Today, I gave the opening talk at the annual Hurricane Conference sponsored by the RI Emergency Management Agency—perhaps all the more vital this year both because of the flooding disaster we went through earlier this year and the active hurricane season hurricane experts are predicting.
Although it’s been years since a hurricane affected Rhode Island, we can’t become complacent—surely the floods of 2010 taught us that. And it’s important to review the lessons we learned from the March floods so we can effectively prepare if a hurricane threatens us.
The conference theme is “interdependencies,” or how cascading events can affect emergency response efforts. We saw such ripple effects during the floods—when the Warwick wastewater treatment center went underwater, that affected how the airport operated. The closing of I-95 affected how responders—and indeed all of us—traveled around the state.
These types of interdependencies point to how critical working relationships are between levels of government, agencies, and the private sector—and how important it is to have those good relationships, communication patterns, plans and equipment in place before an emergency strikes.
While I hope the forecasters are wrong about this hurricane season, as chair of the Emergency Management Advisory Council, I’ll continue to lead efforts to work together and learn from each other to keep Rhode Islanders safe.