By now, most everyone (the BOLDplanning team included) is wondering what’s next for the residents of California. Just last month, the state’s worst wildfire on record, the Thomas Fire, burnt nearly 282,000 acres and destroyed well over 1,000 structures. Now, many of the same areas ravaged by it are recovering from a day of flash flooding and deadly mudslides.
It seems like the Golden State can’t catch a break. As reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), California experienced hundreds of different weather and climate events in 2017. Among them, there were:
- 44 wildfires
- 33 episodes of excessive heat
- 156 flash floods
- 28 winter storms
- 3 tornadoes
Events like these not only plague California, but other states across the country as well. And, they’re not only dangerous to life and property, but incredibly costly too. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the nation’s “scorekeeper” for tracking and evaluating climate events that have great economic and societal impacts, the U.S. experienced a historic year of weather and climate disasters.
In fact and in total, the U.S. was impacted by 16 separate billion-dollar disaster events tying 2011 for the record number of billion-dollar disasters for an entire calendar year. The cost of these events exceeding $300 billion in 2017—a new U.S. annual record—shattering the previous U.S. annual record cost of $214.8 billion established in 2005 due to Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
Serving the emergency pla