Disasters: What Will It Take? : Need for a national insurance program is increasingly apparent

The National Weather Service issued an unusual warning a few months back. Midwestern and north central states had suffered record winter storms at a time when the ground was saturated and frozen. With rainfall to come, the Weather Service said, residents should prepare for the worst spring flooding in years. But that warning only highlighted the problem that has defined national disasters in the 1990s: Prepare for what, exactly?

From the Midwest floods of 1993 and their counterparts in the western states this past winter to the inundation of vast sections of Minnesota and the Dakotas in recent weeks, the term “500-year flood” has been tossed about. As in, “Events of such magnitude should occur on average once every 500 years.”

Where’s the value in an easily misunderstood term like this? Such floods or other natural disasters actually could occur in successive years. Also, the history of refined meteorological and geological record-keeping is comparatively brief in the United States, a nation that is quite young by Asian and European standards. In other words, victims of the recent floods in Minnesota and the Dakotas had no real frame of reference to help prepare themselves.

The current decade is unprecedented in terms of the disasters that have occurred: the most costly earthquake and hurricane; record tornado seasons; the worst floods; the worst blizzards and ice storms; the costliest wildfire damage. After each great disaster, there are calls for national disaster insurance. But enthusiasm soon fades. The nation and its policymakers are mired in viewing such events distantly and individually. There is no collective sense of national need, despite such facts as these: In the 15 months from December 1992 through February 1994, every region of the 48 contiguous states was hit by at least one natural disaster that caused $1 billion or more in damage and related costs.

What more is needed to see that we are all in this together and that disaster insurance is a logical step? Such insurance programs are too big for state economies, and private insurers are less and less willing to take disaster risks. Federal emergency aid will always be necessary, but federal insurance would relieve stress on emergency funds and could encourage better disaster planning. Rates would be keyed to local risks, as they are with the successful but limited national flood insurance.

What’s also needed is better local and state awareness and preparation, and more of what the Federal Emergency Management Agency has already begun--reminding states and localities of the dangers they may face. For example, FEMA helped conduct an earthquake exercise early this year in the New Madrid fault region of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, site of the nation’s most powerful earthquakes in past centuries. The scenario? A quake that would leave 200,000 dead and many more injured, wreck underground fuel pipelines and perhaps trigger a national economic crisis.

Preparation for the absolute worst will lead to safer communities, higher survival rates and less financial impact in the next “big one,” be it flood, fire, quake or storm.