Equity In Emergency Management

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Lucien Canton | Posted in WeblogsLeave a Comment on 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

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Lucien Canton | Posted in WeblogsLeave a Comment on 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

Posted on February 24, 2021 by Lucien Canton | Posted in WeblogsLeave a Comment on 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

Posted on January 30, 2021 by Lucien Canton | Posted in WeblogsLeave a Comment on Emergency Management Solutions – January 2021

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It’s The End of the World!

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Lucien Canton | Posted in WeblogsLeave a Comment on 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."