate change and encourage others to do so. 

Gates is no hero in my book, but the fact that he's doing something positive is more than I can so for most of the ultra rich.  

FEMA Is AWOL After St. Louis, Kentucky Tornadoes

Crews and volunteers start cleanup in front of badly
damaged homes in St. Louis in the wake of last
Friday's big tornado. FEMA has been notably absent
from both St. Louis and the Kentucky
tornado disaster zone.

 The Trump administration has vowed to get rid of FEMA, but officially, it still exists.

But apparently FEMA is in no hurry to help after the latest disasters.  

ST LOUIS

A week after an EF-3 tornado ripped through St. Louis, killing 5 people and causing an estimated $1 billion in damage, FEMA is nowhere to be found in the Gateway City

FEMA typically shows up within a few days after a disaster to start helping with immediate aid to help people just get through the days after the storm.  

With a disaster this big, presidents usually declare a federal disaster soon after the calamity hits. By now, FEMA should at least be mobilizing. But this time, crickets.

A few FEMA officials have joined state and federal teams to begin assessing damage, but there certainly has not been any full blown immediate aid yet. Nobody from the federal government is actually handing out aid. 

Missouri officials are beseeching the Trump administration to declare a disaster. On Monday, Missouri Gov Mike Kehoe, a Republican to issue a federal emergency declaration.

Also Sen. Josh Hawley, (R-MO) a staunch supporter of Trump, on Tuesday pushed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to get an emergency declaration for Friday's storm ASAP.

FEMA and Trump have also not responded for pleas for help in Missouri for a series of floods and tornadoes in March and early April.

KENTUCKY

In Kentucky, five days after tornadoes killed at least 19 people and left huge swaths of destruction in part of the state, Kentuckians had still not heard from FEMA.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear asked for federal help on Saturday, just hours after the tornadoes swept through.  He said he spoke with Noem on Saturday.  "They vowed to help...They showed real empathy for our people."

But so far, there's been little tangible help in Kentucky from FEMA.  Usually FEMA swoops in shortly after a disaster to meet immediate needs, like helping with food distribution or putting tarps on damaged roofs so that rain won't cause added damage to the homes. 

FEMA did say a deadline for applying for aid after devastating February floods in Kentucky is May 25. And survivors of a second serious flood in the state in April have until June 25. But no mention of the tornadoes last Friday in Kentucky. 

Beshear said President Trump called him on Saturday, but other than that, we haven't heard a peep about the tornadoes from Trump.  In the past, if a disaster was big enough, he'd visit the town or city that was victimized. If the president didn't visit the disaster site, he'd make public remarks saying victims are in his thoughts, that the federal government would do everything it can to help and all that stuff. 

I guess Trump has better things to do lately, like debating whether Taylor Swift is still "hot," or battling Bruce Springsteen because The Boss dared to sharply criticize the Trump regime. 

St. Louis and Kentucky are giving us an early view of what disaster response will be like in the coming years. FEMA still exists, so some help is coming to those two disaster zones.

Future disaster victims might not be so "lucky." If Trump gets his wish, FEMA will cease to exist, and states and local governments will be on their own. Or, people will lose their homes and the federal government will just shrug its shoulders, say "tough luck" and move on to giving additional tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.

By the way, hurricane season is just around the corner. NOAA on Friday issued a seasonal hurricane prediction that forecasts another busier than normal season in 2025.

The United States is getting more dystopian by the day. 

 

FEMA Funding Crisis Could Slow Vermont Flood Relief

Road crews begin flood repairs to Route 15 around the 
Wrong Way Bridge in Cambridge, Vermont on July 12.
Immediate funding from FEMA is not in danger, but
rebuilding money might be delayed as the federal
agency is running out of money for the fiscal year.

Is FEMA running out of money?

The apparent answer is yes, but that doesn't mean Vermonters won't get any help from the federal government. 

Money for immediate needs will flow in the Green Mountain State in counties that have been declared a disaster area. 

Vermonter who need help now if not sooner will get it. 

There's a chance the money shortage could slow eventual rebuilding, however. 

As Marketplace reports:

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund is running low, and is likely to be in the red sometime next moth. That's before the end of the current fiscal year, and right in the middle of hurricane and wildfire season."

Congress can approve supplemental funding, and has in the past when this kind of thing happened. But of course, Congress is so dysfunctional these days I'd be surprised if half the members can tie their own shoelaces. 

If FEMA quote, unquote "runs out of money," it's not like they will immediately stop helping. At last report, the federal government has approved nearly $5 million in disaster payouts to Vermont, and that number will surely grow.

FEMA will do the same for the flood victims in Kentucky, and whichever disaster comes down the pike in the coming months 

Marketplace again:

"Craig Fugate was FEMA Administrator during the Obama administration, and he said the agency will make sure it has cash for a disaster like that. 

'But it means a lot of other programs, like the rebuilding, the mitigation programs, will either cease or slow down until they get more funding,' he said. 

It's rare for that to happen, but Ari Renoni, a deputy director of disaster recovery at Hagerty Consulting, said when it does, there are consequences. "This can really have this downstream effect where, you know, the states, the local communities affected by these events, it just further delays their ability to recover,' he said." 

The following is pretty much speculation on my part, but it's something to consider. After the extreme floods from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, Vermont officials wanted to "build back better" to borrow a phrase from the current Biden administration.

With climate change becoming a bigger and bigger factor, Vermont officials wanted to rebuild culverts and bridges to accommodate larger future floods. 

However - and I'm over-simplifing a bit here - FEMA rules pretty much said you could only build back to the level you had before the disaster. Vermont officials fought this, and we got some funding for better culvert, road and bridge designs that would lessen the effects of future floods. 

When July's floods hit, Vermont's bridges and culverts did better than they did during Irene, although we know there was still a lot of damage. 

Federal spending, as we know, is controlled by Congress. We still have incredible pushback from Senate and House Republicans on even the idea of climate change. With that crowd around, it's going to be a lot harder for FEMA to receive funding if even someone whispers the phrase "climate change" in appropriations requests. v

I obviously don't know what the sausage making in Congress will end up doing

There is a bill in Congress that would supply $11.5 billion in supplemental funding for FEMA's disaster relief fund.  That doesn't necessarily mean that will happen quickly. 

According to Roll Call in an article earlier this month:

"However, political dynamics for the caps in the debt limit law could imperil the chances of swift passage of an emergency supplemental. Specifically, lawmakers in both parties are expected to eye any moving spending bill as an opportunity to fund their own priorities, from Ukraine military assistance to aid for migrants crossing the southern border."

Senators from hurricane-prone states, including, notably, Republicans, are trying to get a clean FEMA bill passed without extraneous add ons.  We'll see how that goes. 

The United States is just now getting into the time of year when particularly expensive disasters strike.  The heart of hurricane season starts any day now and lasts into early October. From now into the fall is when wildfires out west tend to be at their worst.

Plus, August, like July, is traditionally a month that features flash floods like we saw this summer in Vermont, Kentucky, New York and elsewhere. 

Let's hope Congress makes the right decision about funding upcoming weather disasters, whether or not climate change contributes to them.