Strategic resilience can help prevent tragedy in the next flash flood

The death toll from the July 4 flash floods in central Texas—at least 136 dead, including thirty-seven children—is a failure of strategic resilience that should concern all Americans. Flash floods are not unique to central Texas. Flash floods killed an average of 113 people a year over the past ten years, based on National Weather Service statistics. Hurricanes, by contrast, kill an average of twenty-seven; tornadoes forty-eight. Only extreme heat is a more deadly natural disaster, with an average of 238 in the past decade.

The Atlantic Council’s resilience task force defines resilience as the ability of individuals, societies, and systems to anticipate, withstand, recover from, adapt to, and bounce forward from shocks and disruptions. Strategic resilience, when it works, leverages the powers of governments at all levels and the private sector to strengthen individual and community resilience.

What happened in Texas was a strategic failure at all levels to protect thousands of residents and visitors, including eight-year-old campers, in a river valley known to federal, state, and local weather and emergency managers as “Flash Flood Alley” and “one of the three most dangerous regions in the U.S.A. for flash floods.”

Read more at Atlantic Council