"From 60 to 90" : A Project to Improve Resilience to Windstorms in Vulnerable Communities Across the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas

Colonias are subdivided neighborhoods in the United States along the border with Mexico, where migrant workers from Latin America have settled since the latter half of the 20th Century. The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (RGV) has the vast majority of colonias with more than 1200 across the four-county region, which extends from the Gulf of Mexico to about 100 miles inland. Colonias feature thousands of poorly built or poorly anchored structures, often housing large families. Most residents speak Latin American Spanish as their primary language, and a majority of adults speak English “not well”, according to data from the most recent United States Census.

Since 2008, local surveys of convective windstorms have indicated the vast majority of significant to destructive damage occurred in colonias. Damage-producing winds were estimated to be below hurricane force (33 m s-1) in many cases. In 2023, four notable convective windstorm events traversed the RGV, culminating in the Laguna Heights, Texas EF1 tornado on 13 May. The tornado demolished six very substandard residences, tragically killing one person and injuring eleven others. The tornado was the key event to energize a wider resilience project, which began in 2022. The project name, “From 60 to 90”, describes the intention to improve the thousands of substandard residences, at minimal cost, to withstand winds up to 90 mph (40.2 m s-1), rather than 60 mph (26.8 m s-1),

In November 2022, a meeting, facilitated by the National Weather Service’s Brownsville/Rio Grande Valley office, was held with local, state, and federal stakeholders to discuss how to develop a formal process to increase both structural and knowledge-based resilience for residents of colonias and other vulnerable neighborhoods where substandard construction is prevalent. Representatives from academia, land management, emergency management, insurance, and the media built a framework to develop methods to communicate the importance of improving structural resilience to windstorms - at minimal costs - while educating residents on understanding windstorm warning messages in order for them to take appropriate action to protect their lives. During spring and summer 2023, these plans were presented at local, regional, and state-level Emergency Management Conferences to garner support from a wider audience of stakeholders. Around the same time, local organizations across the RGV involved in improving structural-based resilience in colonias joined the effort. One such example is Proyecto Azteca, an organization that helps build new single-family homes, but is also invested in improving the quality of substandard housing that currently exists.

This presentation will describe the current status of the “From 60 to 90” project as an interim step until better constructed single-family homes replace the initial substandard structures. Outreach efforts to colonias via trusted organizations, based on cultural understanding and social/behavioral research, will be described, as will progress toward achieving improvements and structural/knowledge-based resilience. The status of financial assistance from grants via the NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge and other mitigation funding sources to local, regional, and state-level organizations will also be discussed. Future benchmarks of the “From 60 to 90” Project will also be provided.