The aftermath of Hurricane Stan, Guatemala, 2005
What
would you do if an emergency – a pandemic, earthquake, or
building/bridge collapse, happened where you were at 17:00 tomorrow?
Chances
are, you wouldn't be prepared. You wouldn't even know what to do. You
would instinctively react to the best of your ability, and for the most
part you'd do the right things.
You'd screw up on some things however:
- You'd
probably try to find and round up your family and then flee the area,
causing traffic chaos, blocking emergency vehicles, clogging
communication lines and exposing yourself and loved ones to more danger
than if you stayed put.
- If it was a health emergency, you might well head for a hospital, clinic or doctor's office to get Tamiflu. Waste of time.
- You might well help overwhelm government, medical and emergency authorities with your frantic calls for information.
The
problem isn't that thousands or millions will make such mistakes, it's
that emergency workers are counting on you to wait passively for
information and instruction, and to stay out of their way. You won't,
and as a result their plans will be jeopardized. And even if there's no
panic, because emergency plans depend on other departments' and groups'
and governments' emergency plans working as well, all it takes is one
group to fail, or something to fall between the cracks of all these
plans, and all of the plans will fail.
We saw this in the
response to Katrina: FEMA failed utterly, and all those depending on
FEMA to do its job couldn't do theirs. And none of the local plans
anticipated the unavailability of communications infrastructure, so the
result was chaos and anarchy. In the aftermath, each group pointed the
finger of blame elsewhere, so preparedness plans for most groups have
not substantially changed. So if, as many expect, we will see another
Katrina this summer, we can expect the same completely inadequate
response.
We never learn. It's not human nature to be prepared for anything that isn't highly probable and imminent
– the needs of the moment always take precedence over longer-term
thinking. We do what we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do
what's fun. Emergency preparedness, until it’s too late, is none of
these things.
There is no human answer to this problem. Just
look at the trillions that have been squandered (and the rights
trampled and abuses committed) in the insane attempt to prevent a
repeat of 9/11, when in all likelihood the next attacks by organized desperados
will use utterly different tactics. They have hundreds of obvious ones
to choose from, even more if they're imaginative, and trying to
anticipate and preempt them all is ludicrous. Spending money on large
standing reserves and task forces which will go into action if and when
an emergency of the type they are specifically trained for comes into
effect is futile. And the psychological and social damage caused by
trying to prepare for a thousand unpredictable possibilities is
horrific.
This is not to take anything away from the many
organizations that have to cope with emergencies every year, or those
who are valiantly trying to prevent them from happening and mitigate
the damages they will cause. These are (mostly) intelligent, committed
people. But what they are trying to do probably cannot be done. It is
another attempt to find a complicated solution to a complex problem.
So what should
we do? I'll suggest some ways of coping with emergencies at the
institutional and societal level in a future article (I suggested some
in my earlier article
on pandemic flu preparation). But at the individual level, there are
probably four things that make sense, and a fifth if you're a keener
and live in a close-knit community:
- Go about your business
and your life. Worrying about things that may never happen and which
you can't do anything about is a waste of time, money and energy and
will make you ill. People in struggling nations get this, I think,
since many in those nations face it day-to-day for their whole lives.
- Don’t expect authorities
to look after you in an emergency. They'll do their best, if they can
keep their own people from breaking ranks and looking after their loved
ones instead of their duty. And if it's a relatively minor emergency
they may do just fine. Just don't count on it. Learned helplessness is endemic in our society, and in an emergency it's a liability.
- Expect
the majority of people to panic as peacefully as they can. Forget the
Hollywood hype about massive arson and murder and rape. If you're
hungry and there's no one in authority, you'll steal only what you need
and only get violent if there’s no other choice. The vast majority of
people are like that. In fact, most people really rise to the occasion
in an emergency, and some behave absolutely heroically. But expect the
roads to be mayhem and ill-conceived, even stupid behaviour to be the
norm.
- Educate yourself and those in your communities on things
you can and should do (and not do) when an emergency occurs. The list
varies depending on the type of emergency, but here’s eight things to
do for starters:
- Have a manageable list of emergency
supplies on hand in your home and in your car, and keep them fresh.
Include in your house kit: 6 litres of fresh water per person, 3 days'
worth of dried or canned food (and an opener), a flashlight (and
batteries), a portable radio (and batteries, even if it's a
crank-type), a first aid kit, prescription medicines, baby food and
needs for disabled family members if applicable, extra keys, and cash.
Include in your car kit: food, water and first aid as above, plus
blankets and spare clothes/shoes, candles-in-a-can (and matches), a
knife, emergency light or flares, a shovel, scraper and brush, and
emergency contact phone number list. Don’t forget to include supplies
for your pets, and keep them close!
- In a health emergency,
keep yourself and loved ones away from other people. Take them out of
school, stay home from work (unless you're an emergency worker, in
which case stay at work), don't travel anywhere you don't have to, and avoid stores, airports, and any other places with lots of people.
- In
a health emergency, wash your hands often and thoroughly with hot water
and soap, don't touch potentially contaminated surfaces, use a hand
sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol, and, when you cough or sneeze, use
a disposable tissue or your sleeve, not your hands.
- In case the
emergency drags on, learn where you can get fresh food locally, from
farms and gardens, and have a back-up source of heat for your home.
- Learn emergency first aid.
- Keep your cellphone (plus charger and spare batteries) and a list of emergency information numbers and URLs handy, but don't expect these to work in an emergency.
- Get
a flu shot. It won't protect against pandemic flu, but it will improve
your resistance, and you don't want to be sick during an emergency.
- If you absolutely have to leave, tell people where you're going.
- If you live in a friendly, tight neighbourhood and you're keen, put together a neighbourhood
plan – who'll pick up the kids, who's best at doing what, how to share
the difficult tasks you may face, what's unique to your neighbourhood
that must be dealt with, etc. Teach each other what you need to know. Practice, at least on a tabletop, what you will do, when you get everyone together.
If
you're like most people (me included) you won't prepare an emergency
kit, and even if you're fortunate enough to live in a community like
mine you probably won't do #5 either. But most of the rest of these
ideas are really just common sense and don't require you to do anything
until an emergency actually happens. These are mostly about preparing
yourself mentally and psychologically, rather than physically, for an
emergency. They're about building your resilience.
In my
earlier article I suggested you should think about what you will do if
there's a pandemic and you find you have a natural immunity, or if
disease strikes a loved one but not you. But I'm not sure thinking
about this in advance serves much purpose – if this happens you will do
what you will do.
And that's the overall message that a study
of history, an understanding of human nature, and a reading of all the
literature on emergency preparedness out there, should probably teach
us: Emergencies are going to happen, and they will touch us personally
or they won't, and if they do we will probably do our best even though
we won't be prepared, so there's no point staying awake worrying about
it.
More about learned helplessness later this week – The more I think about this subject, the more important it seems to be.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
