“Equity” is a term that has become more and more common over the last few months. It refers to the need to ensure that all members of society are treated equally by eliminating inherent biases. In particular, the discussions on biases inherent in the delivery of government services are both appropriate and necessary and emergency management is in exception.
On the surface, this seems like a no-brainer. In my experience, emergency managers are committed to delivering services to disaster victims without regard to considerations such as gender, race, or immigration status. However, as with most things, the reality is more complicated.
Experience and research both show that disasters do not impact all segments of a community in the same way. Marginalized groups such as those with special needs or in low-income populations are disproportionately affected by disasters. Since our focus is on those with the greatest need, one would expect that these victims would be the priority and that this would in turn assure equity in the distribution of disaster assistance.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Research by Dr. Junia Howell and others suggests that federal disaster aid tends to increase wealth inequity in affected communities. Federal disaster relief policies are not intentionally designed to be unfair but their emphasis on avoiding fraud and improper payments create rigid requirements that can be difficult for the economically disadvantaged to meet. Even something as simple as access to a computer can create a barrier to assistance.
Another issue is the emergency management maxim of “do the most good for the most people”. While the public assumes that governments have unlimited resources with which to respond to disaster, emergency managers are very conscious that resources may be limited, particularly in the early stages of a disaster. This means that we are often faced with hard ethical decisions about how and where to apply limited resources. This concept of triage, to borrow the medical term, is based on the assumption that scarce resources should be allocated to those requiring the least assistance, thereby assisting more people, and not necessarily those in the most need. People who place an increased demand on those resources, such as those with an inability to self-evacuate are at risk of being marginalized. Consider, for example, the issues surrounding evacuation in Hurricane Katrina.
As I stated earlier, the discussion on equity is an important one and emergency managers should not shy away from it. Creating equity will require not just consideration of how we do outreach or ensuring that everyone gets the same amount of assistance. Instead, it will require a fundamental reevaluation of disaster policy and a movement away from our “one-size-fits-all” approach to services and fixation on fraud.
