There was an excellent article in this paper’s Nov. 5 edition, titled ‘Haines landslide maps unused, what comes next?’ That was a good read, and such an important topic. As someone who was intimately involved in Haines’ government response to the 2020 landslide disaster, I, too, find myself wondering if we are better prepared now than we were then. I think we are getting there.
After 14 years of hard work in our community in the realm of public safety, messaging, and risk management, I’ve learned a few things about these kinds of unlikely, but foreseeable risks:
1) Limited information is better than no information.
2) Public safety is cultural. It’s non-political — we all have to work together across perceived lines.
3) Science gives us tools to manage risk, based on statistics and physical principles.
4) Emotion, fear, resilience, wisdom, these are all pretty much useless when we’re facing geohazards.
5) People don’t need to be told what to do. But they do need information to be empowered to make safer decisions.
It should be pretty clear that in order to manage our landslide risk, we need coordinated environmental data. Collecting and coordinating that data is well within our means as a community, even if we can’t afford a full-blown landslide warning system.
As a reminder, the Haines Avalanche Center maintains a precipitation tracking webpage to help residents stay informed about heavy rainfall events: alaskasnow.org/haines-precip/rain.html
Erik Stevens