Hurricane Sandy and community resilience

One of the most common disasters myths is that people are incapable of taking care of themselves after a disaster. Despite historical examples and decades of research, we have based much of our planning on the concept of a strong central authority that directs disaster relief efforts. However, as the relief effort on the East Coast is demonstrating, humanitarian aid in large-scale disasters is complex and extremely difficult to centralize.

What both history and research shows us is that people are resilient and in the absence of government assistance will still try to organize themselves and begin the business of restoring their communities. Traditionally, this has not always been efficient or supportive of overall community interests because people frequently acted in isolation.

The advent of social media, however, has been a game-changer. Where non-governmental relief efforts were isolated and limited to the resources on hand, they are now have acccess to a world-wide community of tech-savvy supporters. Take, for example, the members of Occupy Wall Street who have turned their organizing efforts to coordinating the collection and distribution of relief supplies through a system of volunteers.

The truly interesting point for me is that this type of volunteerism can be focused and targeted through the use of social media. One of the reasons we have always discouraged in-kind donations is the difficulty of sorting and distributing these one-off donations. Small, localized efforts, however, can be very effective at identifying individual needs and disbursing donated goods to where they can do the most good. They work at the micro-level that is too granular for traditional government relief efforts.

What I see evolving is more equal partnership between government and volunteers. The question is will we be able to adapt our plans to take advantage of this resource or remain bound by the myth that government must coordinate all facets of disaster relief?

Comments

[Dhahn]

While I support your position, it is unfortunate that signs like the one in this news article are so contradictory to the idea of self supporting populations.

http://news.yahoo.com/fuel-scarce-east-coast-struggles-recover-storm-000645293.html

You are absolutely correct about the need for partnerships between the public and private sectors at the local level. It does not happen enough.

[Lucien Canton]

You raise another issue that I think is worthy of discussion. Over the years we have conditioned people to think that it the responsibility of the government to make them whole after disaster. Compare the first relief legislation in 1790 that merely relieved victims of taxes to the wide range of services we now offer. We have also been the victim of our success to where people think we can solve problems overnight.

While there are some problems where government must take the lead, the are almost always complex issues of overlapping jurisdictions. The fuel issue is a case in point where you have private corporations with the ultimate responsibility for providing the fuel but dependent on local government restoration of infrastructure.

[Dhahn]

Hence the need for good comprehensive emergency management that includes partnering with the private sector (interpreted by me as business, non-profits, and faith based organizations). Too often I still see emergency mangers taking the "its not my job" appraoch to partnerships. Emergency management should include community organizer as a required skill.