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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, we will get an update on Hurricane Milton and invite calls from any of you personally affected or who have friends or relatives in Florida who are being personally affected. Help us report this story. What conditions are you experiencing or hearing about from someone you know? What do people need? Maybe you yourself are here in the New York-New Jersey area because you got out of Florida for a while specifically to avoid the storm. Tell us any such stories of yourself or those you know at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Here's some of the latest breaking even as we've been on the air. This version is from The Guardian. It says at least four people were confirmed killed this morning as Florida began to assess the damage from Hurricane Milton, a Category 3 storm that caused extensive property damage across the state and left more than 3.4 million homes and businesses without power. Authorities said the fatalities were in a senior community in St. Lucie County that was struck by a tornado formed in Milton's outer bands.

The tornado happened before the hurricane made landfall near Sarasota, which is on Florida's West Coast. Last night, parts of Sarasota, Fort Myers, Venice, and other Gulf Coast cities were inundated by up to 10 feet of storm surge while tornadoes wrecked buildings, including a sheriff's department facility. The skies turned purple. Winds as high as 120 miles an hour turned cars, trees, and debris into projectiles. There's a little of that. Of course, this is all on the heels of Hurricane Helene.

Here's how Florida Congresswoman Kathy Castor described what they're facing today on Morning Edition. Oh, we don't have that clip yet. Okay, so let's bring on our guest. Our guest is Jeffrey Schlegelmilch. He's director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness or NCDP at Columbia University's Climate School. He's author of the books Catastrophic Incentives: Why Our Approaches to Disasters Keep Falling Short and Rethinking Readiness: A Brief Guide to Twenty-First-Century Megadisasters. Welcome, Professor Schlegelmilch.

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: First, anything you want to say just about conditions down there as you're hearing them from your perch here? One thing that's a little good is that it was actually predicted to be worse than it was.

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch: Absolutely, yes. I think there was a very strong concern that the storm would take a more northerly track and push a lot more of the storm surge into the heavily populated Tampa Bay area. Thankfully, that surge is less than expected. It's still obviously hitting very, very hard. Unfortunately, we're already hearing about fatalities, but it does look as though that worst-case scenario was avoided, although still, of course, a very large, very dangerous, very bad storm.

Brian Lehrer: I know from our colleagues, On the Media, who put out what they call a Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Storm Edition, this is how to be media literate when hearing media reports of weather events or potential weather events, that hurricane categories, like I said, this was a Cat 3, only take into account wind speed, not rain. Aren't slow moving storms, meaning a little less windy, that dump more rain often even more damaging?

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch: Yes, and especially in mainland areas like the United States, most of the damage that we see-- I shouldn't say "most." The majority of the damage that we see and the majority of the injury and deaths that we see, at least the direct deaths, as a result of storms like this come from water. They come from the storm surge and they come from the inland rainfall. We can have very ferocious storms with very high winds that do cause a lot of damage.

We see like with Helene, just the tremendous amount of rainfall that it dumped. Even Superstorm Sandy here in the New York area not so long ago did the majority of its damage, not as a category hurricane but as a subtropical or, excuse me, but after it had weakened and was no longer a hurricane, but had that tremendous storm surge. Categories are not as useful of an approximation for risk as we might think they are.

Brian Lehrer: To the title of your book, Catastrophic Incentives: Why Our Approaches to Disasters Keep Falling Short, is there anything from this that applies to that or the FEMA response to Hurricane Helene? There's been so much reporting about how there aren't enough FEMA boots on the ground because there aren't enough employees to deal with a storm of that magnitude and with the magnitude of destruction that it caused.

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch: Yes, absolutely. My colleague, my co-author and I, Ellen Carlin, we really look at a number of different sectors, including government, and look at what are those underlying incentive structures. In government and particularly in electoral politics, our elected officials, they're heavily incentivized to invest on the response and the recovery, bringing in money, bringing in resources on the back end. There's not a lot of reward for elected officials and, actually, no real measurable effect for investing in preventing the damage, investing in preventing these things from occurring.

We're seeing that now where we have our standing funds for disaster relief running out of money and needing more and more emergency supplemental funding. We're very drawn to the aftermath of a disaster, but it's much, much harder to get traction when you're trying to make the case for investment pre-disaster. Some of this is changing a little bit as we're seeing areas hit harder and harder by disasters, but it remains something where we're spending far more on the back end cleaning up rather than preventing the damage and the impacts to lives and livelihoods in the first place.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a caller with a little second-hand report of something going on down there. Lisa in Cutchogue on Long Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi, Brian. I'm a long-time and repeat caller. I have a son who's a college kid at State College of Florida, Manatee. That's in Bradenton, which is Sarasota, Bradenton area that took the direct hit. He actually drove three and a half hours to West Palm on Tuesday in that crazy traffic to get on a West Palm flight to get him back to Long Island, to get him out of harm's way.

He's hearing from his college today that, actually, the college is intact. The baseball field is intact. That's good news because they're a D1 baseball team, junior college, and he's a baseball player. He's a pitcher there. That was the good news. They also are a little bit inland, so they are considered Zone C. Zone A and B are the waterfront. Zone C is just a little bit inland, like maybe five minutes inland from Zones A and B. I guess that's kind of a--

Brian Lehrer: I'm curious, Lisa, it might be too early for you to know this. In the context of disaster preparedness as we were just discussing with the guest, is there any feeling on the part of your son or people he's around that, "Oh, the media or the state made too big a thing of this. They forced so many people to evacuate with all this fearmongering. Now, it wasn't actually that bad. I'm not going to pay attention next time they say that"?

Lisa: Not at all. I have to tell you, I could hear the fear in my son's voice. This is not his first evacuation. Two years ago in September for Ian, he also had to evacuate. That one, I think they didn't think would be so bad. This one, nobody was staying put from his college. Even his coaches who are hunkered down usually with generators and stuff, they left. Everyone, I think, really heated it. What's surprising to me is the tornadoes actually were more of the threat, I think, in this one, especially on the East Coast.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, as it turned out.

Lisa: I was shocked to hear St. Lucie being hit before the storm really took its toll on the West Coast.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and that's on the Atlantic Coast, not on the Gulf Coast.

Lisa: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you very, very much. Any reaction to that, including people's perception of disaster warnings or anything, Professor?

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch: Well, yes. Well, it does go to show as well too. Florida actually being hit by a lot of hurricanes actually has had more investment than we typically see in this pre-disaster mitigation. A lot of that often comes in the aftermath of a disaster as new funds become available to prevent a similar one next time. Because Florida gets hit so much, it's not surprising.

I'm very glad to hear, first and foremost, that her son is doing okay, that they were able to get out, and that the school is still intact. Even the ball field. [chuckles] That's good to hear. Again, the building codes are typically further along in terms of preventing or being able to withstand these types of things. Of course, there were elements to the storm that just avoided the worst-case scenario. I think this also goes to show the value of when those investments are made, how they are made.

Also, I think the messaging, it's worth noting that this is a problem where people may say, "Hey, the last storm wasn't so bad. I'm just going to ride it out." We've seen actually for Hurricane Ian, I remember Governor DeSantis specifically saying, "Don't rely on past memory. This is going to be really dangerous." Even in the way that the emergency managers are messaging this and getting out ahead of this, this is a group of emergency managers that know what they're doing because they deal with this all the time.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another caller. Amy in Pine Beach, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amy.

Amy: Hey, Brian. Thanks for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for making it.

Amy: I just wanted to share with your audience. I own a house between the Seven Mile Bridge and Key West in the Florida Keys. I had a very sleepless night. My parents rode out the storm. We live at sea level. Leading up to the storm, it was warning, warning, warning. It's coming in from the Gulf of Mexico. There might be 3 miles difference between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean in that particular area.

They premised it. "We're staying here. We're not going anywhere. This is probably the safest place in Florida to stay." In fact, they kept shooting photos of people driving into the keys from Naples, Tampa, Sarasota, that hid out from the storm down there. If you can imagine evacuating the Key West during a hurricane, but that was the scenario this time around.

Brian Lehrer: That's a long drive on narrow roads, right? All the way down there from the inland.

Amy: It is, but if the storm is headed east and north from there, where else can you go? [chuckles] At least maybe they had a couple of margaritas and forgot their problems until they get home. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Drove to Margaritaville. Hopefully, not after drinking the margaritas. Amy, thank you very much. Here's that clip of Florida Congresswoman Kathy Castor on Morning Edition today describing what they're facing.

Congresswoman Kathy Castor: We're living in a new abnormal of storm after storm. These are more intense. The surge came in feet above we had ever experienced before because of the extraordinarily hot temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico driven by the warming of the climate.

Brian Lehrer: Professor, you also wrote a book about 21st-century megadisasters as you call it. What more do we need to do to prepare for the effects of climate change? Because like the Florida congresswoman there, warmer ocean temperatures are leading to bigger storms.

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch: Yes, and I think that's a really, really key point, is that the types of hazards that we're facing are just stronger. They're intensifying in terms of the hurricanes more quickly, carrying more water, more wind speed and other factors, and just behaving differently in ways that maybe we don't fully understand yet. In doing this, we have to do a few things simultaneously.

First and foremost, we have to continue to work on emissions reduction. The only way to really get ahead of the human-caused climate change portion of this increase in disasters is to ultimately reduce emissions. We also have to adapt. We have to invest more on the preparedness side. It's also worth noting as well too that even if climate change wasn't happening, we would still be seeing an increase in the impacts from disasters.

They wouldn't be as pronounced. The disasters themselves wouldn't have these added amplifications that we're seeing a lot of the time, but we're building in vulnerable areas. We have more and more infrastructure, more and more people in vulnerable areas. We have to recognize that there are a lot of different elements in the way we choose to build and how we build that require more upfront investment to be more resilient to these disasters that are also being made worse by our contributions to climate change.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take one more call before we run out of time. I think Allie in Forest Hills is very concerned about someone down there and might want some advice as we go. Allie, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Allie: Hi. How are you? I'm curious. My mother, who's 82, is down there. Because all the cell towers are out, when do you reach out to the police for a wellness check?

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Can you help her with that? I don't know if that's in your expertise, Professor.

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch: That's a good question. I would say, if nothing else, if you have concerns, to reach out now to the police and the Red Cross. If they're able to answer, they will. If they're not, we'll be able to give you a more precise timeline. We do see the cell towers go out. A lot of times, they're restored fairly quickly. Most of them have batteries and generators.

Even if the power's out, they can still function. It just depends on the level of damage. I sincerely hope for the best. I wouldn't delay reaching out. I don't know that they'll be able to do those wellness checks yet, but they could give you a more precise answer. Again, the local police check the local emergency managers as well as the Red Cross activity there because they do a lot in terms of helping to connect people and if someone ends up in the shelter or something like that to help reunify.

Brian Lehrer: I think I would second that thought that the answer to the question is now, right? It's already the morning after. You can't get in touch with them. I know you want to just be secure in the knowledge. Even if you think they're probably okay, I'd say now. Thank you for your call and good luck to you and them. We will leave it there. We thank Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Climate School. Thank you again, callers, and good luck as we head further into what the congresswoman called the new abnormal. Thanks a lot for joining us.

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