As climate change makes hurricanes and flash flood events more frequent, intense and prolonged, local emergency management authorities are increasingly becoming a critical line of defense when disaster strikes.
The Cumberland County Emergency Services Department is acutely aware of this charge, and says it is taking steps to improve flood management and preparation in response to recent flooding events, such as the Texas floods on the Fourth of July, which killed 134 people.
“Following recent severe flooding events, we want to ensure that the citizens of Cumberland County are aware of the flood monitoring measures that we take as well as the public alerting notification system,” said Amanda Scheck, a county emergency management planner. “Our goal today is to provide you with a clear picture of our current capabilities and highlight some challenges we face while identifying opportunities for improvement.”
Scheck and other members of the Emergency Services Department gave a presentation to the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners on Aug. 14. In the presentation, they said Cumberland County monitors flooding with 24 stream gauges, which cover the county’s 652 square miles of land and 6.1 square miles of water. Focusing on four key waterways in the county — the Cape Fear River, Rockfish Creek, Cross Creek and Little River — the gauges monitor the height of the water and, in some cases, streamflow, to guide evacuations and disaster response decisions.
“These real time readings are critical in tracking how waterways respond to rain, upstream flow and other changes,” Scheck said. “And in a county such as ours that’s prone to flash flooding, this information is vital for emergency management.”
Crucially, gauges were not installed on the Guadalupe River, the river that overflowed in the Texas floods, despite local government officials debating whether to install them in 2017, The New York Times reported.
Cumberland County installed five new gauges in January with grant funding from the Duke Energy Foundation. All gauges in the county feed directly into the North Carolina Flood Inundation Mapping and Alert Network (FIMAN), a statewide monitoring tool that is able to predict flooding “before critical thresholds are reached,” Scheck said. She encouraged residents, especially those who live in floodplains, to sign up for FIMAN’s alert system.
“Our team uses these alerts to evaluate risks and coordinate response, while backup methods like field reports, drones and ham radio ensure situational awareness in the event of a digital system failure,” Scheck said.
Chini Gault, a county emergency management planner, said the county uses FEMA’s
Integrated Public Alert and Warning System as its primary means of issuing mass notifications and public alerts about imminent dangers to residents. The system does this via mobile phone notifications, radio and television broadcasts.
“IPAWS is reserved for life and death emergencies and these alerts should never be ignored,” Gault said. “Unlike other notification systems, citizens do not need to opt in. Everyone in the affected area will receive them automatically.”
Challenges and improvements
The county also uses its own notification platform called Cumberland Alerts — a system that residents can sign up for to receive real-time messages about severe weather hazards, evacuations and protective actions.
The county is actively pursuing ways to improve its emergency management system, staff said. For example, they are considering the addition of outdoor speakers to alert residents of danger by broadcasting sirens and warning messages. The acoustic alert devices would operate on solar power, have backup batteries and satellite connectivity, allowing them to function in cases of a power grid failure or widespread cellular outage.
“These devices would help reach vulnerable populations, visitors and those outdoors who aren’t monitoring phones,” Gault said.
Despite a robust communications network, the emergency response team faces some practical challenges, primarily related to funding. For instance, the acoustic alert devices are extremely expensive, costing about $126,000 each, Gault said. Staff are looking for grant opportunities to fund the devices, according to Garry Crumpler, the county’s interim emergency services director.
The department has also faced challenges with the stream gauges. Staff said the gauges have been repeatedly vandalized, including two of the newly installed ones this year.
“Those repairs have been completed and we are inquiring about options to add signage and security measures to prevent future incidents,” Scheck said.
The gauges are also expensive, and require extensive planning to determine where to install them. The existing gauges are primarily located within Fayetteville and in the western part of the county.
“We’ve been trying to be very strategic about where we place these gauges,” Crumpler said. “That’s why we work in close conjunction with the National Weather Service hydrology [experts], so they can tell us exactly where to place them. Because the funding, quite honestly, is limited for those types of gauges as far as grants that qualify.”
At the end of the presentation, Scheck encouraged county officials to prioritize funding for flooding preparedness and recovery infrastructure.
“It’s important to note that when we do our job right, nothing happens,” Scheck said. “There’s no dramatic images, no flooded homes, no desperate rescues to point to as justification. Success in our field is invisible. But failures — that’s what’s filling the news. Unfortunately, we too often wait for that failure before we act, pouring recovery dollars into problems we could have prevented with a fraction of the cost in planning and mitigation.
“We cannot continue to reward reaction and neglect preparation. If we don’t fund resilience now, we will fund regret later. And that bill will be higher, not just in dollars, but in lives, homes and community trust.”
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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