Risks, Health Consequences, and Response Challenges for Small-Island-Based Populations: Observations From the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season

Abstract

The intensely active 2017 Atlantic basin hurricane season provided an opportunity to examine how climate drivers, including warming oceans and rising seas, exacerbated tropical cyclone hazards. The season also highlighted the unique vulnerabilities of populations residing on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to the catastrophic potential of these storms. During 2017, 22 of the 29 Caribbean SIDS were affected by at least one named storm, and multiple SIDS experienced extreme damage. This paper aims to review the multiplicity of storm impacts on Caribbean SIDS throughout the 2017 season, to explicate the influences of climate drivers on storm formation and intensity, to explore the propensity of SIDS to sustain severe damage and prolonged disruption of essential services, to document the spectrum of public health consequences, and to delineate the daunting hurdles that challenged emergency response and recovery operations for island-based, disaster-affected populations. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;page 1 of 13).

Interdisciplinary disaster preparedness: Study abroad in Saint Kitts and Nevis

“…Small island developing states like Saint Kitts and Nevis are especially vulnerable to natural disasters, as seen by the catastrophic storms threatening and damaging this region during the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, where 22 of the 29 island states in the region were affected. Saint Kitts and Nevis narrowly avoided landfall from Hurricane Irma, with wind speeds exceeding 156 miles per hour (251 kilometers per hour), which was only 64 miles (103 km) away (Shultz et al, 2018). The extensive history of the occurrence of natural disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and hurricanes in the Caribbean provides multiple opportunities for students to learn about public health and disaster preparedness.…”

Advancing Coastal Risk Reduction Science and Implementation by Accounting for Climate, Ecosystems, and People

“…Recovery from the 2017 season was especially protracted in the Caribbean, which highlights costly inequities in vulnerability and resilience among nations, and underscores the disproportionate burden that small island developing states will bear in adapting to climate change (Anthoff et al, 2010;Nurse et al, 2014;Wong et al, 2014;Mycoo and Donovan, 2017;Beck et al, 2018). In contrast to the mainland United States where basic services were restored within days, many residents throughout the Caribbean were without basic services for months, even up a year in the case of Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico (e.g., Hincks, 2017;Kishore et al, 2018;Puerto Rico: The Forgotten Island, 2018;Shultz et al, 2018) 1 . Loss of life also varied dramatically, from almost 3,000 deaths on Puerto Rico, a poor island in the Caribbean, vs. four on the United States mainland (Ascertainment of the estimated excess mortality from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, 2018;Pasch et al, 2019).…”

“…Variation in impacts from storms and the pace of post-disaster reconstruction highlights some of the challenges faced by island nations, including: high exposure to hazards, geographic isolation and small size, fragile infrastructure grids, and poor home construction (Ghosal, 2016;Panditharante, 2018;Rodríguez-Díaz, 2018;Shultz et al, 2018). The ability to respond to and recover from disasters is often highly variable and attention is increasingly being paid to social risk factors that make certain communities especially vulnerable to hazards.…”

Mitigating tropical cyclone risks and health consequences: urgencies and innovations

“…The devastation wrought by human population exposure to the 2017 Atlantic basin hurricanes and the protracted health and social consequences of these storms highlight the destructive potential of tropical cyclones. [1][2][3] Two factors are contributing to the progressively increasing risk for weather-related disasters throughout the 21st century. 4 First, as the oceans warm and the sea levels rise, prominent tropical cyclone hazards are quantifiably increasing over time, especially peak storm intensity, maximum precipitation rate, frequency of the most intense cyclones, and areal extent of storm surge flooding.…”

“…The public health consequences of tropical cyclones will commensurately increase unless solutions are found to mitigate and adapt to increasing risk. 3 The 2017 Atlantic storms brought these risk dynamics into clear view.…”