Build higher, build stronger ? it pays off big in Kansas.
Disaster mitigation investments in Kansas yielded more savings than efforts in any other state, a new study found. The Pew Charitable Trusts listed Missouri as a close second.
Pew crunched numbers from a previous study that looked at federal disaster mitigation grants between 1993 and 2016. The paper compares spending against the potential costs that were avoided.
The report shows that every dollar spent in Kansas to protect against flood and tornado damage saved $6.81. In Missouri each dollar saved $6.72.
?The takeaway for policy makers really should be that investing in mitigation saves,? said Colin Foard, one of the authors of the study.
The savings come from avoiding property repairs, casualties, disruptions to businesses and administrative expenses related to insurance.
The findings come at a time when Kansas residents are dealing with flooding affecting most of the state and cleaning up from recent tornadoes.
The study looked at the continental U.S. and considered mitigation programs aimed at averting costs from earthquakes, fires, floods and wind damage.
The mitigation efforts in Kansas and Missouri addressed only the threats of wind and flooding, but those projects had such a large payback that the two states topped the rankings.
The smallest payback was in earthquake- and fire-prone California, but the study still estimated that every dollar of mitigation in the Golden State saved $3.26.
Mitigation can include adding storm shelters and structural updates to buildings that reduce damage from tornadoes. When it comes to combating floods, officials can remove structures from flood-prone areas or require building structures higher to avoid flood damage.
Over the 23-year period that was examined, the report found the state and federal government spent around $220 million dollars on wind and flood mitigation in Kansas, which netted about $1.5 billion dollars in savings.
Federal programs play a major role in disaster mitigation in Kansas and elsewhere.
