“If you live on a street named River Road,” he said in an interview, your home “is going to flood”. Russel L Honoré, the retired Army lieutenant general whom president George W Bush placed in charge of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts after initial stumbles, has more blunt advice in the title of his new book: Don’t Get Stuck on Stupid. That means that any steps we take to avoid building in places with flood risk should minimise the cost of disasters. The geographer Gilbert F White, known as the father of floodplain management, wrote in 1942 that “floods are ‘acts of God’, but flood losses are largely acts of man”. Our propensity to engage in poor planning is not newly discovered. In flood-prone areas, rapid development often means paving over much of the landscape that might absorb floodwaters, which was certainly a factor in the Houston area when Harvey came. The population of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions jumped from 52 million in 2000 to nearly 60 million in 2016, according to the Census Bureau. Madeline Gray is a photographer based in Raleigh, N.C.And Americans keep moving to the coasts. She knows there was nothing more to be done except wait to get back to her animals after Hurricane Florence passes.Īs the storm hit, McKee says the animals "did great" on Thursday night. They microchipped many of the animals, put identification tags in their manes and tails, ordered a two weeks supply of food, have geothermal water troughs that refill automatically, have removed any additional debris from around the farm, and made all of the animals' shelters more secure.Īs the storm approached, McKee said she feels a sense of calm. McKee and her staff worked non-stop to ensure the farm is prepared. ![]() McKee will head home with Xanadu in tow to wait out the hurricane with her family. ĭespite the animals' often traumatic pasts, McKee goes on, "they have become very, very comfortable here and are stressed when they leave." Part of the animals' routine includes having a neighbor come to the farm to feed them twice a day which will happen even during the storm. "If we put them in the barn, they'd freak out," she explains. McKee, who was a practicing veterinarian for over 20 years, takes a holistic approach to caring for her animals. She and her team launched a "monumental" effort to prepare the farm and the animals. She says she is determined to keep their routine as normal as possible, especially because most of her animals are rescues. "They just seem much more aware of their surroundings," she says.ĭespite numerous offers to take the animals to facilities out of the storm's path, McKee is keeping them on the farm. McKee and her husband David Schwartz transformed the nearly 150-year-old farm, and another in Durham, into an agritourism destination that now houses horses, donkeys, a cow, alpacas, goats, sheep, chickens, and a host of other animals, including a baby alpaca named Xanadu that lives with the family full-time.īefore the storm, McKee said she could tell the animals were acting more alert and skittish than usual as they sense the storm in the air. As Hurricane Florence hits North Carolina, Amanda McKee's only concern is for her animals at 1870 Farm outside of Chapel Hill.
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