International

US hurricane rebuilding rules must adapt to ‘era of climate change’: expert

Photo: The New York Times

AFP | Lucie Aubourg

After an extreme weather event, such as Hurricane Ian which devastated parts of Florida last month, most Americans choose to rebuild rather than move to less hazardous areas.

But as climate change increases the frequency and scale of natural disasters, does US policy need to adapt?

Gavin Smith, a professor of environmental planning at the University of North Carolina, worked for several states following major hurricanes, including Katrina in Mississippi (2005) and Matthew in North Carolina (2016).

According to him, current reconstruction standards are not up to the challenges posed by climate change, but correcting them will require real “political will.”

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Smith’s responses to AFP have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Current reconstruction rules

Q: What are the rules for re-construction after a hurricane, and are they adapted to climate change?

A: Communities must comply with the local codes and standards in place in their jurisdiction before the storm struck.

In the US, we have the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which has historically been subsidized by the federal government.

For a community to join the program, it has to adopt certain flood risk reduction standards. They include building codes as well as land use plans.

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Then, if a home is damaged in the storm more than 50 percent of their value, it must be built back to the most recent code and standards in place.

Our standard for flood is rebuilding largely back to the “100 year flood,” more accurately termed the one percent annual chance flood event. But in an era of climate change, that “100 year” flood is happening more and more often.

Most risk reduction codes and standards often reflect a climate of the past.

For example, we spent $14 billion rebuilding the levee system in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. That levee system was built back to the “100 year flood.”

So you could make the argument that in the era of climate change, that levee system is already out of date.

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Political will

Q: What do you expect from government officials?

A: Disasters can present opportunities to rebuild communities safer.

What I’m suggesting is that if we’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building these communities back, we need to require communities to adopt higher codes and standards.

But that takes political will of both members of Congress and local elected officials.

These are really difficult trillion dollar questions.

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You’ll also have builders and the private sector saying, “We should limit those kinds of regulations, as we need to quickly rebuild.”

It takes a lot of political will for a mayor or for a governor to say “No, we’ve got to do what’s right in the long run.:

Unfortunately, people don’t get elected by saying “I am going to require higher standards.”

That’s not a winning slogan. It takes political will to say, enough is enough, we need to adopt higher standards, it’s going to take time, cost more, and people may have to pay more to do it.

That said, we also need to make sure we include equity in processes adopted to develop those standards.

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The shrimpers and the crabbers that live in a very modest house on the water, if we make them adopt higher standards, can they afford it?

Rules for resilience

Q: Concretely, what would be these better standards?

A: A really simple way to think about it is “where” and “how” you build in relation to natural hazards, including those exacerbated by climate change.

The “how” include elevating structures, more stringent standards for wind performance, like better roof shingles, hardening our infrastructure — communication systems, bridges, roads, levees… We can also do this by protecting natural systems like dunes and wetlands.

The “where” is what we would often refer to as land use planning.

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Should we be putting a hospital, or a school, in an area subject to storm surge? Probably not.

A community may choose to say, we’re not going to build a house within 200 meters of the beach.

Or adopt a gradual disinvestment strategy in extremely risky areas (managed retreat). It’s very difficult to do politically, but it’s happening on a small scale.

Resilience is really about a series of protective measures or choices. It’s not just one. A levee, if that’s your only protection and it fails, to me that’s not resilience.

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International

Three U.S. Executions Set for Same Day as Trump Pushes to Expand Death Penalty

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 U.S. states, while three others —California, Oregon and Pennsylvania— currently have moratoriums in place.

The United States is set to carry out three executions on the same day, a rare occurrence that has not happened since 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

President Donald Trump has sought to expand the use of capital punishment for what he describes as “the most heinous crimes.” In April, the Department of Justice proposed expanding execution methods to include firing squads, lethal gas and electrocution.

Tennessee is scheduled to execute Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines, 66, on Thursday. He was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of a woman, according to local media.

In Oklahoma, Carlos Cuesta-Rodríguez, 70, is scheduled to be executed for a 2003 murder.

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Meanwhile, Alabama plans to execute Jeremy Williams, 42, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl.

The United States carried out 47 executions in 2025, the highest number since 2009, when 52 executions were recorded.

Florida conducted the largest number of executions last year, with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas, with five each.

Of the executions carried out in 2025, 39 were conducted by lethal injection. Three were carried out by firing squad and five through nitrogen hypoxia, a method that involves forcing nitrogen gas into a face mask, depriving the prisoner of oxygen.

The United Nations has condemned nitrogen gas as a cruel and inhumane method of capital punishment.

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International

Colombia Earthquake Death Toll Reaches 265 as Rescue Teams Race Against Time

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Colombia on Monday, the strongest to hit the country this century, has so far left 265 people dead and around 3,500 injured.

In Cali, Pereira and other cities in western Colombia, rescue teams are working around the clock as they search for survivors. The first 72 hours following the earthquake will be reached at 7:34 a.m. local time (12:34 GMT), a critical window for rescue efforts as the chances of finding survivors generally decline significantly after that point.

Among those anxiously awaiting news is Valeria Cardona, a 26-year-old student searching for two of her cousins in Cali.

“We have some suspicions about their location, but there are no signs of life,” she said. “Hope is the last thing you lose, but we are anxious about receiving news we don’t want to hear.”

A team of members from the Topos Aztecas, the renowned Mexican volunteer rescue group, has also arrived in Cali to join the search. The rescuers had been working in neighboring Venezuela, where a double earthquake on June 24 left more than 6,000 people dead.

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“We all came from Venezuela, from La Guaira. The 41 days we spent working there made us stronger because we overcame hunger, pain and sleepless nights,” said Héctor Méndez, 80, president of Topos Aztecas.

Méndez encouraged those affected by the disaster not to lose hope and emphasized the commitment required from rescue teams during an emergency.

“Do not feel like victims. This is not an office or workshop schedule. This is real life, where the best part of the human spirit emerges. These are things of nature that happen,” he said.

International

German Authorities Investigate More Than 100 New Cases Against Convicted Nurse

German authorities announced Monday that they are investigating more than 100 additional cases involving a nurse who was sentenced to life in prison in November for the murder of 10 patients.

The man, who was 44 at the time of his conviction, worked in palliative care at a hospital in Würselen, near Aachen. He was also found guilty of 27 attempted murders.

Aachen prosecutors are now examining 121 new cases, a spokesperson for the office said.

Prosecutors leading the investigation are preparing a new indictment that could be filed next year. Nearly 40 bodies have so far been exhumed as part of the investigation, which covers alleged incidents dating back to September 2022.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the city of Cologne are investigating 18 additional cases. According to a spokesperson, the oldest case dates back to 2010.

Before working at the Würselen hospital, the nurse is believed to have worked at a clinic in eastern Cologne, according to local media reports.

At the time of his November conviction, the court ruled that the severity of his crimes was particularly serious, a finding that would make it difficult for him to obtain early release after 15 years in prison.

Between December 2023 and May 2024, the nurse administered overdoses of sedatives or painkillers to terminally ill patients, most of them elderly, according to the indictment in the original case.

His alleged motive was to sedate patients who required care so that he could minimize his workload during night shifts, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, the nurse worked «without enthusiasm» and «without motivation». When faced with patients requiring extensive care, he allegedly became «irritated» and showed a lack of empathy.

The case has revived painful memories in Germany of Niels Högel, a former nurse and serial killer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2019 for the murders of at least 85 patients.