Canton on Emergency Management

Equity In Emergency Management

“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.

Thoughts on Emergency Management

Two questions that I am frequently asked these days are what significant changes I have seen in emergency management in my some 40-odd years and what I think the future holds. That’s a little bit of a moving target as one of the things I have enjoyed about emergency management is that it is constantly evolving.

Without a doubt, the most significant change, as Tom Drabek noted in Major Themes in Disaster Preparedness and Response Research has been the increased professionalization of local emergency managers. When I was introduced to the emergency management, we all came with previous experience, primarily military or first responder disciplines. You learned your business on the job, and, in retrospect, we sometimes learned the wrong lessons.

I think that catalyst for change has been twofold: role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in developing doctrine and best practices but, more importantly, the rise of emergency management as an academic discipline. One of the hallmarks of a profession is a specialized body of knowledge. For a long time, we were content to allow ourselves to be defined by the tasks we coordinated, most of which were performed by others. This technical knowledge was useful and important, but it was hardly unique to emergency management. It wasn’t until we came to recognize and accept the vast amount of research on disaster behavior that we began to truly understand the role we could play in developing strategy and coordinating complex response.

Another significant development, which I believe you can attribute to acceptance of disaster research, was the expansion of the role of the emergency manager beyond response operations. While many of us are still locked into the role of responders, there is a growing awareness that strategic issues such as mitigation and recovery planning is where we can make the most impact. Community risk goes beyond just natural hazards, and we have an expanded role to play in other areas as well. As evidence of this, we need look no farther than the role FEMA and local emergency managers are playing in supporting COVID response.

Where do we go from here? There’s still a lot of work to do in adequately defining who we are and what we do. It wasn’t until 2007 that we had an accepted definition of emergency management and the Principles of Emergency Management. The Principles were always intended to be just a starting point, but it is only recently that there is interest in reviewing and revising the Principles. We have a rigorous certification in the Certified Emergency Manager designation from the International Association of Emergency Managers, but it is not yet a base requirement for higher level emergency management positions as certifications are in other professions. We still lack a competency framework that defines minimum requirements and standards for emergency management positions. The same holds for a code of ethics, a project that my colleague, Carol Cwiak at North Dakota State, has been championing for years. Without these things, it is difficult to call ourselves a profession.

I think the future of emergency management is bright. We have a new generation of emergency managers emerging, one that is better educated and conversant with disaster research. We have the support of a strong academic community that is building the specialized body of knowledge that underpins our profession and is developing the curricula that are educating the new generation of emergency managers. FEMA, despite setbacks, has made steady progress in developing doctrine. Yes, there is still much to be done but it's worth reflecting on how far we've come.

Where Do We Go From Here? Learning From COVID

One of the unique demands on emergency managers is the need to set disasters in context, to view the big picture even while engaged in immediate response. We need to be able to both look to our current experience to glean important lessons for future response and, at the same time, to try to project potential long-range impacts of the current crisis.

There are two things that both experience and research teach us. The first is that all disasters have ripple effects that produce both short and long-term changes. The second is that memories are short and the further we are from a disaster, the more inclined we are to forget the lessons we have learned. This means that our response to short-term impacts tend to fade over time and there is pressure to return to pre-disaster conditions.

If we look at historical pandemics, it’s relatively easy to identify their long-term impacts. I’ve written elsewhere about the impact of the Black Death on the economy of Europe. The flu pandemic of 1918 brought about major changes in how doctors are trained and licensed in the United States. This not unexpected. Pandemics are, like most major disasters, focusing events that highlight potential policy failures, and by nature precipitate major changes. The challenge is in recognizing changes that are likely to fade over time and those with long range consequences.

In considering COVID-19, I believe the first casualty will be, of course, social distancing. While there will be public pressure to maintain some safeguards, simple economics will ultimately drive us to eliminate many of the protective measures we have put in place. Consider restaurants, for example. As we reopen, we may see initial public expectation driving limited occupancy. However, the need for economic recovery will eventually push us towards permitting full occupancy.

Those safeguards that survive will be those that offer an economic advantage. Businesses are recognizing that a remote workforce offers cheaper access to talent, increased diversity, and significant savings in infrastructure. In my own city of San Francisco, many large corporations have committed to full or predominately remote workforces and have begun to either lease out or divest themselves of unused office space. This has led to an exodus of both company headquarters that are no longer tethered to the need to recruit a highly skilled local work force and to employees who are taking the opportunity to move to areas with a cheaper cost of living.

Remote work will have a ripple effect on local economies. Businesses that rely on office workers as their main source of income will have a hard time surviving. Their loss will translate to reductions in the tax base with a concurrent effect on the ability of local government to provide services such as public transportation.

The other side of the coin is what lessons we can carry forward. After September 11^th, we created a mechanism for responding to terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction.  As part of this program, we considered aspects of response to a biological attack including mass prophylaxis. Judging from our response to COVID-19, we failed to consider the application of the system to a widespread pandemic. The lack of a logistical system capable of supporting a nationwide vaccination program is one of the results. There will be future pandemics and we can no longer afford an ad hoc system.

One other area that we need to rethink is how we manage pandemics. Many jurisdictions chose not to take advantage of the coordination skills offered by the emergency management community. While there is no question that this was a public health emergency, emergency managers have the technical skills to help organize teams, coordinate diverse agencies, and marshal resources required to implement the decisions made by public health officials. In addition to the logistics of vaccine distribution, we have also relearned lessons on multi-agency coordination and sustained operations. This would suggest that the lessons of COVID-19 response could lead to a major rethinking of emergency planning, particularly in terms of large-scale events. It may be time to revisit how we plan for catastrophic events, as we did after Hurricane Katrina.

I have argued repeatedly that in the world of disasters, there is nothing new under the sun. Pandemics are predictable. They have happened in the past and will happen again. In past years, we planned for catastrophic events and for biological attacks. We need to leverage past planning to prepare for future events.

Emergency Management Solutions - January 2021

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FEATURED ARTICLES

Learning from The Past: Can Past Pandemics Prepare Us for COVID 19 Recovery?

    By Lucien G. Canton

 

A Re-Framing of Incident Management Structures
    By Timothy "Tim" Riecker

 

Preparedness is the Key to Surviving the New Normal
    By Erik Bernstein

It's The End of the World!

In 1978, historian Barbara Tuchman published a book called A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century that provided a portrait of Western Europe in the 1300's. Tuchman's premise was that the 14th century in many ways reflected the social upheavals and crises of the 20th Century. Given the calamitous year that has been 2020, Tuchman's comparison is even more relevant today.

The 14th century was indeed a time of tremendous upheaval and people at the time can be forgiven for believing they were living in the end times. The Black Death was ravaging Europe, with one historian estimating that the death toll could have been as high as 60% of the population. The Hundred Years War was being fought between England and France, with unemployed soldiers turning to pillaging the countryside during the brief periods of peace. There were peasant revolts, brought on by starvation and heavy taxation. The Great Schism had sundered the Roman Catholic Church, one of the key unifying elements in medieval culture. The ending of the Medieval Warming Period created unsettled weather conditions that produced droughts, floods, and cold winters resulting in famine. The social order was changing as well, with the collapse of the feudal system and the transition from a subsistence economy to a commercial one.

The 14th century was a bad time, but it was easily rivaled and, some historians would argue eclipsed, by the 6th century. In 536 CE, Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia experienced 18 months of darkness, thought to be caused by an exploding volcano, possibly in Iceland. The pall caused the coldest winter in the past 2300 years and led to widespread crop failures and famine. This was followed by the Plague of Justinian that is believed to have wiped out the equivalent of 50% of the population of Europe over the next two centuries. The combination of the two so weakened the Byzantine Empire that Justinian was unable to reunite the core of the old Roman Empire by retaking Italy, an event that may have had a major impact on European history.

The point here is that, as bad as things got, people survived. The result may not have been what one would have wished, but people survived. The events of the 6th Century produced the Dark Ages, which actually were not so dark and were actually a time of innovation and creativity that is often overlooked. The Carolingian dynasty created a strong, centralized state that produced innovations in architecture, art and education, while Arab scholars made major advances in mathematics and science.   The wars and tribulations of the 14th Century led to the Renaissance and the rise of modern states and  economies. The history of disasters is full of stories of communities that have rebuilt following crisis: San Francisco, Galveston, Chicago, New Orleans. They remind us that all the worlds wisdom can be contained in the phrase. "This to shall pass".

Don't misunderstand me; I am not recommending complacency. In a time of political upheaval, plague, fires, hurricanes, and floods, complacency is the last thing we need. What I do recommend is shaking off depression and taking action to create change. Prepare for crisis; mitigate the potential effects. Above all, be prepared to recover from whatever comes and go on. Remember, as Louis Pasteur said, "Fortune favors the prepared."  

In These Dark Days, Social Media May Offer a Gleam of Light

Social media has always been a two-edged sword. It is the purveyor of misinformation and has been responsible for generating a lot of fear over COVID-19. There’s evidence that it’s being used by foreign governments to generate much of that fear and there is no question that it is being manipulated for political purposes.

Yet, in this time of doubt and fear, social media can also provide us with tools that allow us to counter that fear with simple human decency.

• Within minutes of the announcement of the public health order directing a “shelter in place” for six San Francisco Bay Area counties, the regional leader of a social organization of which I am a member posted instructions on Facebook cancelling all activities and providing guidance for how events would be rescheduled when the order was lifted. His manner was calm and business-like and spoke volumes about his leadership. Within a few hours, instructors scheduled to teach at the cancelled activities had posted offers to hold their classes online. Other members organized chat sites to provide companionship for anyone who was feeling alone and isolated. Someone organized a site to help the artisans who would no longer be able to sell their goods at events. Still others offered their services for anyone needing assistance in shopping or running errands.
• Our church cancelled services last week in accordance with the directives that preceded the public health order. This Sunday our pastor offered a prayer service via conference call and is exploring the possibility of streaming the service next Sunday. The church is organizing a “buddy system” that matches volunteers with people in high-risk categories who may need help with shopping or other needs. The pastor has already called everyone that might need help to identify any immediate needs.
• Even before this, our neighbors began reaching out on the Next-Door app to offer assistance to those who were self-isolating. A lot of these volunteers were teens and young adults and the offers were free of any charges. One mother offered the services of her sons to help teach them lessons on selflessness.

Why are these acts of kindness so important? One of the lessons learned in previous pandemics, such as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, was that many people died needlessly because there was no one to care for them. Fear kept neighbors from checking on the sick and providing food and hydration. Social isolation is not confined to pandemics; many of the deaths in the 1995 Chicago heat wave were the result of people living alone without friends or neighbors to help. Social isolation, as distinct from social distancing, can kill.

Even more important is that these simple acts remind us that we are in this together and share a common humanity. If history is any guide, things will get worse before they get better. But history also tells us that most of us who contract COVID-19 will survive. How will you remember these days? As a time when we came together to face a crisis or as at time when fear kept us isolated?

Solving the Water Storage Problem

More that anything else, disaster survival depends on water. Assuming there are no pre-existing medical issues, the average person can survive for two weeks without food. Lack of water can lead to death in a matter of days.

The minimum amount of water needed per person is around two quarts per day, but this varies based on factors such as temperature and physical exertion. It’s this subjectivity that causes a problem in suggesting how much water a person should store. The oft-quoted recommendation of one gallon per person per day can be inadequate under some conditions and overkill in others.

A major problem is storage. While there are available water supplies in the average house (e.g. water heaters, toilet tanks), most people would prefer a more conventional supply such as bottled water. However, in these days of environmental consciousness, many bottled water containers available in supermarkets are designed to degrade after a period of months. Stored too long, they begin to deteriorate. There are containers designed for long-term storage, but they can be expensive and not all are easy to store. Part of the problem with long term storage of water is the need to periodically replace the stored water, something that many people neglect.

At last years International Association of Emergency Managers conference, a new company called Waterfull introduced a potential solution that is both simple and effective. The system is built around a pressurized 30-gallon water container that is connected in-line with a water source, such as a garden hose. As the water source is used, the water in the container is constantly refreshed. The water is easily accessed via a spigot attached to the container. The price point is roughly around $500, about the same price as a pallet of bottled water.

The concept is not new; I saw something similar offered following the Loma Prieta earthquake. However, Waterfull has put  a lot of thought and engineering into the design and materials used in the container. The container is sealed against contaminants, made from food-grade plastic, and designed to prevent algae growth. It replaces nine cases of bottled water in a much more efficient storage size. It may not completely solve the issue of water storage but is certainly a step in the right direction.

Who's to Blame for California's Fires?

President Trump’s insistence on blaming the state of California for the devastating wildfires is yet another example of over-simplifying an issue without regard to the historical context.

The President is quite correct to attribute at least some of the cause of the fires to a forest management policy that is focused on preventing fires rather than on maintaining a healthy forest. Fire is a naturally occurring phenomenon that increases the health of a forest by removing underbrush and stimulating reseeding. Our emphasis on fire prevention has increased the fire load to such an extent that major fires now burn hotter that normal, destroying  trees rather creating the conditions for healthy growth.

However, the President seems unaware that this policy originated with the federal government following the Great Fire of 1910. This fire, also known as the Big Burn, destroyed some three million acres in northern Idaho, western Montana, eastern Washington, and southeastern British Colombia, an area the size of Connecticut, and killed 87 people, mainly firefighters. The fledgling US Forest Service received considerable praise and, more importantly, an increased firefighting budget.

A major result of the fire was a shift in the role of the Forest Service from conservation to fire prevention. The Forest Service was originally established to protect federal lands from exploitation from timber companies and developers. However, after the Great Fire, the desire to prevent a repetition of such a devastating fire meant that the mission changed from one of conservation to a primary focus on fire prevention. The result is the current policy that actually encourages more devastating fires by preventing the smaller fires that are a natural part of forest ecology.

It is important to acknowledge that the origins of our current forest management policy lie with the federal government. Over 57% of the forest land in California is federal land, under the control of the US Forest Service. President Trump has recently cut some $40 million from the Forest Service budget earmarked for hazardous fuel reduction, the same mitigation measure he is demanding of the state.

Laying the blame on California alone for bad forest management policy shows a lack of understanding of the historical context of how this policy originated. It also ignores other factors such as poor maintenance by utilities and climate change or the fact that many of these fires occur on private land over which the state has no control. There are a lot of factors contributing to these fires and we would be better served by addressing them rather than attempting to fix blame for political purposes.

Why Do We Still Kill The Messenger?

There was an interesting article in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle about one of the survivors of the recent fire that destroyed the town of Paradise. The gentleman in question was born and raised in Paradise and built a home there. That home was destroyed in the Camp Fire last November. But unlike the other disaster survivors, this man receives no sympathy from his neighbors and has had to endure threats and vandalism. The reason? He works for Pacific Gas and Electric.

PG&E has had image problems since the San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010 that resulted in a conviction for obstruction of justice. The company has a reputation for placing profits above safety, a reputation that was reinforced by the company being found responsible for major fires in California in both 2017 and 2018. The company faces multiple civil suits from those fires and consideration is being given to charging the company with manslaughter and possibly even murder.

But are the employees working on recovery culpable in any way? The individual that the Chronicle article highlighted is both a native of Paradise and himself a disaster survivor. The work he is engaged in is community restoration. Yet he and other workers have had their vehicles vandalized, been verbally assaulted, and had garbage thrown at them. They are abused not for who they are or what they are doing but because they are a visible and accessible representative of a powerful company that the abuser has no real power to influence.

This an extreme case, to be sure, but how often are we rude to people who are trying to help us simply because they are the only representative of an institution accessible to us? Mind you, I have limited patience with rudeness and inefficiency, but I try not to open a conversation with a customer service representative with a verbal assault. I remind myself first that I want their help and secondly that they, in most cases, don’t have the power to make any real decisions. In other words, they’re not to blame for their company’s errors; they’re trying to help fix the problem.

Executing a messenger who brought bad news simply because they represented the sender went out of style years ago. Next time you’re angry with a company, write the chairman or president; don’t beat up on the person who’s only trying to make things better.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

These lyrics from “For What It’s Worth” were written by Stephen Stills back in 1966 and reflected the turbulent times surrounding the Vietnam War and the social upheaval that was taking place. It seems, however, that they are just as relevant, or maybe even more so, to our times, as we have allowed our fears to overcome our good judgement.

Here’s a recent example that highlights what I mean. Former FBI Director James Comey tweeted an innocuous message that was interpreted by a right-wing conspiracy group to be a reference to Jihad and was construed as the “go” order for a false flag attack. Using the first five letters of various Comey tweets with the same hashtag, the group identified the “target” as a charter school in a rural California county. As luck would have it, the school’s annual fund raiser was scheduled for last weekend. After reading about the threat on the Internet, several people contacted the school and local law enforcement to express concern.

There was never a direct threat to the school and local law enforcement felt that the threat was baseless. If you had to make a decision to cancel the fundraiser or go ahead with it, which would you have chosen? It’s a “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” no win situation for the school leaders. In the end, the school leaders opted to cancel, not out of concern over a potential attack, but for fear that armed vigilantes would descend upon the festival to “protect the children” as has happened in the past in other locations.

I do not question the decision of the festival organizers to cancel. It was a difficult decision to make and had financial consequences in terms of lost revenue and sunk costs, not mention subjecting the organizers to second-guessing and ridicule. What I do question is how have we sunk so low that a group of conspiracy theorists writing on a discredited website can force the cancellation of an event completely unconnected to them. Anyone who has studied mechanisms of violent social change understands that acts of terrorism or anarchy are intended to force us to overreact and create the very conditions required for the change we oppose. When we live in fear, we allow small erosions to our freedoms in exchange for security. The trouble is these small losses add up to create significant, far reaching losses of civil rights.

I’ve written before that we cannot eliminate all risk in our lives. This means being willing to recognize when a risk is acceptable and when it is not. It means we have to stop letting our fears drive us where we have not desire to go.