Episode 311: Moving Communities Out of Harm’s Way with Gavin Smith

Episode notes

What happens when a community faces the reality that staying in place is no longer safe?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

In this episode, Gavin Smith shares what it takes to guide communities through one of the most difficult decisions they will ever face, leaving their homes behind. Drawing from decades of experience in emergency management and disaster recovery, he walks through the emotional weight, technical complexity, and long timelines required to relocate entire communities with care and dignity.

Gavin reflects on leading efforts to relocate more than 5,000 families after major hurricanes, and explains why planning before disaster strikes is critical. He shares lessons from Princeville, North Carolina, a historic community that has faced repeated flooding, and highlights how trust, engagement, and local choice shape successful outcomes.

The conversation also explores international collaboration with Australia and New Zealand, where different approaches to funding and planning offer valuable insights. At the center of it all is a simple truth, this work is about people, place, and the long road toward resilience.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 1:22 Gavin's path into relocation work
3. 2:00 What community-led relocation involves
4. 3:20 A North Carolina example: Princeville
5. 5:41 Short-termism and learning lessons
6. 6:51 Sharing lessons between the US and Australia
7. 8:20 Lessons from Jimmy V
8. 9:49 New guides and products
9. 11:42 Best practices from the guide
10. 12:37 Words to live by

Questions answered in this episode

What is community-led relocation and why is it needed?

Gavin Smith describes community-led relocation as moving entire communities out of harm's way due to flooding, sea level rise, or bushfire. In an era of climate change, it becomes more likely that some communities will need to move as storms happen more often and become more intense.

Hear it at 1:07

How many families did Gavin Smith help relocate in North Carolina?

Gavin Smith says he led teams that bought out and relocated over 5,000 families following major disasters in North Carolina, including the worst disaster in the state's history and Hurricane Floyd three years later.

Hear it at 1:31

Why should relocation planning happen before a disaster instead of after?

Gavin Smith explains that communities should not have to make fundamental decisions in the aftermath of a disaster when they are hurting, may have lost their job, or had their house destroyed. Thoughtful planning well in advance over long timescales allows communities to decide whether they want to move without the pressure of immediate crisis.

Hear it at 3:45

What happened with the town of Princeville in North Carolina?

Princeville, the oldest African-American community in America settled by formerly enslaved people, was flooded repeatedly by hurricanes. After Hurricane Floyd they chose to rebuild, but after being flooded again by Hurricane Matthew they started thinking about relocation. The state bought a 52 acre parcel outside the floodplain adjacent to the town for possible relocation.

Hear it at 3:45

What are some alternatives if a community does not want to relocate?

Gavin Smith says communities can pursue other strategies including elevating houses in place, adopting nature-based solutions like protecting wetlands, using landscape design features like native vegetation or berms and swales, or clustering future development on high ground while maintaining low-lying areas as open space.

Hear it at 11:55

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 311 transcript

Moving Communities Out of Harm’s Way with Gavin Smith

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Gavin Smith

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series, recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 Conference in Perth, Australia, alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conferences. With over 28 conversations with fire chiefs, engineers, researchers and innovators, we explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting into a rapidly changing world. From climate resilience and community-led adaption, to the rise of new technologies like satellites, AI, and simple tools designed for the field, to the importance of mental health, diversity, and global collaboration, these episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. Enjoy. Well, it's great to have another fellow American in the podcast booth with me down in Perth, down under. How you doing, Gavin?

[0:54] Gavin Smith: Doing great, yeah, it's good to be here.

[0:55] Kevin Sofen: We also have some Australian Tim Tams.

[0:58] Gavin Smith: I've had them, they're tasty.

[0:59] Kevin Sofen: They're quite good. I've maybe gone through a whole sleeve myself, so I'm starting slow this morning. So what brings you all the way from North Carolina to Perth?

[1:07] Gavin Smith: Yeah, so I was asked at the AFAC conference to give a keynote address focused on community-led relocation, the issues, techniques, challenges with moving entire communities out of harm's way, whether it's due to flooding, sea level rise, and perhaps even bushfire.

[1:22] Kevin Sofen: So you're at North Carolina State University. What is it that, like, how did you get into this? What is it that, what was your path to now working in such an interesting niche?

[1:31] Gavin Smith: Yeah, so when I was in graduate school, I worked at a UN-funded think tank, Texas A&M University, that studied natural hazards and disasters. And then upon graduation, went to work in North Carolina emergency management. And two weeks after I was hired, we had the worst disaster in our state's history and was tasked with large-scale buyback or buyout programs. And then we had Hurricane Floyd three years later. And in the end, I led teams that bought out and relocated over 5,000 families.

[2:00] Kevin Sofen: So I've heard this term of this community led relocation and there's this buyout. I know it's a tough thing. It's emotional when you're attached to land and all of a sudden something happens and you're being told that you, not only you shouldn't live there, but you can't live there anymore. And so it's, but it's, I know it's complicated. It's an onion that you got to peel back these different factors, but give me a little bit of context of like what goes into this whole community-led relocations and how do you even approach it from the first conversation to actually relocating?

[2:30] Gavin Smith: Yeah, you know, it's enormously complex technically, but it's also perhaps even more challenging to deal with things like deep place attachment, you know, the deep attachment to place. Maybe you grew up in a fishing community and you're deeply wedded to that place. And so to do it right, to do community-led relocation right should be done very thoughtfully, very empathetically. It should be over long timescales where you actually engage with the community and it may not be for them. They may not want to do it. They wouldn't be forced to do it. But there are funding sources and policies that are being developed around the world because in an era of climate change, it is more difficult, it becomes more and more likely that some of these communities are gonna need to move.

[3:11] Kevin Sofen: So obviously climate change being one reason about what's causing some of these, the fluctuations of usually it all comes on the water, too much or too little. And I know North Carolina is no stranger to some of these different challenges, particularly that hurricanes present. Within your experience now working within North America and even North America and North Carolina, is there any sort of example of how, again, a natural disaster or a kind of a brewing flood or a brewing drought caused the kind of before, during, and after of a relocation, community-led relocation initiative?

[3:45] Gavin Smith: Sure, and one important thing to recognize with community-led relocation, ideally, you are doing really thoughtful planning well in advance of a storm so that they don't have to make such fundamental decisions in the aftermath of a disaster. When they're hurting, when they may have lost their job, maybe their house is destroyed, they're trying to get an insurance payout. And then they're also being asked, do you want to move? And do we want to tear your house down and give you money to move somewhere else that maybe you're not familiar with? That's what often happens in the United States because the money and the opportunity, if you will, is there to take action. But in reality, we ought to be doing it over long timescales to do preemptively, to think through these issues and decide whether they want to do it. In one case, for example, in North Carolina, the town of Princeville, the oldest African-American community in America, settled by formerly enslaved people, they were flooded repeatedly. They were flooded after hurricanes Floyd, but then more recently, hurricane Matthew. Floyd, they chose to stay to rebuild, they were flooded again, and they started thinking about possible relocation. And so the governor of the state asked me put together a team and we did, a faculty and extension experts and students and land use planners and other practitioners to help inform that move. And the state bought a 52 acre parcel of land adjacent to the town, outside of the town boundary, but just adjacent to it outside of the floodplain. And so we came up with design strategies and deep community engagement to think about how and what parts of the community might move to higher ground. And so this is just one example that is, you know, time will tell over time how successful it is, but it's a very complex program, a very complex process. It's not just physically picking up and moving houses, it could be rebuilding new infrastructure, new housing, but also new schools, water, sewer, you name it, to say nothing but the idea that do people want to move from their home place where they are deeply tied to somewhere new.

[5:42] Kevin Sofen: Even this work that you do and the work that I'm fortunate to be involved in as well, there's this constant evolution of the challenges that natural disasters face, but also with dealing with people, there's sometimes this short-termism and this, oh, it happened, it probably won't happen again for another 50 to 100 years. Climate change in different ways is exacerbating some of these extremes. I'm curious with, you mentioned Hurricane Floyd, and obviously I know recent memory two, Hurricane Helene came through and did quite a number throughout the state. Is the short-termism still a challenge and if anything, how do we make sure that these disasters happen? How do we make sure that we learn and apply lessons learned?

[6:22] Gavin Smith: Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things that, and one of the other reasons I'm here is I'm part of an international community of practice that links and draws lessons from Australia, the U.S. and New Zealand looking at community-led relocation. So for example, we're partnering with Natural Hazards Research Australia to think about how we share those lessons and not only do applied research, but then get it in the hands of people so they can make informed choices so that they can better plan for these eventualities.

[6:51] Kevin Sofen: And you mentioned this alignment and I was fortunate to have Andrew Gissing on the podcast yesterday. What have you learned working with your Australian counterparts and what is some knowledge sharing that you think is, that you're excited about as we continue to create this bridge between the state and Australia.

[7:07] Gavin Smith: Sure, and I've worked with Andrew for many years, and we've been talking about this for a while. And so, you know, learning lessons from, for example, Grantham, Australia, where they actually physically picked up the community out of the floodplain and moved it to higher ground as a collective. In the US, one of the problems we face is that given our programs are voluntary, many, not all, citizens choose to move. And so we might move 80% of the town, 20% remain. And that causes all kinds of trouble in terms of the grant programs in the U.S. are actually quite prescriptive and they may not meet local needs and conditions. And so sometimes that's one of many challenges that we face. We tend to have a lot of money. We give it to the community in the aftermath of a disaster, but we haven't done a very good job of pre-event planning. Whereas in Australia and New Zealand, for example, they're doing good pre-event planning, but they may not have access to the same amount of resources. So is there a hybrid, perhaps, that we would look at doing better planning and coupling it with funding that maybe doesn't have as many strings attached to it, thereby giving communities some more latitude to make choices that reflect their local needs and conditions.

[8:09] Kevin Sofen: And so you mentioned, obviously, you're at NC State, you were at Texas A&M University, so first go Aggies, but also first go Wolfpack. I would be remiss to not bring up some of the lessons learned from Jimmy V. and some of your experience there, but when I think of one of the more inspirational people that you know, I watch his speeches often, the infamous run that they had, and maybe for people that maybe have never heard of the NC State Wolfpack and Jimmy V. Morsk is kind of a general, what is any sort of insight that you can share from Jimmy V and some of the NC State that may apply that the work that you are doing today?

[8:43] Gavin Smith: Yeah, you know, one of the things that I think perhaps he may be best known for, and he did a lot of amazing work while at NC State, is, you know, never give up. He was very tenacious, even when he was diagnosed with cancer and knew it was terminal. And so tenacity, I mean, this may sound, you know, it's interesting talking about this and relating it to my work, but nevertheless is communities need to take a long view. They need to be tenacious. They need to work together as a team collectively. And for us in this space, we would call that governance, you know, very much like it's a team sport because we need to be working with land use planners and emergency managers, of course, with the community and their citizens, nonprofits, and others to think not only about the place in which people are deeply tied, but where are they going to move to? And so that may involve working with another community, or it might involve working with people that own land that they're willing to provide, that will allow people to relocate. So, you know, it really is, this notion of relocation really is a team sport.

[9:40] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it really is. So yeah, that was, you took the word out of my mouth, and never give up, never give up. So shout out, Jimmy V, and your continued legacy that lives on, Jimmy. I'm curious now with your role with NC State and this alignment with the Natural Hazard Research Institute over the course of the next one, five, 10 years, what's top of mind for you? What are you excited about? What are some hopeful legacies that you're working into?

[10:04] Gavin Smith: So we're already creating products, if you will. We just finished a comparative study of buybacks in the US and New Zealand. So drawing lessons from those two nations. We also just finished what we call a coastal hazards overlay district guide, it's a mouthful. But that guide in essence has 52 design standards and planning techniques that could be applied in this case in the coastal zone. And an overlay district is many of us, many people that aren't familiar with that land use planning concept, think of a historic district or an economic development district. So within a spatially defined area, you may have additional codes and standards that you apply. So the reason we created the guide is that we also know that community-led relocation may not be the ultimate choice of a community. Rather this guide has 52 standards that they might be able to choose from that deal with community-led relocation, but also perhaps protection strategies or accommodate strategies like letting the buildings get wet, you know, use of materials or even avoiding building there in the first place. And so the guide is meant to bolster this community-led relocation idea that maybe part of the town might move, but the other may remain. And so also going back to this kind of notion, driving force tied to resilience, the concept of resilience is really predicated on a diversity of species within an ecosystem that gives it its strength. Similarly, if you have a whole series of different risk reduction measures that you can apply in a community, if one doesn't work well, the other may help, you know, cover some of them, cover the gap, if you will. It's kind of like this idea of multiple lines of defense. So it's not just one, if communities don't want to relocate, there are other strategies that they might pursue. And so that guide is an example of that.

[11:42] Kevin Sofen: Just a double click on that guide for one second. What are some specific examples? You mentioned obviously some of these different redundancies, but any other, what are maybe one or two specific tangible best practices in that guide?

[11:55] Gavin Smith: Sure. So it could be things like you might need or might choose to elevate houses in place, or you might choose to adopt what we call nature-based solutions like protecting wetlands and or the wildland urban interface so that it provides a buffer between human settlements. Or you might look at landscape design features like the use of native vegetation or berms and swales. and there's a whole host of strategies. You could even look at for future development, clustering development, for example, on high ground and the low-lying flood plan area, you know, ensure that is maintained as open space. So you might have the same number of properties per developable site, but it might be more densely populated out of harm's way versus building sprawling into flood plains and wetlands, for example.

[12:37] Kevin Sofen: That's brilliant. Well, I'm excited about the continued work that you'll be leading at NC State with Andrew. And to kind of finish this out here, You already mentioned the Jimmy V quote, but I'm curious, is there any other words of wisdom or favorite quote that you live by that you apply within your work or your daily life that you could share with us?

[12:53] Gavin Smith: Yeah, you know, one, perhaps, and often think about it, and much of my career was spent in practice in emergency management and also in the university. I think in this case, like in community-led relocation and climate change adaptation as a whole, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And one of the challenges we face in the U.S. is we're sprinting after the disaster to try to fundamentally alter where and how people build. That happens a lot, but that's not ideal. We ought to be thinking about a methodical approach where we're planning for these eventualities, encouraging people to think about these issues well before the storm hits, but recognizing in an era of climate change that these storms are going to be happening more often, they're going to be more intense, and we've got a plan for it, but then we've also got to take actions to make those plans a reality.

[13:36] Kevin Sofen: Brilliant. Well, thanks, Gavin, for your time and insights, and look forward to continue to stay in touch.

[13:40] Gavin Smith: Okay, great, thank you.

[13:41] Kevin Sofen: Appreciate it.

[13:42] Gavin Smith: Sure. My pleasure. Thank you.

[13:45] Kevin Sofen: And that's a wrap for this episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. If you found value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone and tell us what you enjoyed most. Take care and thanks for listening.