Hurricane Helene flood communication research [late-breaking contributions for extreme hydroclimatic events in fall 2024]

Abstract

Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage to homes, land, and utilities in Western North Carolina (WNC) and led to nearly 100 confirmed deaths in NC and more than 230 across the Southeast. In the wake of this disaster, the question has naturally arisen regarding the effectiveness of flood warning communications leading up to the event. To begin to answer this question, RTI International has launched a study to investigate how communications about flooding were received, interpreted, and used for action by community members before and during Hurricane Helene. The study was initiated rapidly, to gain insight while individuals’ memories of the event are still relatively fresh. We are planning structured interviews with a broad range of community members across WNC, including emergency responders, local authorities/decision-making organizations, health and human service organizations, community interest organizations, and the public. We aim to better understand how diverse local stakeholders in WNC received, interpreted, shared, and used flood information before the storm. We also aim to understand what barriers community members experienced in receiving, understanding, and acting on information, what factors impacted the effectiveness of information sharing, and how this may have differed by audience segment or community features (e.g., size, geography, demographics). This study builds upon approaches and findings from a current RTI project for the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH): Optimizing Flood Warning Information Sharing for Local Stakeholders through Science Communication Research. As the Helene study is in the early stages, we will share relevant findings from our earlier project as well as aspects of the current study design (e.g., stakeholder segments, recruitment and interview strategy, analysis approach) and any initial, sharable results at the time of presentation.