In the Aftermath of Disaster
Spring weather in Iowa packs a potent punch. This year’s unusually severe weather, including the tornado that struck Parkersburg and New Hartford and flooding in Ames illustrate the potential of geospatial data and tools to help save lives, limit damage, and reduce the costs of dealing with emergencies. Maps, data sets, tools, procedures and policies as well as the personnel to interact with them have played a crucial role in dealing with this spring’s weather events.
Damage assessment is required after any disaster. Thanks in part to geospatial technologies, in these cases it was done more quickly and more accurately resulting in faster filing for federal assistance and more accurate dollar figures. In Butler County, the County Assessor worked with the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division (HSEMD) to make sure they had access to their digital assessment data where it was combined with post-tornado images from Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to speed and streamline damage assessments in Parkersburg and New Hartford. Black Hawk County sent their assessment data as well, and both sets of information were used to assist Mid-American Energy in determining which customers needed their billing suspended during this tragedy.
The City of Ames and Story County have both utilized geospatial technologies to support decisions made during recent flooding events. In the City of Ames, Geographic Information System (GIS) Coordinator Ben McConville was stationed in their Emergency Operations Center (EOC) throughout the flooding providing mapping related support to aid decision making and streamline flood response activities. As the flooding status changed for the area, up-to-date road closure maps were generated and that information was sent to City departments and others to make them aware of the changing circumstances as quickly as possible. GIS was also utilized to quickly generate contact lists for properties threatened by the floodwaters, rather than looking up potentially affected properties in a phone book and contacting property owners in a traditional manner. This allowed business and property owners to respond much faster to the flooding and resulting consequences.
During the same recent flooding event, Lori Morrissey, Story County Emergency Management Coordinator, worked hand in hand with County staff in using GIS to assess the impact of flooding. Utilizing assessment data of ownership and value, maps were quickly generated showing properties that were destroyed and those with major damage. These maps were a crucial tool during the verification tour with staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as the County worked to acquire Federal assistance for those impacted.
Jon Paoli, GIS Coordinator for HSEMD was in the State EOC during and after these events. He states the some of the value of GIS in this way, “It allowed us to get close to real damage assessment numbers to the Federal Government so we could get declared more quickly… more accurate data leads to more accurate funding.”
In the weeks and months to come, hopefully the severe weather will be minimal. But if it does strike in areas of Iowa that have geospatial tools, rest assured that those tools will be used to react quickly, assist with decision making, and provide accurate assessment data to the authorities.
