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A Q&A with Villanova’s Stephen M. Strader on the legacy of Hurricane Andrew, unsustainable development, and why building codes alone aren’t enough.
In around 12 hours, Hurricane Milton is set to make landfall within miles of Tampa Bay, a region that is home to more than 5 million people. Once a sleepy retirement community, the area has seen a major development boom in recent years fueled by Millennials and Gen Zers seeking the perks of coastal living; it was the 11th fastest-growing city of its size in the U.S. as of this spring and has been expected to continue to grow at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the country over the next five years. A third of those residents, including many of the newcomers, live in low-lying neighborhoods now under urgent evacuation notices due to the threat of “unsurvivable” storm surge, which could rise up to 15 feet.
The development boom that has made Tampa Bay so desirable is also why it’s particularly vulnerable. In an analysis of Hurricane Ian — the most expensive storm in Florida’s history, which struck just south of Milton’s projected track in 2022 — the re-insurance company Swiss Re found that if the storm had struck in the 1970s, it would have caused a third to a half as much damage. Simply put: You can’t adapt your way out of a hurricane problem.
If there is anyone to talk to about the vulnerabilities unique to Tampa Bay, it’s Stephen M. Strader, an associate professor and hazard geographer at Villanova University. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You shared an image on Twitter of the explosive growth in the Tampa Bay area between 1940 and 2024. Why does this make the region vulnerable to a storm like Milton? Is it just about there being more people there?
When we think about disasters, we think of the intersection of three components: a violent event, like what we have with Milton; vulnerability, or what types of people could be in the path, which could be related to racial divides, age, and gender norms; and what a lot of my work focuses on, exposure.
Exposure is just the number of people or things that we care about — businesses, schools, and things like that — that are subject to losses if an event occurs. Florida is a great example of rapid urbanization since the 1900s, and it’s rapid development in a very hazard-prone region.
It can be easy for outsiders to sit back and wonder why anyone would buy a house on the water or on a barrier island near Tampa.
There are a lot of factors that come into play when you think about where we develop and why we develop certain locations. One of the biggest pressures that we see is that it’s desirable land: In the short term, people want to live near the water. It’s beautiful! People don’t think necessarily about the risk that comes with it because they’re too focused on their dream, which is to live near the ocean.
The other side of that is, from an economic standpoint, people see it as an opportunity to have businesses and to build condos. Developers see the land and think, “How much could I buy this for and sell it for with homes on it?” This really started back with Carl Fisher, who was famous for building the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He was a thrill-seeker, but also a businessman and developer, and he loved to go to South Florida — which is now Miami Beach, and then was swamps and mangroves and not developed at all. And he thought, Hmm, this would be a great place for people to visit for vacations and experiences. He slowly started filling in the wetlands with sand. And that’s the history of Florida's development: It continued because this was very valuable land.
There is a lot of socioeconomic pressure to develop in these areas, but we’re also starting to see it change. Those pressures are lessening because you have insurance industries now and events like this year after year.
There is another issue in Southwest Florida, which is that many of the homes were constructed before building codes were updated, right?
I tend to do a lot more work on the manufactured housing side. Before 1974, all manufactured homes were called mobile homes, and there wasn’t really a standard. Then, in 1974, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development came in and said, “We need to increase the standards,” and they did.
Fast-forward to 1992 and Hurricane Andrew, and they realized these codes were not strong enough. Many people lived in manufactured homes that were destroyed by Andrew, which was a very windy hurricane. We think hurricanes are wind threats because of Andrew, but hurricanes are water threats, and most deaths occur because of that water. Andrew was the opposite.
Between 1992 and 1994, they updated building codes for manufactured housing, and actually, along the coastline, Florida has some of the strongest codes for manufactured homes in the country. A lot of the areas that will be affected by Milton will have those strong standards. But many homes were also grandfathered in if they were built before that time.
That’s just one type of housing. My guess is that when you have a lot of rapid development since the 1990s — well, I have some questions about structural integrity since building codes can be strong but they might not be followed. And we sometimes don’t know until afterwards. A lot of what is being built are condos or McMansions — it’s basically, How fast can you build them, how cheap can you build them, and how high can you sell them? And they look great until their performance is put into question.
Insurance companies are starting to see this and ask, “How do we retrofit structures?” Structure-wise, though, I think Tampa is in a decent spot. The problem is, the water is so powerful that it’s not going to matter.
What kinds of conversations do you think Floridians should be having about development or potential redevelopment after Milton?
I’m a huge proponent of resisting the urge to build right back — the reason being that’s how you get repetitive losses. The hard part is, with a lot of insurance, if you have it, you only get provisions to build back the way you were. You don’t have the ability to improve. So what I end up telling people is, sometimes these disasters provide an opportunity to assess what we need to do from a planning standpoint. This is unsustainable development, and not just because of hurricanes, but because of rising sea levels and the stress on the environment. And unfortunately, a lot of these developments were built on top of wetlands and marshes and mangroves that used to protect the island areas as natural barriers.
The hard part is that people’s emotions are very strong after disasters, and they immediately want to return to how things were. That’s why you see people picking up the pieces the day after a storm, sometimes even when they’re injured. So we have to resist the urge as a group, and say, maybe this isn’t the time to think about rebuilding here.
Many wetland restoration projects in Florida are doing that very thing: reclaiming the environments that protected people inland. But on the other side you have developers and builders and local economies that rely on people coming to these areas, and that pressures people to come right back. Then you end up with a situation of repetitive losses and that’s why FEMA has been losing money over the years — it’s not so much that we’re putting money toward disasters but that we’re not getting value out of it, because it’s so much more likely for there to be impacts becauseof that exposure growth. Look at what happened after Helene and what’s going to happen with Milton: We’re splitting resources between the two. But we’re doing the best with the tools we have when there’s pressure on both sides, and considerations both economic and safety.
Is there anything else people should know about the geography of Tampa or the development risk there?
This storm is going to be different than other storms, and that’s because of the direction and intensity of it. The one thing we have to remember is that all that development — and everybody, for the most part, who isn’t 100 years old — has not experienced a hurricane of this magnitude in their life. That means everyone has the cognitive bias to say, “I’ve been through hurricanes before and was fine.” That is probably not going to be the case with this event; no one has been through this before.
What’s worrisome to me is that the trajectory of the hurricane is changing. A subtle shift north or south by 20 miles could mean a big difference for the Tampa region — if you have the right side of the hurricane push water into the Bay, it’s no different than 10 people jumping into a hot tub. The water level goes up and forces all that water into a smaller region, which is going to lead to more storm surge in Tampa Bay, Clearwater, and the St. Pete area. I don’t want to call it a “perfect storm,” but if you push all that water in there, you’re going to flood people in a way that hurricanes they’ve been through before never got close to. And I worry, if it goes south, about Fort Myers and the areas that were hit hard by Hurricane Ian. So it’s multilayered.
The good news that I’ll bring up is that we’re reeling from Helene, which means people have it in their brains about how bad this can be, which is probably causing more people to evacuate than normal. We have a problem with disaster amnesia in places where a hurricane hasn’t happened in a long time so “it’s not going to happen again.” And we forget. I remember Hurricane Katrina and what it did to New Orleans. It still has effects, but the students I’m teaching now weren’t even alive when it hit. These memories are short, and many people in Florida today weren’t there 30 years ago or 20 years ago. The only good thing to come out of Helene is that people are now aware of what can happen.
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.