Resilience – additional feedback from the July 2010 Annual Hazards Workshop

August 13th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

In my last blog, I commented on the Hazards Workshop in July. There is more news. One of the highlighted track plenary sessions —“Resilience—What’s That?”— featured our own Dr. Tom Wilbanks. It was moderated by, as Tom designated her, “the legendary” Clare Rubin. Clare has been doing recovery studies for longer than anyone I know. Dr. Michael Dunaway from DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate participated as did Dr. Lori Dengler from Humbolt State University.

The panel was standing room only. The discussion was in keeping with the workshop and there were two practitioner and two more academic discussions. I should tell you here that the panelists don’t get to use PowerPoint and don’t give formal papers. They give a brief presentation and then it goes open the audience, a truly refreshing way to bring academics and practitioners together for discussion.

Tom did a good job of summarizing what CARRI has been about all along, seeing mitigating, preparing and recovery from disasters as a continuous process that is interlinked. He acknowledged that defining resilience was still a work in progress.

Clare’s approach was interesting and refreshing. Though she has long been recognized for her research in disaster recovery she spoke from her position as an elected official in Virginia. In her standard straightforward fashion she said, more or less, ‘I’m not sure what resilience is, but people are beginning to talk about it and I think means I need to find out more.’

Dunaway offered some interesting comments, emphasizing resilience and the need to find funding for building our national deterrent capacity to meet the challenges we are facing. He argued we need to change our culture in the face of increasing populations and multiple threats. He saw becoming a more resilient nation as the path to accomplishing that. He concluded with a very nice quote that defined resilience to him—given to him by a private sector friend. Resilience, means finding a way to function normally in abnormal like conditions. As good start for thinking that everything is, in fact, getting back to normal (or a new normal).

A tsunami researcher, Dengler, echoed Clare’s statement and talked a bit about being in Malaysia after the huge tsunami a few years back.

One interesting thing she said was that one island tribe used the term “smong” when asked what happened. She actually found out that that meant a lot of things in one word when time was critical. Smong means “when the ground shakes and there’s a lot of things jumbled up and the sea starts to recede and you see gurgling out where the water is, head for the high ground.” So, this one tribe did just that, gathered up the kids, put grandmas in carts and trucked up about 90 meters–exactly where Dengler would have recommended they go–and they all survived. Not only did they do that, but they also had stockpiled critical materials, lumber, food, etc., up out of harm’s way as well. When was the last time a large tsunami hit the village? 1917.

Another village escaped the tsunami, but evacuated anyway. She asked the chief if they were disappointed to have gone through all the effort of getting everyone to high ground and waiting it out. He replied no, “Each time offers us a chance to practice.”

Dengler offered that she wasn’t sure, but thought those were two pretty good examples of resilience. I agree.

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New Urbanism and Disaster Resiliency?

July 28th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

Attending the Annual Hazards Workshop, hosted by the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado has been a privilege I have enjoyed since coming on board with the CARRI team. The conference, unlike most, is not discipline specific, but rather brings together a group of researchers and practitioners who are interested in learning more about hazards, meaning disasters, and how we can deal with them.

July 2010 was the 35^th time the group has met. It would be an interesting exercise to plot their themes/topics over those years, but I was most pleased to see that this year there was a concurrent session on Community Resilience and Recovery. I went to several of these sessions and each was extremely well attended. CARRI’s own Tom Wilbanks was a presenter at one that had standing room only.

Though I will have more to share about what I learned at the conference, one was actually fortuitous that I learned at a panel that Dr. Philip Berke (UNC-Chapel Hill) moderated in a different track on environmental change and patterns of vulnerability. The panel focused on large-scale urban areas with that idea in mind.

One of the panel participants, Dr. Peter Wenger of the National Science Foundation revealed that Dr. Berke was engaged in NSF-funded research on what we social scientists call the “new urbanism” and disaster resiliency. From the way the questions where handled, Dr. Berke’s research is in its early stages—but from my perspective, this is terrific news for our understanding of community resilience.

The new urbanism folks address a pretty consistent theme. They don’t like urban sprawl. They don’t like single-use zoning. They think we can live and would choose to do so in denser communities where we can walk to the grocery store or work. I know more than most about this since I directed the Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Center for Urban Affairs and Mayor Riley is at the forefront of leaders in the new urbanism movement.

How does this relate to community resilience? I don’t know the details of Dr. Berke’s work for NSF, but it is pretty easy for me to see. People who live closer to where they work—to the point of walking distance—are likely to find recovery from disaster easier. Ditto for whether schools and places to shop and seek entertainment are as well.

The new urbanism movement is all about core cities and multi-purpose nodes that, in the end, create not just easy access to employment or retail, but a sense of place as well. They like small parks, places where you can go and walk, talking to your kids or playing fetch with your dog.

Berke’s is the kind of resilience research that should be pursued—it has the portent to be path-breaking in that it gets us through the multiple layers of community connections that we know entail resilience. It is encouraging to see the NSF funding such efforts. I look forward to the conclusions from this way of scientifically researching community resilience.

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Symbolism and Resilience

June 10th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

I’ve been busy of late writing a paper for CARRI that explains our ideas about a Community Recovery System (CRS) and a Common Framework (CF) to wider academic and practitioner audiences. As I have done so, I have once again been struck by what a linear process writing is.

We at CARRI see disaster recovery as following a logic, but one that also shows the interconnectedness of a community. Though post-disaster infrastructure recovery is important early on, even then the gears of a community’s economic and social system are engaging. It is important to understand this because any recovery plan that does not will not be as effective.

As I was struggling with a way of explaining the need to pay attention to social factors, early on I thought about a community’s social capital. Social capital is one form of glue that holds a community together during normal functioning. It literally, to use our CRS and CF terminology, helps create a sense of community. And it gets stressed, stretched, and challenged during and following a disaster.

I went back and searched for a quote I had highlighted in Lawrence J. Vale and Thomas J. Campanella’s edited volume, The Resilient City: How modern cities recover from disaster, written in 2005. There, Vale wrote:

“….[R]ecovery occurs network by network, district by district, not just building by building; it is about reconstructing myriad social relationships embedded in schools, workplaces, childcare arrangements, shops, places of worship, and places of play and recreation.” (Vale, 2005)

My mind immediately seized upon a familiar image—that of the tattered American flag that someone searching amidst the World Trade Center rubble attached to the highest girder sticking in the ground. Even before the first truckload of debris was carted away, putting up a symbol that the city would use to endure its disaster. Who can forget the image of sheer compassion on the fireman’s face as he tenderly carried a young child away from the rubble that had once been the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City? These are the types of symbols that help a community rebuild.

Vale writes about other rituals that matter–the ceremony that was held before the last truck carted the last load of debris from ground zero where the towers once stood. In his words, “Remembrance drives resilience.”

The significance of this should not be overlooked. Even in the early stages of disaster recovery, a community should attend to matters of social capital just as it works to repair roads and bridges. Of course, the primary form this takes is communication from community leaders that clearly understand this is both at stake and an issue.

Social functioning may rest atop adequate infrastructure and a healthy economic system, but that does not make it any less important in the meshing of gears that create community resilience.

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Flood Resilient Communities: National Flood Insurance Program Saves Money, Property, Lives

May 25th, 2010 - Susan Kammeraad-Campbell

Note: This is the first of three blog entries on flood resilient communities

Flooding is the one disaster to which every community is vulnerable. And as we have learned from the recent flood devastation in Nashville and New Jersey, property owners considered outside delineated flood zones can have a rude awakening if the rains hit hard and fast. Many residents and business owners outside the 100-year floodplain believed themselves safe from flooding and did not have flood insurance. They had a harsh lesson from which we can all learn.

Since standard insurance policies do not cover flooding, property owners have the opportunity to purchase protection through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) if their community meets FEMA requirements to adopt and enforce ordinances for reducing flood risks.

While community participation in the NFIP is voluntary, nearly 21,000 communities across the United States and its territories participate. Only in participating communities do homeowners, renters and business owners have access to federally backed flood insurance.

Having and enforcing an adequate floodplain management plan is a mark of a resilient community. Adopting standards that exceed NFIP standards means a community might sustain even less damage and recover more quickly. Translated: floodplain management saves money, property, and lives.

Beyond that, there are costs to a community for not participating in the NFIP. Federal officers or agencies, such as Veterans Affairs or Federal Housing Administration, are prohibited from approving any form of financial assistance related to land located in a Special Flood Hazard Area. If a Presidential disaster is declared, no federal financial aid can be used to repair or reconstruct flood-damaged homes.

Without community oversight of building activities in the floodplain, the best efforts of some to reduce future flood losses can be compromised by the careless practices of others. Likewise, insurance rates will be adversely affected.

After a disaster, non-participating communities can apply to join the NFIP within six months and, if accepted, limitations on federal disaster assistance will be lifted. But after a disaster is not the best time for a community to undertake an application. Neither is it wise for individuals to secure insurance after the flood damages or destroys a home or business, or to wait for the forecast that predicts severe flooding since most insurance programs don’t allow for last minute policies.

There are distinct benefits for living in a flood resilient community. Exceeding the minimum NFIP requirements can mean insurance discounts of between 5 and 45 percent. Further, the program has resulted in insurance reductions of nearly $1 billion annually. According to the NFIP, buildings that meet flood construction standards suffer approximately 80 percent less damage than non-compliant structures.

It’s worth noting that FEMA reports that up to 25 percent of NFIP flood insurance claims are paid on buildings that are outside the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area, those areas where floodplain management regulations must be enforced and where flood insurance is mandatory.

Resilience begins at home. The best way to protect your investment in your home is to have adequate coverage. If you live in a community that is not in the NFIP, private insurance can be purchased. Visit www.floodsmart.gov for a listing of agents by community. You can find out if your community participates in the NFIP by going to www.fema.gov/fema/csb. If your community is not part of the program, you can petition your local government to participate.

For those not subject to the NRIP regulations requiring flood insurance, it is especially important to self-regulate and purchase insurance and use flood damage-resistant materials and building practices. Stay tuned, this is the subject of the next blog on flood resilient communities.

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How Far We’ve Not Come

April 26th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

I teach a Capstone Seminar in the master of public administration program at the College of Charleston—it is designed to bridge the students’ academic experience with the practitioners’ world. One of the assignments for the seminar is for students to work in teams of three or four on a real policy issue/problem. I ask local governments and nonprofits if they have issues or problems and the students choose from the list I get in response.

This semester, one group chose to examine and suggest updates for the City of Charleston’s policy addressing how employees will be expected to perform in the event of a disaster. While some employees, for example, those involved in public safety and health are clearly part of an emergency response plan others are not. Disaster or not, the city’s financial operations cannot shut down, public works crews need to be ready to quickly deploy for emergency repairs to critical infrastructure, and an orderly system of public communication needs to fall in place.

In previous blogs, Dr. John Plodinec and I have hinted at this by suggesting that any recovery plan should factor the critical role that public employees will play. Many employees may be required to work several days straight and then be on-call for an extended period. It is unreasonable for a plan not to acknowledge this and provide assistance to them in meeting family needs. It is unreasonable to expect that an employee will work two or three straight days and not know if their family is safe and secure.

A good plan for public employees would identify ”tiers,” from those that are deemed critical for the ongoing operations of the government, to those that may not be needed for several days. Employees should know in advance what is expected of them in a disaster, what they can expect in return, and, as best they can, make their own personal plans accordingly.

As the students did their research, they naturally decided to contact other East coast communities to see what their employee plans were for disasters.

One community representative, alarmingly, responded they would convene department heads and make a plan if a disaster was imminent. There are two pieces of news here. That is not a plan. Rather it is a plan to plan at what is probably not a very good time. Secondly, and more importantly, they should understand that a disaster is always imminent.

As if that was not enough to set off alarms in my head, the students reported that many communities said they had no plan at all for use of employees during a disaster. The students said they didn’t feel comfortable in asking them ”why not” since they are, after all, still students.

If you are reading this, alarm bells should be ringing loudly in your head as well. Governmental response outside emergency management both during a disaster and in the extended recovery period is crucial. Lack of a plan that employees know and understand will likely not only dramatically affect the time needed to recover, but human lives as well.

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More Thoughts Regarding “Managing for Long-Term Recovery in the Aftermath of a Disaster” – Read it With Us!

April 14th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

This is a continuation of last week’s blog on Managing for Long-Term Recovery in the Aftermath of a Disaster, Charles J. Alesch, Lucy A. Arendt, and James N. Holly (Public Entity Research Institute, 2009). This is, as I said, a book I heartily recommend.

The methodology used in the book was qualitative interviewing. They picked several communities that had endured disasters and in varying stages of recovery and simply asked people who were there when the disaster hit, “What happened?”

In listening to people tell their story, the authors gradually arrived at some conclusions put forth in the book. One particularly insightful one was that even as infrastructure was being restored and steps taken toward recovery, the disaster’s effects continued on for several years.

Though undoubtedly communities need some outside support in recovering from major disasters, they note they could find no correlation between the amount of support and how effective the community was at recovering. Some got a lot of support and still appeared to be failing and some not so much and were succeeding.

The last chapters of the book are written from a public practitioner’s perspective. The authors note the incredible strain that disasters put on public workers. Not infrequently, city managers resign after working long days for months on end. This is one more reminder that communities that do not plan to take care of their employees and their families are neglecting a crucial resource.

Recovering from disasters can offer a community an opportunity to undo past mistakes. Many communities tried to do just that in focusing on revitalizing their decaying downtowns as a recovery strategy. Not surprisingly, they didn’t succeed. Even after facades were spiffed up, streets landscaped, and inviting parks built, most in the community continued to prefer the mall on the edge of town.

I am reminded of the many failed efforts that cities undertook to ‘mall-ize’ their downtowns in the 1960s and 70s. Despite spending massive amounts of money and building them, the people did not come.

We at CARRI are always reminding ourselves that the trajectory of a community before a disaster will be exacerbated post-disaster. The point here is a simple one. The decayed, vacant, unappealing downtowns didn’t happen overnight. Their development was an incremental process that occurred building-by-building, street-by-street, and tenant-by-tenant over several years. Attempting to change direction with all of that momentum in the wrong direction is not, as Alesch et. al. observe, good policy.

Restoring, rehabilitating a vacant downtown should be done through careful planning with community involvement and likely will take a long time. While recovery planning can undo some mistakes, it cannot expect to reweave the fabric of the community in a completely new pattern.

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New Publication “Managing for Long-Term Recovery in the Aftermath of a Disaster” – Read it With Us!

April 7th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

In my initial relationship with CARRI as the local researcher in Charleston, one of the aspects of disaster recovery was gathering what we called ‘nuggets.’ These were, in our mind, some things that communities did to smooth the path toward ‘getting back to normal.’

An example that comes to mind is that Mayor Riley arranged for utility workers to stay in a vacant hotel (which has since been renovated and is now on the historic register) in Charleston. Rather than having to drive their equipment to a central site, they could leave it where they were working, get on a bus, and come back to a meal and bed. This undoubtedly hastened Charleston’s recovery from Hugo.

An excellent book that contains many ‘nuggets’ has recently been published by the Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI)—Charles J. Alesch, Lucy A. Arendt, and James N. Holly co-authored a book, Managing for Long-Term Recovery in the Aftermath of a Disaster, PERI, 2009. You can find the book at their website: http://www.riskinstitute.org/peri/

The authors are to be praised for taking on the issue of disaster recovery from a holistic perspective and giving a lot of good information in a very readable format. I would encourage any practitioner who has an interest in disaster recovery to read it. This book not only contains many examples of what communities did right in recovering from a disaster, but also others where they made mistakes. All are nuggets making the book a very worthwhile read.

The best parts of the book are in patiently explaining how disasters are really complex socio-economic events. We on the CARRI Team have constantly said that recovery must engage the ‘full fabric’ of the community and that is a different way of saying the same thing.

The book is particularly effective at explaining and categorizing cascading events, the slow unfolding of the consequences of disaster that are often unnoticed and may take years to occur. The authors break out the immediate consequences of disasters and then explain clearly how these can lead to more immediately following consequences and to systemic community consequences that in turn, create ripple reverberations and consequences. They offer excellent, concrete examples of all these, grounding them in their on-the-ground research method that they used in questioning individuals in specific communities on how they endured different disasters.

If all this sounds complicated, it is not—and that I why I recommend the book. One of the things they note, for example, is that sometimes business failures as a result of a disaster may take many more years to occur. The business owner holds on for as long as they can, linked to their communities by a sense of place and community, and simply cannot do it anymore. The success stories they tell are equally as enlightening.

What Alesch et. al, know is that a disaster affects the whole community—recovery is not about any single component—the infrastructure, economy or social aspects.

At this point, what I would invite is for any who are reading this blog to get the book and read it. It is worthwhile. Engage in some commentary and we can begin to exchange our views on it. I have some problems with it, but that is because we are all passionate about disaster recovery. You are welcome to respond to this blog or engage me directly at feltsa@cofc.edu.

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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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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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