Disasters: ways resilient counties recover and mitigate

At a luncheon, sponsored by the Resilient Counties Advisory Board, a panel of North Carolina officials discussed their reaction to and recovery from Hurricane Matthew, and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) launched its Naturally Resilient Communities Guide, a follow-up to a focus group discussion at NACo’s 2016 annual conference.

TNC’s guide uses the way nature works to address flooding problems, according to Nate Wolwode, a risk reduction and resilience project manager at TNC. Escambia County, Fla. used a natural infrastructure approach to deal with the damage caused to  Pensacola Bay by Hurricane Ivan and to prevent severe storm  damage in the future.

Escambia Commissioner Grover Robinson showed how the county reduced wave energy and reinvigorated the bay’s ecosystem by installing breakwater barriers and building islands beyond the barriers. Escambia’s “Project GreenShores” typifies the kinds of projects applicable to every community in the country, Wolwode said.