How redlining and systemic gaps leave communities vulnerable to disaster

Natural disasters such as tornadoes and flooding often have disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and renters, particularly affecting people of color. The tornado that tore through the Twin Cities in 2011, ripping from St. Louis Park to Blaine and causing the most damage in parts of North Minneapolis, is a stark example of this pattern.

Eric Waage, director of emergency management at Hennepin County, explains that each level of government carries a different responsibility when natural disasters strike. Because Hennepin County has a high concentration of cities compared to rural areas, cities serve as the first layer of response, followed by the county, then the state and finally the federal government, which traditionally serves as the financier of recovery.

“In Hennepin, we have kind of tweaked things to become especially focused on public warning,” Waage said.

Through partnerships with cities throughout the county, the department manages alert networks including outdoor sirens, highway message boards and the Emergency Alert System on TVs, phones and radios. For over a decade, the county has also partnered with Twin Cities Public Television to broadcast on TPT NOW, a 24/7 public safety channel that provides emergency alerts in English, Spanish, Hmong and Somali,  a resource Waage said is unique in the United States.

Hennepin County also conducts hazard assessments and research to identify specific risks based on where people live, using that data to help cities educate residents with targeted information about the hazards in their own neighborhoods. The TPT channel is the primary vehicle for this work, partnering with Spanish and Hmong-speaking outlets to reach communities that major English-only broadcasters miss.

“One of the problems is many of the official sources, like the big local TV channels, they’re only in English, or the National Weather Service does it only in English,” Waage said. “So we’ve needed to figure out how to convert that.”

Outdoor warning sirens, however, don’t depend on language. “All you have to do is be taught what you should do,” Waage said, which is to get to shelter and then seek information.

The disparity in disaster impact often comes down to pre-existing circumstances.

“When you see an actual disaster, it’s the folks that start out a little bit behind, whether it’s in preparation or their circumstances, because they’re renters and they may have a landlord that hasn’t made proper safety adjustments,” Waage said.

The emergency management industry has tried to adjust its recovery processes to account for these realities, though those efforts have faced challenges recently at the federal level. Nonprofits and other agencies remain closely attuned to the needs of marginalized communities.

The county uses the Social Vulnerability Index to identify areas that may need more assistance, examining demographic and socioeconomic factors including poverty, lack of transportation access and crowded housing. Conditions that compound the impact of tornadoes, chemical spills, disease outbreaks and other disasters.

“We know that those areas are going to require a lot more effort and resources when they get hit,” Waage said.

Waage began working in emergency management the year after the 2011 tornado, which he describes as a clear case of a disaster cutting across neighborhoods with very different vulnerability profiles.

“Although the damage kind of varied, the lasting impacts were clearly in some parts of North Minneapolis, where it was harder for people who didn’t have the same protections, like insurance, that maybe some of the other areas had,” he said. Recovery took longer, and disruption lasted well beyond the storm itself.

Part of the reason, Waage said, is that utility restoration at the time went to where the tornado first landed, in St. Louis Park and Golden Valley, rather than the areas most severely affected.

“Now we’d go to the area that was most impacted first and work out from there instead,” he said. “It just sort of makes sense, but I think people didn’t really realize it as much back then.”

Procedures have since changed, and more work remains. But the underlying vulnerabilities those procedures are meant to address run far deeper than emergency response protocols.

“It all stems down to systemic disinvestment,” said Abigail Phillips, planning analyst with the Metropolitan Council.

The council works to create an equitable region through commitments to greenhouse gas mitigation, environmental justice and climate resilience. Phillips is leading the development of a climate change vulnerability assessment intended to help cities identify where they are likely to experience hazards like extreme heat, localized flooding and poor air quality, and who is most likely to bear the burden of those hazards.

“We know that both the economic and the human consequences of climate change are experienced unevenly across communities, particularly in communities of color and communities that have been historically disinvested and overburdened by planning practices like redlining,” Phillips said. “Because the effects of those policies are still seen today, we’re looking at how socioeconomic data interacts with data related to climate hazards.”

During redlining, properties were overvalued or undervalued based on the racial identity of the communities living in those neighborhoods. The consequences are still visible today, not just in wealth gaps, but in the physical landscape.

“The impact is that the value of land in those communities didn’t increase, so families couldn’t build generational wealth the way white families in other communities could,” Phillips said. “But also that trees weren’t planted, so they didn’t have a chance to grow up and be these big, strong, beautiful canopy-providing trees that exist in wealthier areas.”

Those trees matter more than aesthetics. Large, mature trees provide shelter and stability during severe weather. Younger trees planted in redlined neighborhoods in recent years simply can’t withstand high winds the way older canopies can.

“When severe weather comes through, like a tornado or high winds, those younger trees aren’t as strong and can’t withstand the impacts, so they’re more likely to have broken branches or even be blown over,” Phillips said.

Neighborhoods without large tree canopies also lose the cooling effect that reduces energy burden on homes and residents.

The Metropolitan Council is building a regional tree canopy data set to track these disparities. In the Growing Shade data set, said Lisa Barajas, head of the community development division, you can see a visible scar on the landscape tracing exactly where the 2011 tornado cut through North Minneapolis.

“While there are smaller trees that have been planted, they’re not providing that cooling effect yet,” Barajas said. “You can see that difference in the average high temperature in those neighborhoods that were impacted by canopy loss.”

Barajas also noted that in redlined communities, homes are often not upgraded with whole-home air conditioning, leaving residents with fewer options when temperatures rise and tree canopy isn’t there to help.

Damenica Ellis welcomes reader responses at dellis@spokesman-recorder.com.