Psychological Effects of Disaster

March 29th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

Thinking holistically about the impact of disasters means we need to be willing to drill down from the macro to the individual level.

At the macro level, infrastructure may be compromised or destroyed and that creates one set of problems. If a bridge is lost, an entire community may be isolated.

On an intermediate level, discreet neighborhoods left isolated by the loss of the bridge may be impacted in terms of overall survival and recovery. No one wants to return to a place where they cannot access health care, get groceries, or buy gasoline.

If we go down to the individual level, then we face a new set of challenges. Even if the bridge is rebuilt, the grocery store opens back up, and the gas station is pumping gas, we are still left with considerations about the impacts on individuals and their families.

If you will here permit me to speak from experience, I can tell you that, after experiencing Hugo in 1989 for many years afterward, I had a very sinking feeling when June 1^st rolled around and we faced a new hurricane season. Every day I felt a sense of dread as I checked the National Hurricane Center’s website to see tropical activity (something I do even now). I saw similar effects on many friends. Instead of being thrilled with summertime and vacations, we all took on a somber look. Some finally decided to move away from Charleston.

Experts tell us that many people suffer various psychological effects from disasters. Many exhibit mild to severe signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Depression is another observed effect.

Most of us are familiar with the effects of depression—if we watch TV at all, then we likely see one or two ads for drugs used to treat it. Though we commonly associate PTSD with soldiers who suffer the horrors of combat, the US Department of Veteran’s Affairs excellent website on PTSD (http://www.ptsd.va.gov/index.asp) includes disaster victims among those who suffer from it. It lists no less that twenty-four common effects ranging from emotional to severe physical reactions, including violent behavior.

Post-disaster, stress levels for those with jobs and families to support certainly will increase dramatically. They need to work, perhaps repair their homes or adapt to temporary housing, tend to their children (who are another psychological issue in and of themselves) and try to be an anchor. Children will not only be affected by this, but also suffer their own problems. Older people may feel helpless and endure increased isolation.

To an extent, we can predict those more likely to suffer from PTSD. They would be those that had emotional or psychological problems before the disaster or loss a loved one—even a family pet.

It is not hard to imagine the effects PTSD and depression can have. Jobs may be lost. Drug and alcohol abuse likely will increase. In short, the post-disaster effects of depression and PTSD will ripple upward from the individual to the community.

There is no question this affects community resilience. Experts are beginning to look at strategies to reduce the psychological consequences of disasters. Some are as simple as encouraging people to talk to others about the disaster. Some suggest we provide more immediate post-disaster counseling. We need better data. But we also know a lot.

Planning to recover means not just ensuring that the infrastructure is restored and economic recovery is set in motion. It means we also must think about keeping individuals whole as well.

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The Art of Resilience

March 23rd, 2010 - John Plodinec

Whenever I start a new endeavor, I try to assess it in terms of the factors set down over two millenia ago by Sun Tzu in his great work, The Art of War. According to Sun Tzu, successful generals assess their strategic situation in terms of the weather, the terrain, the leadership, the discipline and the Way. Communities can become more resilient if they assess themselves using the same five factors.

When a community assesses itself in terms of the weather, it shouldn’t literally think only of natural disasters, but rather consider all of the storms that swirl around it, including pandemics, economic disasters, and even civil chaos (think of the riots in the ‘60s). Each of these brings its own challenges. The resilient community anticipates crises, and objectively determines what the consequences might be.

A community’s terrain is not only its geography but also its internal terrain – its networks that actually perform the actions needed by the community. A resilient community understands that just as different neighborhoods may be affected and respond to crises in different ways because of their geography, so, too, different parts of its networks may respond in very different manners to a crisis. Thus, in assessing its terrain, the resilient community recognizes its strengths and weaknesses, and realizes that disasters are likely to magnify its weaknesses, while reducing its strengths.

A resilient community recognizes that its leadership goes beyond government, and is most often a complex network of public and private partners. Time compounds this complexity: the attributes of successful leadership during the response to a disaster (e.g., heroism) have to evolve to the patient perseverance of a saint as the community recovers and redevelops itself. Indeed, the community’s “decisions” made during recovery often will be the sum of hundreds or even thousands of individual decisions made by those in the community.

Resilient communities will exert discipline by planning for disasters, and by practicing those plans. Those plans will identify the human, physical and fiscal resources needed, and where they will come from. Through practice, these plans are refined and revised. Communities seeking to become more resilient will also invest to reduce their vulnerabilities.

The Way is at once the most difficult of these factors to grasp, but likely the most important. The Way is a complex compounding of vision, communication, and trust that provides a signpost to any member of the community in reaching decisions. The resilient community strives to achieve a coherence – a moral accord – an agreement – a shared vision across the entire community about what the community should be. If a community has a recovery plan or – better yet – a strategic plan, it can inform those hundreds or thousands of individual decisions made during recovery so that the overall outcome is positive. Thus, it is useful for communities to develop recovery plans before disasters, to lay out the general principles by which all in the community will act.

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Reinforcing the Need for a Common Framework

March 22nd, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

Several times in these CARRI blogs, Warren Edwards has reinforced that CARRI is about planning to recover. In recent blogs, Dr. John Plodinec has argued several reasons why we need a common framework—perhaps more precisely described as a national community resilience system—to build communities more resistant to disasters. I’d like to add an additional note to that discussion that reinforces and links these two ideas explicitly.

We live our lives in a way that is analogous to facing backwards in a boat that is floating down a river. The maxim is that our hindsight is 20-20—meaning that we know after things happen much of why they happened. We will never see the future, but we can anticipate and prepare, making use of applied research and best practices. That, in two words, is applied theory and that is the intent behind the community resilience system.

We know that communities with fewer resources have a harder time recovering from disasters. While a community resilience system won’t necessarily augment resources per se, it does point at ways that scarce resources can be used more effectively. In this sense, it is a preparatory tool that can help communities create more resilience.

We know that businesses, large and small, can better weather a disaster and recover if they have business continuity plans. A community resilience system both predicts that and provides ways of measuring how effectively a community is promoting business continuity planning and thus predict their degree of resilience.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that all disasters are, ultimately, social phenomena. In the end, no one would care much if a flood, hurricane, bomb, tornado, or earthquake destroyed a baseball park if there were no one around to go there and watch games. That is the major reason we believe there should be a common resilience system that can be applied to any disaster. In that sense, the system would provide each community a lens to look at potential areas of loss and thus direct their attention to areas where they, specifically, should plan to recover.

So, to return to one of Dr. Plodinec’s assertions about the need for a system now, our research has led us to conclude that communities often have unrealistic expectations about federal aid after a disaster. This, in itself, is a negative indicator. Developing a system of community resilience will work to teach communities to be more self-sufficient and strategic.

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Gulf Coast Resilient Home Building Conference March 19-21, 2010

March 8th, 2010 - Ann Farrar

The Gulf Coast Resilient Home Building Conference will be held March 19-21, 2010 at the Mississippi Coast Convention Center in Biloxi, Mississippi. This Conference is presented in cooperation with the Home Builders Association of the Mississippi Coast 23^rd Annual Home and Garden Show. The purpose of the Conference is to help put communities along the Gulf coast on a path toward greater resilience to natural disasters through the construction of strong homes that can withstand high winds and water. The Conference will feature a combination of education sessions, a demonstration exhibit and product vendors.

The Conference Planning Committee would like to thank the Home Builders Association of the Mississippi Coast for their scholarship donations within the continuing education component of the Conference. Registration deadline is March 12, 2010; information regarding the Conference Education Sessions can be found at http://www.resilientus.com/rhbc-education-sessions.html.

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CARRI Implements New Blog!

March 5th, 2010 - Ann Farrar

Welcome to the new CARRI Blog! In addition to a fresh look you will find the following enhancements:

Multiple Contributors/Authors

Along with CARRI Director Warren Edwards, we have additional contributors with John Plodinec, Andy Felts, and myself – we will contribute on a regular basis and invite your comments. Over time, other members of the CARRI Team will most likely become regular bloggers/contributors.

CARRI Blogwatch

This is a rotating “headline” that highlights recent blog entries; a quick “click” takes you to the referenced entry.

Categories

A team worked to identify twenty categories (terms) that are relevant to community resilience. These categories will be used with each blog entry/posting and will aid in the search and archive functions.

Reports and Briefings

This tool is designed to bring you quick access to recent publications that are relevant to community resilience. If you are aware of an item that would be helpful to our Team and CARRI Blog Followers, please send us a note by using the “Contact Us” tab above.

Blogroll

This is a nifty tool that will serve as a fast link to other blogs that are relevant to our interests. Again, if you are aware of a blog that might be of interest to us, please use the “Contact Us” tab above.

We are excited about these enhancements and look forward to your interaction with us as we continue our work in community resilience – let us hear from you!

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Cascading Events

March 5th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

Most are probably familiar with the old maxim:

“For want of a nail, a shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.” For want of a rider, a battle was lost. For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost.”

The maxim describes quite well what we call ‘cascading events.’ As communities, regions, nations, and even continents have become increasingly interdependent, understanding and factoring cascading events becomes an important part of assessing community resilience.

Think of our growing interdependencies in this way: In 1960 a major disruption in international trade would have meant you might not have bananas to put on your cereal. In short, its effects would have been fairly minimal. Now think what such a disruption could mean in 2010.

Cascading events are easiest to understand in the private sector—with economic consequences. A major disaster in the Pacific Northwest might reduce the ability of industries there to supply the rest of the nation with plywood. This might, in turn, cause other building materials to be substituted and thus reduce long-term market share for the plywood producers. Or, the lack of materials or higher costs might cause a southeast contractor to go out of business.

Complex interdependencies are a major reason that business continuity planning has become increasingly important in the private sector. A large company that outsources a service or production to another nation has to factor what a disaster in that nation would mean for its ability to provide services and/or products. Those dissatisfied with services might seek the other’s products, which then might cause production layoffs. read the entire article >

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Unrealistic Expectations

March 5th, 2010 - John Plodinec

In a previous posting, I pointed out that the new reality of constrained resources created by the Great Recession makes the need for a community resilience framework more pressing than ever before. In this post, I’ll discuss another major reason a community resilience framework is needed now: the unrealistic expectations that have resulted from recent disasters.

In the aftermath of 9/11, and especially after Hurricane Katrina, a large portion of the populace seems to believe that the federal government should and can be the “White Knight” that charges in after a disaster and returns the community to normalcy. This belief has been reinforced by recent federal bailouts to financial institutions and automakers, and mirrors some of the rhetoric surrounding the health care debate.

Many current plans for emergency response and recovery reflect other facets of the same problem. For example, too many plans expect that the community’s behavior will conform to directives from the community’s leaders. And yet opinion polls in several locales have shown that large portions of the populace in hurricane-prone areas say they won’t leave no matter what they are told. read the entire article >

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