The Port Chicago Disaster: Disasters Can Produce Lasting Social Impact
Featured Article for July 2017
The Port Chicago Disaster
Disasters Can Produce Lasting Social Impact
Author: Lucien Canton
San Francisco To Ban Flame-Retardant Chemicals
A San Francisco Supervisor has just introduced legislation to make San Francisco the first city in the US to ban flame-retardant chemicals from furniture and children’s products. It’s going to be an uphill battle.
Back in 1975 California passed a law requiring that manufacturers perform open flame tests on all their products. This quickly led to the use of chemical flame-retardants and, because of the size of California’s market, this quickly became the norm for products across the country. However, continued research has linked these flame retardants to attention problems, cancer, lowered IQ scores, hormone disruption, and reproductive disorders. They are also highly carcinogenic when exposed to flame. Blood tests on firefighters in San Francisco have shown high levels of dioxins, a carcinogenic compound released when flame-retardant chemicals catch fire. In addition, the rate of breast cancer in female firefighters in San Francisco are six times the national average for women 40 to 50 years old.
But the genie is out of the bottle and it’s going to be difficult to put it back in. For one thing, selling flame-retardant chemicals is highly profitable and the chemistry industry has vigorously resisted any attempts to scale back the law. California now requires products to be labeled if they contain flame-retardant chemicals and allows manufacturers to use flame-resistant fabrics and coverings in lieu of flame-retardant chemicals but legislators have been unable to ban flame-retardant chemicals outright.
The second issue is the one of public perception that banning flame retardant chemicals will somehow make them less safe. This is he line that the American Chemistry Council’s North American Flame Retardant Alliance is already using. They argue that removing the chemicals will remove a critical layer of fire protection. Convincing the average consumer that returning to the use of naturally flame-resistant fabrics and materials such as wool will be difficult.
The Laki Eruption of 1783: A case study in cascading disasters
Featured Article for June 2017
The Laki Eruption of 1783
A case study in cascading disasters
The Future of First Response: Designing a vision for the future
Featured Article for May 2017
The Future of First Response
Designing a vision for the future
To Everything There Is A Season
To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
These lines were written by one of my favorite folksingers, Pete Seeger, and was a hit by the Byrds in the 60’s. Based on the Book of Ecclesiastes, the song is a reminder of the cyclical nature of life and how things follow logically from each other.
Unfortunately, this is not always a positive thing, particularly if you’re an emergency manager. For the past five years, we in California experienced a major drought. The heat damaged a lot of our vegetation, increasing the fire load in our forests and hills which in turn led to major wildfires throughout the state.
This winter, the drought broke with one of the wettest seasons on record, leading to localized flooding, the most serious being the overtopping of the Oroville dam that led to major evacuations downstream. Contributing to the severity of these floods was the lack of vegetation in burned areas to absorb and of the moisture. Most recently, major landslide caused by the denuding of a hillside by fire and drought led to the closure of Highway 1 for the foreseeable future and the isolation of several small communities along the Northern California Coast.
The cycle is not ended. The plentiful rainfall has, as one would expect, led to the explosive growth of our native vegetation. This is a time of beauty, with wildflowers blooming and our hills covered in green. But our rainy season is over; rain does not fall in California over the summer and fall months. Already our hills our starting to return to their usual shade of brown as the grasses die. The increased vegetation ultimately translates to an increased fire load. Weather predictions are for above average temperatures through June, leading to problematical fire loads in July. It’s going to be a busy fire season.
We sometimes joke that we only have two seasons in California: flood season and fire season. But we sometimes forget that the two are intricately intertwined. As emergency managers, we need to understand interrelationships such as these and consider them when we plan. In the words of another biblical folk song, “It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”
Reputational Risk: You Only Get One Chance to Get It Right
Featured Article for April 2017
Reputational Risk
You Only Get One Chance to Get It Right
Disaster Commemorations: Just What Are We Celebrating?
April 18th is always a special day in San Francisco. It’s the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake and fires that in many ways mark the beginning of modern San Francisco. Our tradition has been to gather each year at Lotta’s Fountain at 5:12 AM, the time of the earthquake. Lotta’s Fountain, a gift from the singer Lotta Crabtree, was one of the sites where survivors would leave messages for each other trying to reunite with loved ones and hence a place of special significance.
The highlight of the brief ceremony was the chance to hear from survivors of the disaster. As the years went on, though, their numbers dwindled and the definition of “survivor” was stretched to include people who were still in their mothers’ wombs at the time of the earthquake. The last survivor died in January 2016 and there was concern that the ceremony might have died with him.
That, fortunately, was not the case. If anything, the celebration is morphing into something new. A crowd of some 300 or so were in attendance, many of them in costume and the atmosphere was ebullient. There was some suggestion that the event might be turning into minor street fair.
What is it about our fascination with past disasters? What are we commemorating? There’s no easy answer to these questions because events like these operate on so many levels. In our case, we remember the 3,000 dead in the disaster who for many years were denied recognition for economic reasons. We remind ourselves of how easy it is to destroy a city if we ignore obvious warnings and do not prepare. We acknowledge how far we have come in preparedness since 1906. Truth be told, many of us are just there for the fun – to drink bloody Mary’s and to mingle with people of similar interests. And, of course, to sing that great old song, "San Francisco"
I think that the 1906 commemoration, and events like it in other major cities, is not really about the disaster. I think it’s more a celebration of what came after. In each case, the cities that rose from the ashes were better and stronger. In his book, The Culture of Calamity, Kevin Rozario argues that catastrophic events have been instrumental in shaping the American commitment to progress and have frequently lead to positive change. There's a reason our city's seal bears a phoenix rising from flames. While these commemorations may seem to look to the past, they are really a celebration of the human spirit and our drive to rebuild and renew in the face of overwhelming calamity.
Who Are We? The Case for a Competency Framework
Featured Article For March 2017
Who Are We?
The Case for a Competency Framework
Social Isolation Can Kill
In a crisis, the provision of emergency services is a balancing act at the best of times. Our goal is to provide the best services we can to the most people given limited resources and severe time constraints. However, that goal implies that there may be people whom we are unable to help. But as the 2011 lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles affirmed, we have an obligation to provide access to our services to all citizens. This is at the core of planning for people with special needs.
One of those groups frequently overlooked are those who are socially isolated. This may include people such as the homeless, people who do not speak English, the elderly and others who have limited or no contact with their neighbors and the community. These are people who may not be reached by our normal means of communicating information such as boil water orders, evacuation warnings, or severe weather warnings. They may lack access to televisions, radios, smart phones, etc. and either not hear or not understand the message. They may a not have neighbors, friends, or relatives who could help them in a crisis.
In his study of the Chicago heat wave of 1995, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, sociologist Eric Klineberg studied two communities with identical demographics and demonstrated how social isolation was the principal factor leading to the deaths experienced by one of the communities. Many of the dead were older citizens who were afraid to leave their apartments, didn’t know where to go for help, or had no one to check on them.
A similar situation occurred recently in the evacuation of three counties in California is anticipation of the failure of the Oroville Dam spillway. The mandatory evacuation order never reached homeless camps along the Feather River, many of which were not evacuated until the next day. Those who managed to evacuate in a timelier fashion had no information about where to go or what to expect. Fortunately, the spillway did not fail and no lives were lost.
Social isolation is not a problem emergency managers can solve as it has its roots in societal failure. Nor can we solve it “on the fly” in a time of crisis; there’s not time and resources are limited. But we can rethink how we communicate critical disaster information before the event and go beyond press releases and social media. We can invite the participation of organizations that work with these populations as we formulate our emergency communications plans and make use of their resources when we need to reach out to the socially isolated.
Official Visits: The Second Disaster?
Featured Article for February 2017
Official Visits: The Second Disaster?
Do officials on scene help or hinder?