Gene Kennedy is the president of Savannah Trims, a company that designs and creates removable and permanent barriers to protect buildings from damage during flooding events.
With Kennedy being in the business of flood protection, he's well-placed to see how these weather events have been increasing in both frequency and intensity, and he observed how areas not typically prone to hurricanes and flooding are struggling to deal with the impacts.
"The flood events kept evolving over the years, so our company latched on to it in around the year 2000," Kennedy told The Cool Down. "We've seen this stuff over and over and over again, only nowadays it's at a larger scale and more frequent.
"In the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency keeps changing all the flood maps, so there are more and more flood zones. So, what we've done over the years is develop more product that can protect your assets from the flood event."
Kennedy described how notable flooding events during 2012's Hurricane Sandy — a Category 3 Atlantic hurricane that devastated the U.S. Northeast — demonstrated how the New York subway system was particularly ill-equipped to deal with vast amounts of water inundating the city. According to Progressive Railroading, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority sustained nearly $5 billion in damages.
Savannah Trims was tasked with ensuring that some of these areas along the transport network could deal with the increasingly present risk of flooding events, helping to save money from water destruction and get valuable public services back up and running quicker.
"Our mission and our business is to design product to protect the people and the building from flood damage," Kennedy said.
"We've helped design products for the specifics of [the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey]. … We created a glass enclosure for the subway entrance at the World Trade Center. It had to take seven-and-a-half feet of water. We had to design our glass to be a particular thickness and strength to accomplish all these pressures.
"… We also created stainless steel doors for the basement of the World Trade Center that had to take 17 feet of water … but that one person could still open and close. We're doing one now that's for 29 feet of water, if you can believe that."
The energy grid, the construction sector, the transportation industry, fast fashion companies, and agriculture, among others, make up the fabric of daily existence for the people who live on planet Earth. However, they also put our homes, businesses, and citizens in danger because of the pollution they produce.
The burning of dirty energy sources — such as gas, coal, and petroleum — that these industries depend on is basically rocket fuel for extreme weather. NASA has observed that rising global temperatures, caused by planet-warming gases trapping heat in our atmosphere, make heat waves, droughts, and wildfires longer and more intense.
But, perhaps surprisingly, they also increase the risk of devastating flooding, and that's especially true because of the rising threat of hurricanes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted the potential for four to seven major hurricanes during the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season between June 1 and Nov. 30.
Kennedy wants to emphasize that there are products to protect against flooding but that perhaps businesses — and homeowners — don't understand they are available.
This is becoming particularly important as insurance companies are increasingly reluctant to provide coverage — or otherwise significantly boost the prices of premiums — in the face of extreme weather events.
In California, for example, Scotts Valley residents' cost of insurance is two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half times more than it was five years ago because of the rising risk of wildfire events. This is making people leave the area in search of safer communities where insurance is more easily accessible.
It could soon be a similar case for flood risk. And if insurance companies can't step up to protect homes and businesses, prevention is likely to become an important measure for property owners. In many cases, insurance providers don't even protect against flooding at all, something Kennedy describes as "the most amazing phenomenon." He also said the lack of insurance discounts available for homes with flood protection is "perplexing."
While Savannah Trims largely deals with commercial and industrial buildings, the company is increasingly looking at residential property protection products as communities bear the brunt of extreme weather.
"Even though you would think domestic installations would be a big popular market, it's only now starting to evolve. So, we're looking to do more of it," Kennedy noted. "We've got product now we're developing just for that, which will probably be ready within the next month."
But beyond what Savannah Trims offers, Kennedy is perhaps more concerned with protecting people from both the physical and financial damages floods can bring.
"As a citizen, I feel like I'm helping people if they know that these things are available and they've got something else to look at," he said. "We know with these hurricanes, we've been through this damage. It's not pretty. We've been without electricity for two or three weeks at a time. … It's a horror."
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