Exactly how many homes and businesses were impacted by the 2016 flooding?
Surprisingly, it’s a difficult question to answer.
Data collected after any disaster remains spotty and imprecise. But now state officials say they are looking for better ways to track their true impact.
“No one agency is empowered to perfectly capture this data now, but there could be value in collecting this information uniformly after a disaster,” Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Don Pierson tells Daily Report in a statement in response to a data request.
Doing so would require legislation, he adds. But LED officials are researching ideas to make it happen. One involves creating a database in which insurance agents and first responders would enter data on each business or individual seeking assistance in real time.
Such information is currently collected through a patchwork of different agencies, at different times and without a centralized database. To get a basic idea of how many businesses flooded—both those that closed for good and those that reopened—officials have to coordinate with several different entities. Even then, it can be difficult to determine which ones simply closed for other reasons.
An analysis conducted by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber soon after the August flood determined that roughly 145,000 homes and 11,994 businesses in the Capital Region are located in flood-affected areas. That data, however, represents people and businesses placed at risk because of their location in flooded areas—not those that actually flooded.
LED says more than 6,000 businesses were likely impacted by last year’s flood, but not all local or parish agencies could provide data. In East Baton Rouge, more than 800 businesses have closed and 1,452 have opened since the flood—but not all of those can be directly attributed to flooding, according to Open Data BR numbers analyzed by Business Report. In Ascension Parish, the commercial impact was negligible, and Livingston Parish did not have parish-level data.
LED and the governor’s Office of Community Development recently mailed surveys to 25,000 businesses in the state identified in the FEMA intake process after the flooding in March and August of 2016 to find determine the needs of businesses affected.
Low-interest federal loans granted by the Small Business Administration are another metric to use—3,929 businesses applied for SBA assistance after the August floods, and the SBA approved $162 million in disaster loans. However, SBA spokesman Michael Flores says not all businesses register for assistance—some simply fold, while others don’t apply for SBA aid for other reasons. And federal officials are largely confined to tracking people and businesses who registered for help.
“If you didn’t register, we have no idea you’re there,” says FEMA spokeswoman Robin Smith.
—Sam Karlin
