Three Tips to Make Your Disaster Donations Count

Yesterday I logged onto a site from which I purchase regularly and was immediately presented with a pop-up that solicited donations for the victims of Hurricane Harvey. I’ve seen similar offers on other sites and on Facebook. This particular company is extremely reputable and I’ve no doubt that they will funnel all contributions to the intended recipients. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of all such sites. This raises the question of how you can be sure that your donations will actually reach the people who truly need help.

Contrary to popular disaster myths, people are at their best in disasters. We have research that shows that people want to help others in disasters, even if they themselves are affected. You need look no further than the tremendous outpouring of money and goods that follow every major disaster. However, good intentions can sometimes cause more harm than good. Here’s how you can make sure that you are helping and not contributing to the problem:

1. Send money, not goods. Responder organizations don’t have the resources to sort, size and distribute goods such as shoes and clothing. The bulk of these types of donations end up in a landfill, many of which are already taxed by disaster debris. You’re better off donating to one of the many voluntary agencies working with the government in the response. The exception is if you are a company or organization that can ship in bulk. In this case, you can contact groups such as National VOAD or a FEMA Voluntary Agency Liaisons and Donations Specialist at a FEMA regional office to see if your goods and services are needed.
2. Don’t deliver goods directly to the disaster area. Loading a truck with supplies and heading to the scene of a disaster is tempting but it can put you at risk and make you one more problem for local responders. Access to disaster areas is often restricted to residents only for safety reasons and the temptation is to leave goods by the side of the road. Instead, consider volunteering with one of the many humanitarian agencies providing relief.
3. Make sure who is getting your money. Fraud is common after a disaster and you should be careful about to whom you give money. If you choose to not to give to national organizations such as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army or National VOAD, do your homework before giving money and watch for red flags such as only requiring cash or wire transfers or high-pressure tactics.

Any emergency manager can tell you horror stories about dealing with donated goods. I’ve seen fur coats sent to Hawaii, landfills closed as a result of the glut of donated goods, and disaster resources diverted to deal with donations that weren’t needed. Don’t be part of the problem!

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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.   

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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Facebook’s Community Check Ap Raises Issues for Emergency Managers

Social media has shown itself to be a powerful tool for community organizing after a disaster. We saw an example of it in the London riots of 2011 when hundreds of people turn out to clean up the damage. We saw other examples recently in Hurricane Sandy.

Facebook is now offering a new tool to make it easier for people to help each other in the wake of disaster. The new feature, called Community Check, is an update to Facebook’s existing Safety Check program. Safety Check was developed in 2014 to allow those potentially affected by a disaster to let friends know that they are okay. When Facebook becomes aware of a crisis, it monitors traffic in the area and, if sufficient volume is noted, activates Safety Check. The program queries people in the affected area and asks if the wish to post that they are okay.

Community Check works as part of Safety Check. People in the affected area can post needs or available resources that can then be searched by category. Once the person finds a match, they can message the other party and match needs to resources. The program is being rolled out in a few countries (including the US) over the next few months.

The concept of people helping people is not new and every emergency manager acknowledges that more people are helped by their neighbors than by first responders. Programs like Community Check merely make that process more efficient. However, it also raises some concerns that we need to consider.

• What expectations might we see raised in the future? Will programs like Community Check generate the demand that public agencies monitor social media and respond to requests for aid?
• Should we integrate programs like this into our planning and logistics systems and, if so, how? We are good a moving bulk goods to points of distribution but do not have the resources to move individual items directly to the end user. Does this offer a possible way to fill that gap?
• Considering the potential for misuse of social media systems, who is responsible if something bad happens? Do local governments have a liability exposure by integrating with these systems?
• What will be the effect of programs like Community Check on our issues with donations management?

Our emergency planning has long been based on the false belief that the most efficient way to provide disaster relief is through strong central control. Social media is a constant reminder that we are merely one voice in a discussion involving many community actors. As programs like Community Check demonstrate, people aren’t just going to sit around waiting for rescue; they’re going to be proactive and we need to decide how we can best support their efforts.

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This Too Shall Pass

By Martin Falbisoner – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28253642

There’s an old fable that speaks of a king who summoned his wise men and tasked them to gather all the world’s wisdom in one place. After many years, they created a magnificent library housing the sum of all knowledge. The king the challenged them to reduce all this accumulated wisdom to a single book. Many more years passed but eventually the wise men returned to the king with a single volume containing the essence of all knowledge. The king sent them away with a new task: to distill all the world’s wisdom into a single sentence. After much deliberation, the wise men returned to the king and gave him this single sentence, “This too shall pass.”

As I see the concern and fear among my friends over the current political situation, I’m reminded of this phrase and the need to keep things in perspective. In my lifetime, I have experienced many critical events: the battle for civil rights, the Vietnam war protests, the Free Speech Movement, the domestic and international terrorism of the 70’s, to name but a few. As an emergency manager, I have seen the how natural disasters can devastate entire communities. As an amateur historian, I’ve studied the effects of wars and plagues, political unrests, economic collapse, and climate change. Yet somehow, we manage to survive and get on with our lives.

However, don’t think I’m suggesting complacency. I’m a firm believer in the quote by John Stuart Mill that, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” I encourage you to act but make it count. Here are some things you can do:

• Educate yourself on how our system of government works. We no longer teach civics in school and it’s shameful that we require more knowledge of our governmental system from immigrants seeking citizenship than we do from our own citizens.
• Write your elected officials. But really take the time to write. Post card mailings and cut-and-paste emails do not carry as much weight as a personal letter. The same hold true for letters and calls to local Congressional offices rather than to their Washington DC offices.
• Cultivate and educate Congressional staffers. Your representative may meet with you but he or she has a busy schedule and must be conversant with an enormous range of issues. Congressional representatives rely on their staff to analyze issues and propose legislative positions. Put your money where your mouth is.
• Donate to organizations that are actively working for the change you support. Volunteer your time if you can. Stop spreading the fear. You’re wasting your time retweeting or Facebook posting bad information. If you must do so, read the actual article and not just the headline before posting. Do some fact checking on your own.

So to my many friends who are experiencing stress over the recent political change, take a deep breath and get a little perspective. This is not the end of the world. This too shall pass.

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Veterans Day Thoughts: The Soldier’s Oath

On entering service, every soldier swears an oath that requires, in part, obedience to the President and the officers appointed over them. But that is only the last part of the oath. First we swear “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” That same oath to the Constitution is also sworn by all government officials and workers. The oath is a reminder that the Constitution is more important than the person who holds the office. Preservation of the system of government established by the Constitution and the rights and freedoms it guarantees is paramount.

Understanding this, it concerns me when I see the demonstrations taking place across the country in protest over the Presidential election results. The simple fact is that there is no hint that there was anything unconstitutional or illegal about the elections and, like it or not, Donald Trump is the legitimate President-elect. The election process and the peaceful transfer of power enshrined in the Constitution is what is important. Those who have sworn the oath have no choice but to support the President unless his actions put him in conflict with the Constitution.

While I understand and share the feelings of fear and disgust that have sparked these gatherings, there is a part of me that fears that they will be perceived as the acts of spoiled children who did not get their way, especially when they descend into violence. However, I am even more disgusted by the reports of hate crimes that have occurred across the nation in the past few days. This, too, is a violation of everything the Constitution stands for and now is not the time to stand silent. The right of assembly was so important that it is enshrined in the First Amendment. People have the right to gather and express their concern.

I do not believe these demonstrations should be focused on showing disgust with President-elect Trump as an individual or about the election. I believe that instead they should be used to send a strong message to our new government in waiting: campaign rhetoric is one thing but you’d best step carefully before seeking to erode the rights of our citizens. There are an awful lot of us out here who understand that the Constitution is much more important than you are.

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Yes, you have a plan. But do you have a strategy?

One of my pet peeves with emergency planning is the over-reliance we place on the one-size-fits none guidance we receive from the Federal government. Don’t misunderstand me; the guidance overall is good and well-intentioned. But there is subtle and not so subtle pressure put on local jurisdictions through grant requirements and reviews to develop plans that mirror the guidance.

The simple fact is that all jurisdictions are not alike and to expect each to use the same plan fails to take this fact into account. Resources are not the same, risk tolerance is not the same, even the threats each jurisdiction faces are not the same. The problem as I see it is that we focus on the tangible result, the plan, without considering the importance of the strategy behind the plan.

I was recently in a plan development meeting with a major utility department seeking to consolidate multiple division plans into a single unified department plan. The planning team supported the concept and saw the benefits of using an enterprise approach. Things started to get uncomfortable when I started asking questions about how they planned to manage their new operating structure. For example, each division had its own logistics operation and the team agreed that establishing a combined logistics team would save time and money but they had not thought about who would manage that team or how the team would operate. They had never thought to discuss the strategy behind the plan they were writing.

There is certainly a commonality among plans. Most rely on central coordination through an emergency operations center and decentralized tactical operations at the department level. But even this simple concept can cause problems if you haven’t worked out your strategy. Does the EOC serve as a command center, actively directing operations, or as a point of coordination? Do department heads report through the EOC or directly to the senior executive? These are not issues you want to decide during a crisis.

Develop your strategy before you begin revising your plan. Ask the hard questions. Once you understand strategy, the tactical component will be much easier to develop. In the words of Sun Tzu, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

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A Crisis Demands Decisive Action

In his weekly column in the Chronicle this past Sunday, my old boss, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Jr, drew some interesting contrasts in how local governments responded to the officer-involved shootings in Tulsa OK and Charlotte NC. In Tulsa, police released video of the shooting and charged the officer involved with manslaughter. In Charlotte, police have still not released any footage of the shooting, leading to assumptions by members of the public that the police are lying about the victim having a gun. The result was that Charlotte has seen nights of often violent protest while Tulsa has remained quiet. Brown’s recommendation is blunt:

Lesson one for police agencies throughout the nation: Release the video immediately after every incident. Eliminate the speculation that you’re hiding something. It’ll come out one way or the other, so you might as well be the one to do it.

I believe that we are seeing in Charlotte is one of the “four traps of decision making” I’ve written about previously: using the need for gathering more information as an excuse for inaction. One of the things you have to accept up front in any crisis is that you will not have all the information you need to make a good decision. There is a good chance that your initial decisions might turn out to have not been the best course of action or may be completely wrong. However, failing to take the risk of making a decision that may seem wrong in hindsight frequently allows the crisis to escalate, often to the point where you lose control. Acting decisively on the best information you have available at the time can be justified and explained; failing to act and allowing things to get of hand cannot.

Remember that Botterell’s Fourth Law of Emergency Management is, “Perception is reality.” If you give the appearance of concealing the truth, this is what the public will believe. You need to be seen to act decisively and quickly if you are to retain the public turst. One of the sayings attributed to General George Patton is, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” This applies as well in crisis management as it does in war.

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