Preparing for a Disaster

The head of UConn's public policy department says general preparedness and being observant can help individuals and communities against either a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.

Amy Donahue, associate professor and department head, public policy, CLAS.

Amy Donahue, associate professor and department head, public policy, CLAS. Photo by Daniel Buttrey

Amy Donahue, head of the Department of Public Policy in CLAS.
Amy Donahue, head of the public policy department in CLAS. (Dan Buttrey/UConn Photo)

Amy Donahue is head of the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut.

Her research focuses on the productivity of emergency services organizations and on the nature of citizen demand for public safety. She has published work on the design, management, and finance of fire departments and other public agencies, and is principal investigator on federally-funded research projects focused on improving emergency preparedness.

For the past several years, she has served as a technical advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Donahue has many years of training and field experience in an array of emergency services-related fields, including four years serving in the U.S. Army, managing a 911 communications center, and working as a firefighter and emergency medical technician.

She spoke recently with Karen Grava of CLAS Today.

 

Your research shows that some people are willing to prepare for weather-related incidents such as hurricanes, but not for others such as terrorism. Why?

We have done some national survey work to try to get at this question. About twice as many people see themselves as very prepared for a natural disaster as see themselves as very prepared for a terrorist attack. Likewise, about twice as many people have thought about the specific consequences of a natural disaster as have thought about the consequences of a terrorist attack.

In part, the attention to natural disasters may be explained by the nature of risks they perceive and how personal they seem. So while a lot of people (about a quarter of those we surveyed) think terrorism is the biggest risk facing the nation, a much smaller percentage (about 6 percent) think it is the biggest risk facing their own community.

People think a terrorist attack would be about as serious problem as a natural disaster if it occurred in their community. And they are less confident in their ability to recover from a terrorist attack than from a natural disaster. But people think a terrorist attack is less likely to affect them and are less worried about it.

Are most people adequately prepared at least for a weather-related disaster?

That’s a good question. If you ask people, about 75 percent will say they are at least somewhat, if not very, prepared. Only 8 percent of people think they are not prepared at all. On the other hand, if you ask local government officials how prepared they think the residents of their communities are, they say that only about half are at least somewhat prepared, and 22 percent are not prepared at all.

People are generally less prepared than they think they are. They overestimate how well they will be able to cope, and how long they will be able to be on their own without help. At the same time, I have worked on major disasters and have seen how resourceful and generous people are when disaster strikes. It is certainly the case that people who make the effort to prepare in advance are better off after a disaster, and they are better able to help their families and neighbors. Despite this, people procrastinate because their lives are busy and so many other things seem more immediate and pressing.

You have noted that the same mistakes – communications failures, lack of a clear command structure and a failure to deploy the right resources – recur in disasters despite what we should have learned in, say, 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. What can we do to overcome these problems?

This is a very difficult challenge. We do very well managing “routine” emergencies, and even pretty large disasters. We have a very robust operating philosophy that is now fairly commonly understood and used to handle these things. As a nation, we have a large, strong cadre of responders who are very dedicated and capable. So it is not for lack of smarts, expertise, or effort; but when disasters are especially large or complex, our systems to manage them falter, sometimes badly. What is frustrating is that some of the same fundamental problems arise disaster after disaster and are documented every time – yet we don’t seem to learn these lessons.

I don’t know definitively why, but I have several hypotheses. One is that these are simply very hard problems that exceed our analytic understanding to this point. Some of the ways of operating that we use every day can be scaled up and used during catastrophic events, but some cannot. In effect, we have not yet devised the solution that works in these unusually large, complex environments, where the response involves hundreds of agencies and thousands of people from many disciplines with very different responsibilities, authority, expertise, and professional norms.

Since we have had so few terrorism attacks on our soil, how should we prepare for them?

Given how little of their scarce time and money they have to devote to preparing themselves, I don’t advocate that people work on preparing for terrorism specifically. I think the key is for people to think about how they can be prepared in general for whatever might happen. In fact, this is the approach emergency responders use – in the domain of disaster preparedness, this is referred to as an “all-hazards” approach – build capability that can be applied to threats and hazards of all types.

The one thing I do think people should do related to terrorism isn’t really a preparedness action but a habit: People should be observant of the world around them, and if they see something unusual that doesn’t seem right or is unexplained, they should report it.

Disaster preparedness takes resources and time. Do we invest enough in safety?

At the individual level, a little effort can go a long way, and most steps people should take are common sense. Most people have things like bottled water and flashlights on hand. But on top of that, having a supply of medications is important. Having a plan for how you will make contact with your family when something happens – and cell phones don’t work – is also important. Having some cash in small denominations (since ATMs and credit cards won’t work) is very useful. Keeping vehicles full of fuel is a good habit to get into. Keeping a list of key information you’d want to have (account numbers, contact phone numbers, and so forth) is really helpful. The point is that if people spend a little time learning what to do, and then make these things part of their regular habits, they can be in a good position when something bad happens.

As a society, this is a much harder question to answer. It is very hard to decide how prepared is prepared enough. Even if resources were unlimited, it would be impossible to prepare for every eventuality – though that seems to be the temptation. In reality, resources are scarce, and many priorities compete for them.

In the end, the trick is to make sound assessments of probability and consequence in order to decide what preparedness investments to make. This means that risk assessment is our most important tool, because it can help communities decide what capabilities to build.