Disaster Prep Should Get More Attention

How the Government Saved Lives in Moore, Oklahoma : The New Yorker:

...Just as coastal towns and delta cities are beginning to adapt to the “new norm” of recurrent extreme weather, states and towns in the vast Tornado Alley (which stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians) need to improve their preparedness for dangerous winds and thunderstorms. The tragic deaths of the seven children who drowned in the basement at the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore suggests that, at a minimum, all schools and public office buildings should have secure shelters. Today, about a hundred schools in Oklahoma have safe rooms that were built with federal funds, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the program’s budget zeroed out long before the vast majority of the state’s schools, including Plaza Towers Elementary, could install one.

The United States invests far more in disaster recovery than in preparing for disasters by designing and creating more resilient buildings and infrastructure...