New Media Project

In this podcast, Diogenes Ayala interviews Victoria Henderson Weber about the response in her low-income neighborhood in Des Moines after the 2020 derecho, a severe windstorm. Victoria shares her experience of being at home during the storm and the lack of awareness and resources available to her community. She emphasizes the importance of effective communication from emergency management agencies and the need for preventative measures and community outreach. The impact of the storm on her community included power outages, fallen trees, and limited access to essential resources. Victoria suggests that emergency management agencies should prioritize prevention and provide resources and tools to help communities handle such events. She also highlights the importance of connecting with local organizations and communities to ensure effective communication. Our call to speed is done with Diogenes. Hello, this is Diogenes Ayala, student at the Naval Force Graduate School, Center for Homeland Defense and Security, Class 2301. In this podcast, I will be talking with Victoria Henderson Weber on the response in her neighborhood after the 2020 derecho, and how emergency management agencies can do a better job of ensuring all communities are restored after a tragic event. On August 10, 2020, Central Iowa received a derecho with widespread destructive straight-line winds. The highest official wind gust measured was 9 mph, with unofficial wind gusts of 106 mph. The strong winds were between Highway 30 and Interstate 80 corridor from Central Iowa eastward into East Central Iowa and northern Illinois. Iowa has had 11 derechos prior to the August 2020 outbreak. You are probably wondering what is a derecho. The National Weather Service defines a derecho as a widespread, long-lived windstorm that is associated with an event of wind, rapidly moving showers, or thunderstorms. The derecho destroyed buildings, homes, and severely damaging corn and soybean crops. The derecho caused over $11 billion in damage. Ironically, my two kids and I were unfortunately in the derecho when it traveled to Ames. We stayed in our car as the winds knocked trees and tractor trailers down around us. I was lucky to pull in behind the building that was shielded from the wind coming in. After a six-hour trip back from Ames, which normally would be a one-hour and 15-minute trip, I came home to some hail damage and tree debris. This was not the case in Des Moines, where Victoria is located. Victoria, welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you for having me. So, please, tell me about yourself, and what part of Des Moines do you live? Yeah. So, I am a mother of one, and I live on the east side of Des Moines. East side of Des Moines. So, is that area considered a high-income or a low-income area? I think it would definitely be classified as a low-income neighborhood, single-family home, one- to two-bedroom, middle-class at best is the area. Middle-class is the population. Do you live near, like, a train track or anything of that nature, near an airport? So, we actually, within a mile of my house, we have train tracks, we have a river, and quite a few large creeks. Would that be considered, like, a high-impact area, like a hazardous area for you? Absolutely. Okay. So, where were you on August 10, 2020? So, that is the pandemic. So, I was working from home that day, and I did have a dentist appointment scheduled. I found out about the storm, actually, from my dentist, who is a friend of mine. She called to tell me to stay home and that she was going home, and that we would reschedule my appointment at a later day. So, what was the convenience of that, working from home, compared to if you had to go into a job, I think? Oh, I mean, in terms of the storm? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, I mean, it's everything. Had I had to be working outside of the home that day, I actually wouldn't have been able to get back into my house. At least not, I wouldn't have been able to drive up to the house. But being able to work from home that day, you know, we are equipped with hot spots and some charge boxes, and so we are able to work all of the time, but that is not the case for most people. So, when the derecho came in on August 10th, you already said you were home. Yes. What was that like, to have a derecho come to your house and, you know, come into your neighborhood? Like, what was the things that were going through your mind? So, it was really interesting. So, to be honest, I'm not somebody who watches storms. I don't watch the news. But I generally don't have an idea of what's happening until it's actually happening. And so, what I saw that day was that the sky continued to get darker. My house was positioned in a way in which the garage was actually in front of the house, and so the garage shielded a lot of winds. And so, I didn't quite have an idea of how bad it was actually getting until I saw the lights in the neighborhood start to go out around me. I have a pretty good view from my front window, and I'm able to see quite a few blocks away. And you could just slowly see it get actually darker as the lights cut out and as trees started to fall. Were you worried at any time that your house could have been impacted heavily because of the derecho, because of the wind speeds? So, no. But now that I've been through that situation, I understand that I should have been. I think the majority of people who live in neighborhoods such as mine are worried about real-life issues and weather doesn't seem like a real-life issue in the moment. That's something that you face when it comes. And so, it's not something I had considered. But looking back, I had huge old trees around my home. There were empty lots around that had farm equipment, believe it or not, just in the middle of the city. We had a neighborhood garden next door, and so there was some large equipment that could have tipped into my house. There were all kinds of hazards that I should have been concerned about and didn't have the information to know that I should have been. So, let's talk about that. You were saying that you weren't aware of any information that you should have information when it comes to hazards. Where do you think that information should come from? I think it really should come from a variety of sources. I think the mistake that is made is that information is pushed out to the news and that everybody watches the news. The truth is most people don't watch the news. It's on at inconvenient times when people are working or cooking for their families. And that's the only method. Most of us don't listen to traditional radio any longer, and so, you know, the radio isn't necessarily a good source. And so, I think, to be fair, it's a hard question to answer. But I think with as serious as these things are, I think that communication should come from the professionals. I would say the emergency management, whether that's the actual emergency management offices or other first responder organizations, such as, like, sheriff's offices or the police department, that information should be pushed out to the best of their ability through every possible means necessary. So, tell me after the derecho, what was the impact to your community? It was an absolute nightmare. So, specifically, my block or the couple of blocks around me is an older population of people. There are quite a few individuals on my block alone. They're 80, 85, 90 years old. All of us experienced a power outage. We were one of the very last blocks in town to get our power back well, well after a week after everybody else. We had trees down, power lines in the road, shingles and roof debris blown everywhere. I mean, it was pretty bad. So, did you have, as you said, weeks later, were those lines on the ground for weeks at a time, or did they come at least and clean up those lines and their shingles? Well, we cleaned up the shingles ourselves. The power lines, those were cleaned up by Mid-American Energy, our energy provider, but it took quite a while for them to get them picked up. And even once they were picked up, we still didn't have power. So, how did that make you feel as a community that you had power around you, but you guys were without power? It was really hard to deal with. You know, I'm a person of privilege in my neighborhood. The job that I work provides me, you know, luxuries to be able to work from home and the finances to be able to leave, and to be honest, I did choose to leave. Because our power was out for so long, it just got to be so hot in the house that I just couldn't take it and my son couldn't take it, and we chose to pack up and drive down to Kansas City for the weekend. But the individuals on our block didn't, and so we had people without access to their medicines, people without access to properly cared for food. And so it was really rough to be able to see that people literally within eyeshot of our homes had power and things were returning back to normal for them, and we were just still left in the same circumstances. So, what's a good message for emergency management agencies? I mean, you kind of talk about people don't watch the news, so what's a good message from you from experiencing this that people in the emergency management field should know about when it comes to serving their communities? That prevention is probably key. So, no, you can't prevent a storm from happening, but you can provide resources and tools to help people know how to handle the things when they come. So, you know, now I know that there are really great apps that would have alerted my phone. You know, our cell phone is something that almost everybody has with them at all times. Had my cell phone gone off and said that there was a storm and that it was as bad as I thought it was going to be, and maybe there was some, you know, take cover sort of alert, that's something that I would have paid attention to, and I think that all the people in my community would have also. But in terms of, like, the preventative sort of measures, you know, letting communities know in advance what resources are available when something happens is probably the most critical thing that anybody can do, and that's not something I've ever seen done. So it's better for, you're saying, emergency management agencies to come out and talk with people prior to an event? Absolutely. You should absolutely know the people that you serve. And I know that that's hard in cities our size or larger, but that looks like if you can't connect directly with the people, then you connect with the organizations, the churches, the whatever resources that you can get to, so that they can then get the information to the communities. Victoria, this has been a wonderful discussion. I appreciate your time today, and thank you for giving us this information. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Shout out to Brijan and Lauren, as always, my biggest fans on here, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.