This episode features interviews with experts Andreas Deckelmann, Senior Consultant for Hydrogeology and Environment at HPC; Jon Rix, Principal Flood Risk Consultant at Tonkin + Taylor; and Agenor Freitas, Field Technician at Antea Brasil. They share their harrowing experiences during devastating floods in Germany, New Zealand, and Brazil. They also discuss the innovative solutions and strategies they are developing to help communities mitigate the effects of disasters like floods. Despite adversity, their stories of courage and community support offer not only hope and inspiration, but also invaluable insights for a more climate-resilient future.
Flooding, one of the most dangerous natural disasters, is becoming increasingly prevalent due to climate change. Millions of people around the world are impacted by floods and the effects stretch far beyond the physical destruction.
This episode features interviews with experts Andreas Deckelmann, Senior Consultant for Hydrogeology and Environment at HPC; Jon Rix, Principal Flood Risk Consultant at Tonkin + Taylor; and Agenor Freitas, Field Technician at Antea Brasil. They share their harrowing experiences during devastating floods in Germany, New Zealand, and Brazil. They also discuss the innovative solutions and strategies they are developing to help communities mitigate the effects of disasters like floods. Despite adversity, their stories of courage and community support offer not only hope and inspiration, but also invaluable insights for a more climate-resilient future.
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Guest Quotes
“I think the huge growth there is how can we be ready for the next events? What were the lessons from what we've experienced, and how can we more efficiently respond to the future events, which we know are coming? Because they're going to be getting more frequent.” - Jon Rix
“The knowledge of the local people and conducting interviews, for example, in a case of a flooding event, sometimes oral information is really important. Information by a local inhabitant of a municipality about perhaps the former drainage channel can be as valuable or even more valuable as any kind of planning information.” - Andreas Deckelmann
“Well, I think no matter how insensitive people can be, if they don't feel something after what happened in the region, well, I'm sorry, but they have no heart. Because it had such a big impact on me. To this day, I still have nightmares about it.” - Agenor Freitas
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Time Stamps
*(00:00) Episode Start
*(01:45) Andreas Deckelmann on flooding in Germany
*(06:35) Disaster preparedness in Germany
*(09:20) HPC’s role in climate resilience
*(12:46) Jon Rix on flooding in New Zealand
*(21:19) Emotional impact of natural disasters
*(22:52) Tonkin + Taylor’s climate resilience efforts
*(26:35) Agenor Freitas on flooding in Brazil
*(29:38) Reflections on impacted communities
*(30:37) Phil’s takeaways
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Rethinking EHS is brought to you by the Inogen Alliance. Inogen Alliance is a global network of environment, health, safety, sustainability and ESG consulting companies working together to provide one point of contact to guide multinational organizations to meet their global commitments locally. Visit http://www.inogenalliance.com/ to learn more.
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Links
Explore Inogen Alliance's resources
Check out the BBC’s article 'How to protect communities and build resilience to natural disasters'
[00:00:00] Phil: Let's travel back to Fiji in 2017. One of the most devastating cyclones in history hit Fiji, flattening homes, destroying villages, and uprooting families. 44 people lost their lives and communities are still struggling to this day with disrupted water supplies and damaged food sources. Flooding, one of the most destructive natural disasters, is becoming increasingly prevalent and severe due to climate change.
It has become the most common natural disaster, with 44 percent of disasters associated with it worldwide. Millions of people are affected by flooding each year, and that number continues to rise. And the impacts of these disasters stretch far beyond physical loss and destruction. Today, we journey across the globe to uncover stories of survival, perseverance, and resilience.
We'll hear from three expert individuals from Germany, New Zealand, and Brazil, each sharing their harrowing experiences during devastating floods. Throughout all their stories, you'll discover a common thread, the importance of building community resilience. They highlight the necessity of international collaboration and the importance of learning from past disasters to better prepare against future climate change impacts.
Let's dive into their stories and discover how global goals and local actions are coming together to build a more climate resilient world.
First, we hear from Andreas Deckelmann, Senior Consultant for Hydrogeology and Environment at HBC. Andreas shares his experience with catastrophic flooding in Germany. He dives into the immediate aftermath, the broader implications of climate change, and the recommendations from HBC on how to address and mitigate future disasters.
Let's dive right in.
[00:02:09] Andreas: After a really catastrophic event in the summer of 2021 in western Germany, just recently last week there was another heavy rain event which affected specifically the southern part of Germany. Following a few days of rainfall in the area where the soils were already saturated and so on.
The heavy rain event in the end occurred, leading to a total of six fatalities and a significant damage of infrastructure. The event was categorized in several places as a 100 year event, which means that the rain volumes are expected to fall only once per 100 years. Uh, this also shows the dimension of, of this event.
Initially, the locations that were affected were mainly locations located in a catchment of a steep topography, mainly actually along small creeks. And then afterwards, a few days later, also the water levels of the major principal rivers like the Danube River were rising significantly and also the areas along these rivers were affected.
And also damages of the existing protection infrastructure were reported. For HPC, yeah, this event had a special importance since several of our HPC offices are located in this area and around 150 colleagues are living in or really close to the affected areas. Fortunately, nobody of the colleagues was directly affected, but many of them had experienced the event directly in their neighborhood.
Also, the first damages are now, yeah, visible and also partly mitigated after one week. Still, there will be a long term impact of the event in the area. I mean, these long term impacts are not entirely clear at the moment already, but beyond the extremely high costs for reparation of buildings and infrastructure, which are also of course not not covered or not completely covered by by insurance companies.
There are actually two main long term effects that I would like to point out a little bit. One is a significant contamination issue. Which affects especially the surface water and also the, uh, the subsurface. This is mainly coming from, uh, from damaged or destroyed heating oil tanks, which are now leaking and the water transports the, the oil across the, uh, the fields and across the places.
And a second expected long term issue was just also recently mentioned in the media. And this refers to, uh, the effect on agriculture and the harvest. So, many already cultivated agricultural land was flooded in that area and the crops which were already planned were either directly destroyed or many will be destroyed by the previously mentioned contamination.
But well, another aspect which is, it's often forgotten is also the psychological aspect, especially the effect for the affected people. During every future heavy rain event, for sure the people will be reminded of this, yeah, this terrible event now. Seeing the pictures of the people, the floodings and, yeah, the damages affects you simply, yeah, and also makes you concerned.
But still, I mean, it's, it's something completely different if you see it from the distance or in the media, or if you are directly involved. Yeah. Well, I would like to point out especially one case, which was also mentioned in the media during this event where, where a woman spent more than 50 hours on a tree.
to be protected from the, from the floods. And then finally she was rescued and almost they are unharmed. So I mean, this is, these are examples that are really very emotional.
[00:06:28] Phil: There have been recent developments in disaster preparedness in Germany and Andreas dives into the shift towards more effective practices in preparation for and response to these events.
[00:06:39] Andreas: I mean, the topic and channel developed, of course, also in the recent years in Germany, there were former events and so on, which were even more catastrophic, as I mentioned. And the meteorological service of Germany, of course, also had sent out warnings for this heavy rain event, the days before the event occurred.
And also the other responsible authorities had started their preparations as well. Immediately also after the event, fast help was available. Yeah, it was properly managed in many of the places. And therefore, the damages could have been even a bit, a lot bigger if this hasn't been the case of the preparation.
However, the exact locations where the events will happen cannot be predicted and the preparations for these events cannot be, can never be 100%.
[00:07:31] Phil: As we've heard, Climate change plays a major role in the increasing prevalence of floods. Andreas shares its impact and how HPC incorporates climate considerations into their projects.
[00:07:43] Andreas: The, the perception is actually rather clear that these events are increasing significantly. I think this is something that, uh, we, we are perceptive. I mean, still, I would like to say that every event is, in the end, unique and has to be analyzed individually in detail based on, yeah, in the end, available data, yeah, the rainfall volumes, what are exactly the, the infrastructure, where are there protection measures and so on.
So climate change can be a factor, but also the topographic location and the existence of these protection measures have to be considered for vulnerability and the damage considerations. At HPC, we consider climate change effects within our projects. Reviewing and evaluating the, the flood risk situation is something that is, uh, commonly included in every site specific assessment, for example.
And beyond that, uh, in the water sector, for instance, we have a close look on climate predictions and their effect on the water cycle by using, uh, global tools, evaluating the risk on a regional level. But yeah. Thanks a lot. As important as the global tools, we also look at information and tools that is available, let's say, on a local scale of a site or a municipality that the organization is interested in.
So based on this, recommendations towards impact resilience can be made and, I mean, the key in the end is a combination of this local and globally available tools.
[00:09:24] Phil: Let's hear Andreas dive into how HPC is guiding organizations towards climate resilience.
[00:09:31] Andreas: Well, I would like to pronounce that, yeah, we will not be able to, to control nature and, and prevent heavy rainfall at all, but, but we can get prepared for these events.
Effective measures, of course, are complex, but at HPC, we recommend to have a stepwise approach to identify the risks associated with floodings and especially with, um, heavy rains. The stepwise approach includes a collection of, yeah, historic data and public available data for the places that you want to look at.
And then the first preliminary evaluation, usually based on the topography and the location and its surroundings is conducted. After that, after this preliminary evaluation, a decision is made and about the requirement for a 2D or 3D modeling. These models can predict the risks and evaluate potential damages for different rainfall volumes.
In the same way, the models will help to evaluate suitable protection measures like retention basins or drainage channels and also identify the right position of these measures. But also beyond the models, it is crucial to, yeah, to inspect the location, yeah, this is required to recognize, for example, critical places where blocking, yeah, might prevent the water discharge to, to flow away from, from a site and also for the case of emergency, it is necessary To know the protocols of local authorities or also the fire brigade, working hand in hand with these organizations and with the local authorities before the event happens is of utmost importance and may also improve the protocols that they have at the moment.
I would like to say that local expertise is really crucial within all these considerations. I mean this starts a bit with the knowledge about the area, to be there, to be there present in the area. You should know the right contact persons, the responsible public sector bodies and also the legislations.
Yeah. But it also includes a bit the knowledge of the local people and conducting interviews, for example, you know, in a case of a flooding event, sometimes an oral information is, yeah, it's really important information by a local inhabitant of a municipality about perhaps the former drainage channel can be as valuable or even more valuable as any kind of planning information.
On the other hand, a global perspective. allows transfer information and practices of similar situations in other geographies, for example, for a specific project. Yeah. Therefore, it's, it's really also important to have this global perspective and be in communication with, yeah, perhaps people in other countries or other continents that might have experienced a similar situation.
And Inner Channel Alliance in the end has this global network of information and In combination with the local expertise.
[00:12:51] Phil: Next, we hear from John Ricks, Principal Flood Risk Consultant at Tonkin Taylor. John shares his reflections on a series of disastrous floodings in New Zealand from 2022 into early 2023.
He dives into the impacts of the flooding and the ongoing efforts to adapt, recover, and prepare for future events. Let's hear about John's experiences and insights.
[00:13:13] Jon: I'm calling from Auckland in the North Island of New Zealand. And New Zealand's got a long history of flooding. But it seems like over the last couple of years, there just seems to be one event after another event after another event.
Starting at the end of 2022, the Nelson floods, and then into early 2023 in particular, the upper North Island was just hammered by sort of three events, firstly, Tropical Cyclone Hail, then the Auckland Anniversary events, the Auckland Anniversary is a holiday weekend in Auckland at the end of January, and then Cyclone Gabriel as well.
And so those last three, particularly the ones in the North Island, so those last three were in the mainly impacted the North Island, get referred to as the North Island severe weather events where we're still feeling the impact from them over a year afterwards. Unfortunately, 15 people lost their lives in the North Island severe weather events.
There's, I think there's one person still missing. Economically, there's been over 4 billion worth of insured losses. That's just the insured losses, so the economic impacts were a lot higher than that. And for a population of only 5 million people, that's a significant event for New Zealand. About half of those, the dollar damages is based in Auckland, because that's where the majority of the population live.
Most of my experience is Auckland based, because that's where I live, that's where I work, that's where my clients work, that's where the communities we work with, um, are based. It was indiscriminate in who it impacted, whether that be an affluent area or a non affluent area. We had a lot of landslides as well as the floods, so that impacted inland areas and coastal areas as well.
In the aftermath of the events, the council, which is the Auckland Council, which is the lead authority in the response and recovery. Developed a categorization process that homeowners could opt into, and that provides funding to help fund catchment responses and also buyouts as well. So there's about, about 7, 500 properties were known to have flooded in Auckland, um, from the Auckland anniversary events.
And one of the ongoing issues is getting the homeowners to opt into that process because opting into the process helps provide the funding to develop the solutions that are going to protect them. The long term impact of these floods, although a year feels like a long time, that, that cliche that it's a marathon, not a sprint is just so true.
The impact of events over a year ago aren't going to be fully realized. For, for many years yet to deal with the sort of scale of the events that we've had requires consideration of planning, who's going to pay for it, the community impacts, it, it requires so much thinking about the, the change process and all of the impacted disciplines, professionals, people that are going to influence that.
It's going to just take a long, long time for the benefits of the changes that we make to be realized.
[00:16:29] Phil: So, we heard John talk about the series of flooding in New Zealand over the past few years. Now, let's hear him share about the flooding experience that impacted him the most.
[00:16:40] Jon: The event which most impacted me was the Auckland event, because that's where I live, so I'll share my reflections on the Auckland event.
And as I say, it was the start of a long weekend in New Zealand, so people were trying to head away. Friday night. We were heading out, um, and the, uh, car parks in our work office flooded, um, and so as we were trying to head away, there was also some, our office manager was trying to find people to take away the company cars, so the company cars didn't flood in our own basement, and so I very happily accepted an invite to sit in one of those company cars to go and meet some friends within an area in central Auckland.
At the start of these events, you don't know how big an event it is, just that it was raining hard. We went out, whereas when we got to an area called Mount Eden, I couldn't get out of the car because the road was completely flooded and the restaurant we were meeting some friends in, it was flooding over the threshold to that restaurant already.
It's like, this is quite a big event, but it wasn't really until the next morning did I realize that what we were seeing within that local area and what I'd experienced on that street had been felt. By over a million people across Auckland, Auckland's population is about 1. 7 million, but in two thirds of that population experienced an event of that sort of scale.
That it was, to a large extent, unprecedented in the fact that hasn't, that sort of scale of event hasn't been recorded before in Auckland. Um, and we knew it could happen in local areas. I don't think we fully appreciated that it could happen on the spatial scale that it did. So this is now a Saturday with a lot of people looking to head away for a long weekend.
Auckland has about 200, over 200 small catchments located within it. We knew that the flooding was going to be extensive but you wouldn't know exactly where the flooding was going to take place. The problem with how Auckland floods is it's very flashy. And the floodwaters retreat again very quickly afterwards, and things can appear normal even though you know that the carnage that's been caused inside people's houses is no longer evident from the flood.
So, we were able to connect with our colleagues who live in areas all around Auckland, um, many of who were offering to, um, Help, um, and had cancelled their plans to go away for the weekends. We knew that we could start collecting information that was going to support the response and the recovery following the flood.
So we mobilized a large number of staff just to go out and start observing what they had been seeing. In their local neighborhoods where they live, we connected in with council who were in the early stages of their response as well. And they, they knew what we were doing. We were staying connected with them.
There was lots of other consultancy firms and other organizations all around the region, all just collecting information. We were all doing it. We were doing, we didn't have contracts to do these sort of things, we just knew it was going to be helpful. And so people started taking photographs, they started recording on, on their phones what they'd seen, like geotagging their photos, their videos.
We started getting people collecting social media information that we knew was going to support the recovery effort, because the big problem in Auckland is knowing where flooded. And so the only way to know where flooded is to collect these stories from people to see that what those observations are.
So for me personally, knowing we had people going out, essentially doing work was a huge sort of health and safety issue. We needed to know that people were out, we needed to check people out, check people back in. We were trying to set up systems, record where that data was being collected, stored so we could.
Make, we could add the greatest value that we could to that, that, that data. And that sort of continued over the coming days. We all sort of started in this sort of decentralized, fairly unstructured way. And then over the coming days, we were able to connect in with those lead authorities and between all the different organizations that have been collecting information, start centralizing that information, working with Auckland Council to put it into places where we knew it was going to be useful.
I'm relaying another story from. One of the council, uh, flood managers, it was a story about a retirement home and one by one, the people within the retirement home had their family members coming in and checking on them and helping get people out. But then there was the ones that were left at the end who didn't have their family members coming and looking after them.
And those are people at the end of their lives getting pulled out by other people in, in retirement age and get carrying them upstairs to escape the floodwaters. That's hugely powerful.
[00:21:24] Phil: There's an emotional contrast between professional knowledge and the real life consequences for communities in the face of natural disasters.
John shares the personal impact that these events have had on him from witnessing them first hand.
[00:21:38] Jon: There's two parts to this. There's one which is this professional fascination and real personal interest in flooding. And then there's also the aspect of how it's impacting the community. So you get torn with professional fascination versus the reality of what you'll see and how it's impacting people is.
I don't think emotionally it can, wasn't prepared for that sort of emotional response. I understood the professional response. We know that the frequency at which these sort of events is happening is increasing. We've been able to predict it for a long time. We Know what the flood hazards are. By and large, we know what the flood risks are as well.
Seeing the events unfold as they did, help get some momentum on action for, for hazards and risk information that we've known for a long time. The flood maps that we're all used to producing to define these flood extents, yeah, that's usually with pretty colors. So, this, this area might be flooded. They're, look, they're, they're helpful.
But the stories that you start collecting from people, how it impacts people, how it impacts organizations. How it actually impacts people and the stories that come out of it, it's really the insights that bring about change. That's what we're seeing through now. It develops that political will. I think that's what's been missing.
[00:22:57] Phil: Let's listen to John explain how Tonkin Taylor is guiding organizations towards climate resilience.
[00:23:04] Jon: We typically provide That expertise to inform adaptation planning and implementation. But times have changed, you know, decades ago, expert led decision making was how decisions were made. That's not how decisions are made anymore.
Experts know the technical solutions that will work, whatever work means. You know, what works for somebody doesn't work for somebody else. So, what's tolerable to somebody, Doesn't, isn't tolerable to somebody else as well. So what is the decision making process? So in terms of how we help organizations, yes, we provide that traditional technical expertise.
We identify engineering solutions that are going to minimize the hazards, building stock banks, raising seawalls. We can help design houses, which are going to accommodate floods. Better. We can help from a planning perspective with retreat based solutions, but increasingly we're seeing the need to help support those decision making processes, facilitating workshops, working with other disciplines as well to give the decision makers the information that they need to make the decision makers.
We're in a consulting environment, we're not the decision maker. We are there to provide information to decision makers, whatever they need to make decisions. In New Zealand, our emergency management focuses on four R's. They are around risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery. Um, and I find that a really useful construct for how we can be thinking about how we can provide our services to help.
Typically, we'd be working in risk reduction, long term spatial planning, land use planning, those kind of topics. We think of emergency. Management in terms of response and recovery. I think the huge growth there is how can we be ready, the readiness of the, the R that stands for readiness in the response.
How can we be ready for the next events? What were the lessons from what we've experienced and how can we more efficiently and better respond to the future events, which we know are coming because they're going to be getting more frequent. I think every location, MNO is unique in terms of its socioeconomic construct, its topography, its climate, its regulatory environment.
But I don't think it's unique enough that it can't learn from what might be going on in other areas, either in the country or globally. I certainly get a strong sense that each location feels like they're having to deal with flooding in this case in their own unique way for the reasons that were just mentioned.
And it sort of leaves them with a feeling that they are exposed to the decisions that they've been making. It's really uncomfortable for those decision makers that I was just talking. So I think there's a huge opportunity to learn from what other areas that might have a similar socioeconomic construct or a similar climate or a similar regulatory environment, maybe not all of them together, but.
If you can learn from other places around the world and how they've been, what, what are their lessons? What went wrong? What went right? How can we share information with each other to help everyone deal with flooding, which is a global worldwide problem? Uh, I think that puts in the decision makers in a much more comfortable place to try things and to keep learning from each other.
We know what the hazards are. We know the likelihood. We generally know the likelihood of these. We can quantify uncertainty. We know what the consequences are. What we need to be able to do is to turn that into action. And that's the bit where we need to be helping our decision makers, help those with the purse strings, provide the funding for the solutions that we need.
[00:26:40] Phil: Lastly, we hear from Agenor Freitas, a field technician at Antea Brasil. Agenor recounts his harrowing experiences during the very recent 2024 devastating floods in El Dorado do Sul in Brazil. He highlights the detrimental effects of the flooding on personal and community levels and the resilience shown in the face of these disasters.
Let's take a listen to Agenor story.
[00:27:13] Agenor (Translator): So I went to the city of El Dorado for projects, one of the cities that was most affected by the floods. When I got there, it started raining and it didn't stop. At a certain moment, I realized that people were living their houses. I realized that people were escaping with what they had and what they could, sometimes a piece of luggage, a bag, and even market bags.
They were living with their pets and sometimes without nothing because they had no time to pick up their stuff. The water level was raising quickly and at some point, myself, jointly with the client's representatives. I've decided to leave the facility for safety reasons. So I went back to the hotel, where I stayed for 8 days, trapped, unable to leave.
On Friday, after 8 days, our team in Sao Paulo found an alternative route for me to leave. So I hit the road. Apart from that, during my journey, the problem was that I had to fill the car tank, and it was tense, because you couldn't predict if I would find a gas station or not. I actually found one, but there was a limit on how much you could fill your tank, so that made the trip even more tense. But, with the grace of God. I managed to leave the region safely. So, the first days were tense.
As the water was rising, people were leaving their homes, leaving everything behind, taking what they could. They were put on tractors, trucks. When I was returning to the hotel, I got there and found two employees from the CEO.
When the water invaded their apartment and they were on the second floor, they lost everything. I mean, everything. They left with the clothes they had on their bodies. The only thing they managed to do was saving their children and their father, who was blind. That's all.
To get them out of the apartment, they had to use a tractor, and they were put in the buckets of a backhoe.
[00:29:43] Phil: So now, let's hear Agenor share his reflections on the communities impacted by the floods.
[00:29:50] Agenor (Translator): Well, I think, no matter how insensitive people can be, if they don't feel something after what happened in the region, well, I'm sorry, but they have no heart, because it had such a big impact on me. To this day, I still have nightmares about it. I see my house flooded. It kind of shocked me, right? It left a mark on me.
I was marked by those images, by this flood. And by the people suffering, right? For having lost relatives, for having lost the work of a lifetime, which is difficult. It's hard for anyone to recover from such a situation.
[00:30:40] Phil: We reflect on the stories from Andreas, John, and Agenor, there are three key takeaways that are crucial for us to understand in preparing against the impacts of climate change.
First, the importance of preparedness and immediate response. Their experiences emphasize the crucial need for ready emergency plans and supplies, which will lead to coordinated and swift responses. Being prepared significantly mitigates the impacts of natural disasters like floods. Second, the strategic advantage of global perspectives combined with local expertise.
By learning from experiences from around the world, we can improve our decision making frameworks. Adapting strategies to local expertise ensures their practical effectiveness. This strategy enhances climate resiliency by blending broader global insights with specific regional challenges. Lastly, the critical need to build community resilience.
All of their stories shed light on the importance of social cohesion, local leadership, and community driven solutions in times of crisis. This not only helps in real time recovery efforts, but strengthens communities against future climate impacts. We learned today that by drawing from global experiences, harnessing knowledge, and empowering communities, we can be better prepared for the increasing risks brought by climate change. Together, we can build a more climate resilient future.
[00:32:11] Voiceover: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Rethinking EHS. We'd like to thank our exceptional guests for sharing their stories and insights on the increasing prevalence of flooding and how our world can become more climate resilient. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode.
For more tools and tips on how to work globally with a local lens, check out the global resources page on the Indigen Alliance website. To access webinars, downloads, ebooks, and more, find the link in the show notes or visit www. indigenalliance. com forward slash resources. Additionally, for further insights on climate change, human health, and stories of flooding, check out BBC's article entitled, How to Protect Communities and Build Resilience to Natural Disasters, also linked in the show notes.
Follow Inogen Alliance on LinkedIn for the latest updates. And until next time, let's innovate, inspire, and rethink EHS together.