Physical vs. Cultural Infrastructure

Not actually Erin.

Picture by KJ Photography.

Used with permission.

If you expect the unexpected, then by definition it's no longer unexpected. Which is another way to say that people in North Florida were taken completely by surprise when it started snowing yesterday. And not just little flakes that melted when they hit the ground; no, some places had up to ten inches of snow! I don't know what you Northerners consider a significant amount of snowfall, but I think that "distressingly close to a foot deep" qualifies. 

As you would expect, the snow has had dramatic effects on the Sunshine State. Our capital city Tallahassee shut down yesterday, and our biggest northern city Jacksonville closed multiple bridges due to ice. There's also concern that warmer weather today has caused the snow to melt, which will then freeze over and make road conditions dangerous. 

This is Florida's Superstorm Sandy. Back in 2012, Sandy was a category 1 hurricane that hit New York City during a high tide, and NYC wasn't prepared to handle that kind of weather. If Sandy had hit anywhere in Florida with the same strength and tide level, Floridians would have shrugged it off. By the same token, New Yorkers would have shrugged off 10 inches of snow, but it's crippling us. This is because both events exploited a gap in both physical and cultural infrastructure. 

You already know what physical infrastructure is: the tools, supplies, and people in place to address a problem. In Florida's case, those would be snowplows, sand trucks (with sand), and people skilled in driving those vehicles in snowy conditions. We have plenty of sand, but not much of the others; I only just today learned that Florida owns 11 snowplows. I don't know how many snowplows are needed to clear a metro area of 500k (Pensacola) to 2 million (Jacksonville), but I have a feeling that 11 isn't enough. If we need more than that, we'll need to get them from Georgia and Alabama, and that's assuming they can spare the people and trucks to help us.

 

Cultural infrastructure, or at least how I use the term, is the problem-solving knowledge and experience that the population as a whole possesses. For example, Floridians know how to drive in nearly whiteout levels of rain, because we're regularly hit by rainstorms for half the year. If you live here long enough, you acquire that skill, as well as skills on preparing for hurricanes and how to make it through them. That's part of our cultural infrastructure, but driving through snow and ice categorically isn't. While we may have some snowbirds who used to drive in the winter up north, those skills have likely atrophied. They're also more likely to be further south, like Central Florida (where I am) or beyond. If it snows there, the entire state will shut down and I'm going to start looking for signs of other Biblical plagues. 

So how do you prepare for the unexpected? As much as I'd love to suggest that everyone have preps for every single situation, that's unrealistic in terms of time, space, and money. Considering how rare snowfall in Florida is, preparing for it expends resources that are best spent elsewhere. Instead, the answer is a repeat of advice that I and others have given elsewhere:

1. Plan for the most likely events instead of black swans so that your preps give you the most benefit. 
2. Cultivate friendships, or at least working acquaintanceships, with people who have useful skills and knowledge that you lack so you can help each other out in emergency situations. 
3. Try to keep an open mind and stay adaptable. Flexibility of thought is always better than complacency that can lead to panic. I do this by imagining scenarios and then role-playing them as realistically as possible, but there may be ways that work better for you, such as a script or flowchart. 

You can't change a state's physical infrastructure, but you can contribute to its cultural infrastructure by practicing those three tips.

Stay prepped, or get wrecked. The choice, as always, is yours.