GRI Director on Hurricane Irma, preparedness and resilience – On Point with Tom Ashbrook | Global Resilience Institute

With weather events becoming more intense, society needs to be better prepared – and think about what can be done in advance, in order to “bake in” resilience.

Global Resilience Institute Founding Director Dr. Stephen Flynn shared these thoughts on Monday, during NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook.

[Note: If the embedded player does not show up above, click here for the full interview]

“We’ve got to stop treating these as rare events and start building resilience into infrastructure to better withstand these events and recover,” Flynn stressed. He added, “Nine out of 10 Americans, if they stay put for 30 years, are probably going to be affected by some disaster…we can’t afford not to make these investments.”

Flynn was joined by Benjamin Kirtman, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami and Patricia Mazzei, reporter at the Miami Herald covering Irma, on the Monday morning show.

“Irma, moving on north today. Leaving records in her wake. The highest, longest wind speeds of any hurricane on record on Earth. More “accumulated cyclone energy,” experts call it, than any storm ever before. Caribbean islands, devastated. Miami, spared the worst. Florida’s west coast, in the water. And six million evacuees now start to turn home. This hour, On Point: What we saw, what we feared, what we got. And what we’ve learned from Irma.” — Tom Ashbrook

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About GRI:
The Global Resilience Institute (globalresilience.northeastern.edu) is leading a university-wide interdisciplinary effort to advance resilience-related initiatives that contribute to the security, sustainability, health and well-being of societies. Our objective is to help advance preparedness at multiple levels to effectively respond to slowly emerging disruptions and sudden disasters, both human-made and naturally-occurring. To learn more about the seed-funding program, click here.

Media Contact:
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[Featured image: A rough surf surrounds Boynton Beach inlet as Hurricane Irma hits in Boynton Beach, Fla. (Jim Rassol/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)]