Why aren’t we ready for natural disasters?

From hurricanes to wildfires, this is our new reality. We need to get used to it, and we need to start by being better prepared for these unprecedented disasters.

Over the last 20 years, the number of weather-related disasters has nearly doubled, according to international database EM-DAT — more droughts, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, ice storms and tornadoes. And they’re more severe.

The Texas flooding is a one-in-1,000-year event. The B.C. wildfires are the worst in more than 50 years.

The human cost of weather-related disasters will only get worse as the global population continues to grow, land and sea temperatures increase and sea levels rise.

Between 1995 and 2015, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reported that 606,000 people died in weather-related incidents. Another 4.1 billion were injured, left homeless or in need of emergency assistance. Annual economic losses averaged nearly $375 billion.

In 2016, insurance companies paid out nearly $63 billion in claims due to natural disasters.

Yet few people have made even the most basic of plans for themselves and their families for when their turn might come.

“Preparedness is absolutely vital,” says Kimberley Nemrava, a Canadian Red Cross vice-president. “People need to start to think of disaster preparedness in the same way that they put on bike helmets and seatbelts. Disasters are now part of our lives.”

If people can help themselves, they are also likely to be able to help their neighbours more quickly than any agency or government is able to mobilize.

If you don’t know where to start, the Red Cross has an app for that, called Be Ready.

Nemrava says more of us also need to know basic first aid. If you don’t have time to take a course, at least download the Red Cross’s free first aid app.

But if few are prepared to look after themselves, even fewer are demanding to know what kind of planning is being done to protect and prepare their communities.

Cities are built in “defiance of nature,” to borrow a phrase from urban planner Christof Spieler, who spoke to the Washington Post about Houston’s sprawling networks of roads, subdivisions and parking lots.

“We tend to sort of ignore the natural underpinnings of the city,” Spieler said. “When this amount of rain falls, suddenly that natural geography reasserts itself.”

So, why is so little being done to prevent and prepare for them?