Helping Disabled People in Emergencies

Introduction

It is a fundamental principle in the modern world that disabled people should be given the opportunity to participate in modern society with as few impediments as possible. There is no justification for relaxing this principle when emergencies and disasters occur. Nevertheless, handicapped people may encounter physical barriers or experience particular difficulties of communication that prevent them from reacting effectively to crisis situations and stop them from using the facilities and assistance made available to people who are not disabled.

The whole question of how to assist the disabled in emergencies has been roundly overlooked. The body of academic literature on this subject is very small (e.g. Parr 1987, Tierney et al. 1988) and little attempt has been made recently to renew it. Moreover, the subject is seldom a theme at emergency management conferences. Despite this, there are some useful initiatives, such as the Verona Charter on the Rights of the Disabled in Disaster (ULSS20 Verona 2007), some study centres (e.g. the Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds, UK--Hemingway and Priestley 2006, Priestley and Hemingway 2006) and some manuals of best practice (e.g. FEMA 2003). However, state-of-the-art reports tend to be damning and to provide a catalogue of inadequate provisions (CID 2004, Tady 2006, White et al. 2004).

The purpose of this article is help redress the balance and encourage positive action. I will discuss some of the broad issues connected with disability in disaster, highlight the problems and indicate some of the solutions.

In the context of civil protection, what is disability?

The classic layman's view of disability is that of a person in a wheelchair who must be manhandled away from danger. In reality the issue is far more complex than that. To begin with there are many forms of disability: the list includes paraplegia, quadriplegia, deafness, blindness and defects of vision, mental illness and retardation, cerebral damage, stroke, senility and dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and, in fact, numerous forms of dependence on personnel, equipment and supplies for support to the vital functions that sustain life. Although old age is not in itself a disability, many very old people are frail and lack mobility, and they may also be ill or susceptible to various diseases and conditions.

In terms of classification, disabilities fall approximately into the following categories: difficulties of personal mobility, inability to see (with possible use of guide-dogs), deafness, problems of communication and articulation of words (as with stroke victims), cognitive disorders, various medical problems, use of life-support systems, people who suffer from intolerance of chemical or environmental substances, psychiatric disorders and panic attacks, and infirmity associated with old age. The list is long and impressive and, of course, individuals may suffer from more than one form of disability. Clearly, the different categories should be associated with a varied catalogue of provisions during emergencies, including transport for people with reduced mobility, specialised means of communication for those with cognitive or speech difficulties, provision of portable or substitute equipment for those who depend on life-support systems, and psychiatric support for those with mental health problems.

Disasters do tend to discriminate against disabled people. For example, in earthquakes, people in wheelchairs cannot take refuge under desks and tables, and neither can they rapidly exit a building down stairs (Rahimi 1993, 1994). People who are deaf or have defects of vision may fail to recognise danger or not hear verbal orders to evacuate (Kailes 2002). Furthermore, people who depend on electrical apparatus (dialysis machines, ventilators, or simply electronic means of communication) may find themselves in difficulty when there are power cuts during emergencies. Finally, all the services offered to people in disasters and crises--transportation for evacuation, shelter, counselling, and so on--need to be made accessible to disabled people.

It should be noted that the problem is not an insignificant one. In Tuscany, central Italy, 16 per cent of the population has some form of disability. Some 54 million Americans and 90 million Indians are counted among the disabled (and the disaster management law of 2005 in India makes no mention of them). At the time of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf States of the USA, 155,000 residents of the cities of Biloxi (MS), Mobile (AL) and New Orleans (LA) were registered as disabled. By all accounts, many found themselves in dire straits when the hurricane struck. In fact, as 71 per cent of the 1,330 known fatalities in the hurricane were people over the age of 60, there is a clear indication that disabled people were disproportionately affected by the disaster (Tady 2006).

Although 19.3 per cent of the population of the United States--almost one in five citizens--suffers from some form of disability, 80 per cent of emergency managers contacted in a recent study (NCD 2005) had not made any special provision for the disabled in their plans. Indeed, 57 per cent of them did not know how many disabled people there were in their own planning jurisdiction, and only 27 per cent had taken a course offered by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on dealing with disabled people in disaster. The problem can become acute in a major disaster: for example, on 11 September 2001 a group of disabled people congregated in a room on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center waiting to be evacuated by firemen, but the building collapsed before any of them could be rescued (CID 2004).

We can conclude that major emergencies may put disabled people more at risk than other members of the general population and may impede them and threaten their safety with new barriers. Despite this gloomy picture, there have been more optimistic assessments. For example, Douglas Lathrop, writing in Mainstream magazine in 1994, suggested that "In some ways, disabled people who manage to live with a certain degree of independence are more able to face disaster than people who are not disabled. They have a 'psychological advantage'..." (Lathtrop 2004). That may be so, but we cannot and should not rely on the resourcefulness of disabled people to get them through calamity. Hence, the next section will consider what ought to be done.

Helping the disabled in disaster

In an emergency situation it is comparatively easy not to recognise the type of handicap borne by a particular individual and thus to offer the wrong kind of assistance. Moreover, the organisations that work in disaster tend to be accustomed to think in terms of providing assistance to large groups of people, whereas the disabled have individual needs that cannot necessarily be equated with those of groups. In fact, assisting the disabled in disasters requires, not only particular procedures, but also special preparations and plans tailored to their needs. Individual attention is labour-intensive at a time when manpower is at a premium. However, providing special assistance is one way of showing that, despite their being handicapped, the disabled are full members of society, with all the associated benefits, rights and privileges.

In emergency planning and management it is time to take into account the problems, special needs and points of view of disabled people. For example, most evacuation plans require the ability to walk, drive, see and hear. They should be adapted to the needs of people who cannot do one or more of these things (Kailes 2002).

The experience of being disabled in disaster situations highlights certain needs. For example, there is a question of how to ensure continuity of services for people who depend for support on electricity, the telephone, water supply or other basic services. Disabled people need to know how to manage when disorder and debris are present at home, and what transportation and mobility assistance will be available in disaster situations. They must be informed of how they can be resupplied with basic necessities in emergency situations and there is also a question of how to manage the needs of guide dogs (FEMA 2003).

One report (White et al. 2004) found that there were few if any empirical data on the efficient and safe evacuation of disabled people during emergencies and crises (see Kailes 2002). Moreover, in many places there is a lack of integration and co-operation between the various organisations that work with the disabled and the civil protection community which must plan for and manage emergencies. It is important to start the dialogue, for the issues are complex. No single emergency response strategy is valid for all types of disability. Moreover, the question of how best to assist the disabled in disaster is related to other issues such as providing help to ethnic minority groups, single mothers, and people with special dietary and medicinal needs.

The basic principles of assistance to the disabled in disaster are easy to list. First, procedures and services should be accessible in times of peace and in disaster. Emergency communications should be accessible, comprehensible and reliable. Disabled people's associations should be involved in civil protection activities and in the emergency planning process. Where there is a significant risk of disaster, appropriate preparation, education and training should be carried out for the benefit of emergency responders and disabled people who are at risk. Finally, efforts should be made to sensitise the mass media to their potential role as purveyors of emergency information to the disabled.

A guide to emergency preparedness written specifically for the disabled (FEMA/ARC 2004) recommends that they do three things, if possible. The first is to assess the types of hazard that are present in the workplace and at home. Secondly, they should endeavour to create a support network of at least three people for each site that they habitually frequent. Thirdly, they should estimate their own capacity to respond with self-protective actions in the event of a crisis. In addition, for kinds of disability that are not immediately apparent, it may be helpful to wear a broach or bracelet that identifies the handicap in question. These are examples of a practical approach that can go a long way to improving the safety of disabled people in crisis situations. However, this form of pragmatism is dependent on developing an appropriately positive mindset and attitude in the civil protection community.

Conclusions

As noted above, the academic literature on disabled people in disasters is exceedingly sparse (Parr 1987, Rahimi 1993, Tierney et al. 1988). This appears to be a sign that the problem is being neglected in both intellectual and applied terms. Yet it is clearly an important issue. In the words of Hemingway and Priestley (2006):-

"Disabled people have been made more vul­nerable to natural hazards through historical processes of exclusion and impoverishment. As a consequence, their experience of disaster may be more acute and long-standing than non-dis­abled populations. These effects are accentuated in poor communities throughout the world where disabled people remain amongst the poor­est of the poor. Moreover, when disaster strikes, disabled people encounter inequities in access to shelter or relief and are often excluded from full participation in response and recovery."

The idea that because an emergency or disaster is occurring normal rules are suspended should not mean that disabled people are left without adequate assistance. Indeed, it ought to mean the opposite--that efforts to help them are redoubled, and that special consideration is given to their needs on a priority basis. Moreover, crisis conditions should not offer any excuse to violate the dignity of disabled people. It is high time for the plight of the disabled to be considered in emergency plans. This is both a moral imperative and simply a question of justice and equity. It involves knowing where disabled people are likely to be when emergencies occur and ensuring that appropriate services are available to them. It may also involve an element of monitoring to ensure that discrimination does not occur.

In the European Union the publication and signing of the Verona Charter on the Rescue of Persons with Disabilities in Case of Disasters (ULSS20 Verona 2007) is a milestone in the official recognition that here is a problem which must be tackled. The Charter is the culmination of a project that has investigated the plight of the disabled in disaster in various European countries and has thus contributed to the formulation of a clear picture of the problem and its potential solutions. Examples of bad practice may abound (see NCD 2005), but there is every scope to improve matters. To do so would be a sign of civility and an affirmation of rights for people who, despite their disadvantages, are full members of society and are deserving of protection in disaster.

References

CID 2004. Lessons Learned from the World Trade Center Disaster: Emergency Preparedness for People with Disabilities in New York. Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (see http://www.cidny.org/).

FEMA 2003. Disaster Preparedness for People with Disabilities. US Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington DC (see www.fema.gov/library/disprepf.shtm).

FEMA/ARC 2004. Preparing for Disaster for People with Disabilities and Other Special Needs. US Federal Emergency Management Agency and American Red Cross Society, Washington DC, 20 pp.

Hemingway, L. and M. Priestley 2006. Natural hazards, human vulnerability and disabling societies: a disaster for disabled people? Review of Disability Studies 2(3): 57-67.

Kailes, J. 2002. Evacuation Preparedness: Taking Responsibility For Your Safety: A Guide For People With Disabilities and Other Activity Limitations. Center for Disability Issues and the Health Profession, Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California (see www.westernu.edu/cdihp.html).

Lathrop, D. 1994. Disaster! If you have a disability, the forces of nature can be meaner to you than anyone else. But you can fight back. Be prepared. Mainstream (Nov. 1994), (see www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/independentliving/disaster.htm).

NCD 2005. Saving Lives: Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Planning. US National Council on Disability, Washington DC (see http://www.ncd.gov/).

Parr, A.R. 1987. Disasters and disabled persons: an examination of the safety needs of a neglected minority. Disasters 11(2): 148-159.

Priestley, M. and L. Hemingway 2006. Disabled people and disaster recovery: a tale of two cities? Journal of Social Work in Disability and Rehabilitation 5(3/4): 23-42.

Rahimi, M. 1993. An examination of behaviour and hazards faced by physically disabled people during the Loma Prieta earthquake. Natural Hazards 7(1): 59-82.

Rahimi, M. 1994. Behavior of mobility-disabled people in earthquakes: a simulation experiment. Earthquake Spectra 10(2): 381-401.

Tady, M. 2006. Disabled people left behind in emergencies. The New Standard.

Tierney, K., W. Petak and H. Hahn 1988. Disabled Persons and Earthquake Hazards. Monograph no. 46, Institute of Behavioral Science, Program on Environment and Behavior, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.

ULSS20 Verona 2007. Verona Charter on the Rescue of Persons with Disabilities in Case of Disasters. ULSS no. 20, Verona, 17 pp.

White, G., M. Fox, J. Rowland, C. Rooney and S. Aldana 2004. Nobody Left Behind: Investigating Disaster Preparedness and Response for People with Disabilities. Lawrence, Kansas (see www.rtcil.org/resources.htm).

Integrated Emergency Response

Configuration of resources in disaster preparedness

Towards a common language and culture of civil protection

At least 35 disciplines and professions have relevance to civil protection. When disaster strikes or incidents occur, their practitioners must work together efficiently and effectively. Many of the greatest problems of emergency co-ordination occur, not within, but between organisations and groups, for people must work together who are not accustomed to doing so, or at least not in the way that emergency situations demand.

Stated simply, during an emergency the priorities are to save and protect lives, rescue and evacuate people, make environments safe, and restore acceptable conditions as soon as possible. These objectives require programmes, plans, protocols, procedures, norms, regulations and a legal framework. In its essence, planning is not about procedures, it is about co-ordinating inter-agency work according to particular scenarios of event and response. Thus, a common language and a universal culture of civil protection are needed. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is to involve the general public in this process, and encourage them to know and evaluate the risks they face, generate personal plans, and support civil protection initiatives.

The need for both professionalism and multidisciplinary competence means that members of the civil protection community must consider the consequences of actions outside the compass of single disciplines (Comfort 1985). For example, to achieve greater integration in the field, non-medical rescuers must learn to appreciate the needs and modus operandi of medical, sanitary and epidemiological emergency responders.

When disaster strikes, we face three sets of challenges connected with different spheres of action: domestic, international and intercontinental. Whereas in the past these have involved three distinct communities of responders (local civil protection operatives, national ones and international humanitarian agencies), as world integration gathers pace there is an increasing tendency towards convergence and the involvement in each field of all three constituencies.

The organisation of civil protection systems

With regard to domestic emergency response, there are four main groups of protagonists: public administration (in general, the civil protection services of government at all levels), 'blue-light' services (police, fire, ambulance and technical specialists), civil society organisations (especially volunteer services), and military and paramilitary forces in their roles as providers of military assistance to civil communities. This diverse set of protagonists requires careful organisation in order to ensure rapid and timely response to disasters, and guarantee a well-organised, carefully targeted reaction that is based on scenarios of what is likely to happen. The key words are command, co-ordination and collaboration. Generally, as information and communications technology (ICT) has opened up new opportunities, there has been a shift in emphasis from the first of these to the second and third (Green 2001). With respect to models of emergency control developed in previous eras, ICT has thus had the effect of flattening the chain of command. A rigid hierarchy is no longer needed when what is required is a flexible approach to the evolution of problems in the field that draws benefit from techniques of adaptive management. Hence, parallel task forces have tended to replace the earlier militaristic forms of centralised command [1], and their roles have been enhanced by digital information sharing. Rapid communication has facilitated the apportionment and conduct of emergency response tasks.

There is no universal model of command that is valid and appropriate for all circumstances. Instead there are two basic themes: the command principle and the support function principle. Both require a lead agency, or in other words a central organisation that takes a directional role in emergency situations and also functions as a point of reference for the diverse forces that respond to incidents and disasters. This is usually a 'blue-light' service but which one it is depends on the country involved. For instance, in the United Kingdom, where emergencies are seen primarily as a question of public order, it is the police service. In Italy, where the primary requirement is for technical intervention, the fire brigades are the lead agency; while in Iran, where mass casualties are feared on huge scale, it is the national Red Crescent Society.

The command principle divides emergency functions vertically into policy (and ethical), strategic, tactical and operational levels (PESTO). Alternatively, the support function principle divides command by creating corresponding units that manage functions (such as communications, transportation, material supplies, and shelter) at different levels and in different organisations. Unfortunately, the two principles seem not to be compatible to the extent that a hybrid system can be made out of the best features of both.

Civil protection can only function well if it is generated and organised at the local level, for when emergencies occur the local area is almost always the "theatre of operations". In fact, given distances, route blockages, shortages of resources and the press of time, there is no substitute for locally-organised preparedness. As a result of this, other levels of government or administrative hierarchy should harmonise and co-ordinate, not supplant, local efforts. The importance of this cannot be overstated: many studies have proved that local resources and organisation are paramount when disaster strikes (Waugh and Tierney 2007). In fact, perhaps 90 per cent of emergency resources deployed during the early stages of sudden-impact disaster are likely to be of local origin (Gillespie 1991).

This implies 'bottom-up' organisation, but paradoxically it still requires 'top-down' harmonisation to ensure compatibility between different levels of administration and geographical areas. Generally, local preparedness has been fostered by decentralisation, and by applying the principle of subsidiarity in government. However, there is a risk that the resulting mosaic of jurisdictions will be exceedingly heterogeneous in terms of the degree of preparedness and the kinds of measures adopted. If that is so, the result will be incompatibility, and disasters are no respecters of political boundaries. Thus, one of the greatest challenges in civil protection is to ensure local self-sufficiency and at the same time guarantee compatibility.

Integration is not easy to achieve. For example, with respect only to medical emergency response, there is a need to integrate intra-hospital plans with plans for both inter-hospital response and the whole medical system (Auf der Heide 1995). The results must in turn be compatible with other civil protection plans, for example for municipalities, regions, airports and factories. At the simplest level it is merely a question of reading through plans in a comparative way and trying to ensure that there are no glaring inconsistencies between them. However, there are many other aspects. One of the greatest problems in emergency situations is to ensure adequate communication, not merely within groups, but between different organisations. This is both a technical matter, for example in terms of radio frequency compatibilities, and a socio-organisational one, regarding the protocols, priorities and command procedures utilised. The solution is to design systems in a parallel manner to be technically workable and robust, and also to have clear and acceptable chains of command. However, it is not easy to get particular organisations to accept overall command by members of other, possibly rival, institutions (Sylves 1991).

In the interests of creating a common language and culture, there is a question of whether to opt for standards and standardisation procedures (Alexander 2005). Standardised language need not involve absolute definitions, but should at least aim for acceptable working definitions of commonly used terms. These can be derived from any of more than a dozen glossaries of emergency management that are currently available on line or in print. Common language and culture also means familiarity with the faces, personalities and modus operandi of people in different organisations. This can be achieved by general field exercises, but these take much time and many resources to organise. They are also disruptive of routine. Frequent conferences and meetings, as well as table-top exercises and discussions, are needed. In any case, despite the increasing prevalence of information technology, which tends to remove people from direct contact with one another, the human aspect of emergency management cannot be overemphasised and is fundamental to any attempt to achieve integration of methodologies and resources.

In reality, technology and human organisation (i.e. management) both have a role to play in the achievement of greater integration in emergency management. Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), for example, has the ability to overcome the disjuncture of frequencies between organisations and emergency responders (Tattersall 2001). The Incident Command System (ICS) offers a flexible, modular way of ensuring overall control of an event without necessarily interfering with each organisation's internal mechanisms of command (Buck et al. 2006). It is no coincidence that ICS has become popular as information technology has made it more attractive and at the same time created the conditions for its more efficient application.

Humanitarian relief

Special attention needs to be devoted to the problems of integrated emergency response for large disasters in the international arena. Gradually over the last 60 years the world community has evolved a sophisticated system of relief for major sudden-impact disasters (Dore and Etkin 2003). It has been widely exercised: indeed, it has had to react to increasing numbers of deadly events. However, it is far from being efficient.

When a major flood, storm or earthquake causes a massive death toll and leaves survivors trapped, homeless or hungry rescue teams take to the skies and various branches of the United Nations send aircraft full of basic goods. The mobilisation of foreign search-and-rescue teams involves a series of stages. First they need to be alerted, and the early information coming out of major disaster areas is frequently as incomplete as it is inaccurate. Secondly, they must mobilise and find transport for personnel, equipment and, where appropriate, search dogs to the affected area. Thirdly, they must navigate customs, importation and quarantine regulations in order to gain entry to the country where the disaster has occurred. Finally, they must obtain transport and logistical support in order to reach the area. Many governments are not prepared in terms of policy or bureaucracy to waive or accelerate entry requirements. Commonly the realisation that this must be done is belated, or so is the realisation that the help should not be staved off.

Most forms of entrapment involve relatively short survival times for injured people. A harsh climate and dangerous conditions of entrapment can drastically shorten the survival time for victims who are initially uninjured. Hence, although people can survive entrapment for up to 15 days, the cumulative curve of survival indicates that most victims will succumb under the rubble within 8-12 hours. In fact, after a day has elapsed the probability of being rescued alive diminishes to a value that may be statistically insignificant (Coburn and Spence 2002). Yet the international community is simply unable to import specialist search-and-rescue forces over intercontinental distances in such a way as to make a significant difference to the eventual survival rates. For example, after the Bam earthquake of 26 December 2003, about 1,600 foreign rescuers arrived in the Iranian Province of Kerman. Most arrived at Kerman, which is a significant distance from Bam. None had brought wood for buttressing tunnels into rubble, yet Bam is in a desert where there are only the most limited supplies of wood. Transport from Kerman to Bam was limited as well. The rescuers arrived during a time window that stretched approximately from 36 to 72 hours after the main earthquake. They succeeded in rescuing a total of 36 people, at a cost which probably reached about one million US dollars per life saved, if all the ancillary support is taken into account.

The problem of delay is exacerbated when national governments refuse to admit that they cannot cope. These include Myanmar in the 2008 hurricane and India in the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, both of which imposed restrictions on the arrival of foreign assistance. Even the United States was slow to accept international aid in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.

There is no inherent reason why there should be one form of civil protection for the rich nations and another, inferior one for the poor countries. The cost of information and communications technology is falling, especially on a per capita basis, and much can be achieved by improvements in organisation, which are not necessarily costly. There is, however, a strong need to transfer expertise and training to the countries that are in the front line against disasters. This involves many different questions related to peace-building and sustainable development (White and Cliffe 2000).

Conclusion

In conclusion, how better to integrate emergency response is one of the leading questions of our time in civil protection (McLoughlin 1985, Ikeda et al. 2008). The increasing complexity both of emergency situations and of response capabilities has thrown this problem into high relief. For the sake of efficiency in emergency management it requires that considerable thought and effort be devoted to the search for a solution.

References

Alexander, D.E. 2005. Towards the development of a standard in emergency planning. Disaster Prevention and Management 14(2): 158-175.

Auf der Heide, E. 1995. Community Medical Disaster Planning and Evaluation Guide. American College of Emergency Physicians, Dallas, Texas, 182 pp.

Buck, D.A., J.E. Trainor and B.E. Aguirre 2006. A critical evaluation of the incident command system and NIMS. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 3(3): article 1. www.bepress.com/jhsem/

Coburn, A. and R. Spence 2002. Earthquake Protection (2nd edn). Wiley, Chichester, UK, 420 pp.

Comfort, L.K., 1985. Integrating organizational action in emergency management: strategies for change. Public Administration Review 45 (special issue): 155-164.

Dore, M.H.I. and D. Etkin 2003. Natural disasters, adaptive capacity and development in the twenty-first century. In M. Pelling (ed.) Natural Disasters and Development in a Globalizing World. Routledge, London: 75-91.

EMA 1998. Australian Emergency Management Glossary. Manual no. 3. Emergency Management Australia, Canberra, 133 pp.

Gillespie, D.F., 1991. Co-ordinating community resources. In Drabek, T.E. and Hoetmer, G.J., eds., Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Government. International City Management Association, Washington, D.C.

Green III, W.G. 2001. E-emergency management in the USA: a preliminary survey of the operational state of the art. International Journal of Emergency Management 1(1): 70-81.

Ikeda, S., T. Sato and T. Fukuzono 2008. Towards an integrated management framework for emerging disaster risks in Japan. Natural Hazards 44(2): 267-280.

McLoughlin, D. 1985. A framework for integrated emergency management. Public Administration Review 45 (special issue): 165-172.

SIPROCI 2007. Glossary of Civil Protection for EU Citizens. SIPROCI Interregional Response to Natural and Man-Made Catastrophes, Ancona, Italy, 7 pp. http://www.siproci.net/

Sylves, R.T., 1991. Adopting integrated emergency management in the United States: political and cultural challenges. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 9(3): 413-424.

Tattersall, P.T. 2001. Professional mobile radio: the BT Airwave public safety service and the path for technology and service evolution. BT Technology Journal 19(1): 142-148.

Waugh, W.L. Jr and K. Tierney 2007. Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Government (2nd edn). ICMA Press, International City Management Association, Washington, D.C., 366 pp.

White, P. and Cliffe, L. 2000. Matching response to context in complex emergencies: 'relief', 'development', 'peace-building' or something in-between? Disasters 24(4): 314-342.

Note

[1] This is also true in the organisation of modern military forces, and hence there has been a general shift away from linear chains of command.

Lessons in Disaster Preparedness: Vox clamantis in deserto persico

The following was written in early 2004 and remains pertinent in the light of subsequent earthquake disasters.

Introduction: a little elementary geology

As I write this I have in front of me a high-definition satellite image of the Bam area of southern Iran. The signs of recent, cataclysmic tectonic activity emerge spectacularly from the desert landscape. Faults, folds and eroded geological structures are all precisely etched in the arid terrains of the Bam basin. The moderate-power earthquake of 26 December 2003 was an episode of slip-faulting in the normal direction (i.e. vertically downwards). As the dominant fault of the area is transcurrent (i.e. subject to horizontal movement), it seems that the December event was a mere tectonic adjustment to more serious local movements of the Earth's upper crust. Yet tens of thousands of people died in it. More than a geological calamity, the event is thus a terrible indictment of human negligence.

Whatever political expedient may eventually turn them into, natural disasters start as morally neutral phenomena. Hence they are relentless in the way they expose the inner workings of society. The Bam earthquake seems to have revealed a shocking lack of preparedness in Iran.

It is always important to learn lessons for public safety from disasters when they occur, and hence the following are a brief series of reflections on what lessons the Iranian case has to offer.

The timing of events

The Bam earthquake happened at 05.27 local time. At the world scale, whereas the distribution of damaging earthquakes is exactly balanced between the three periods 8 am-4 pm, 4 pm-midnight and midnight-8 am, 80-95 per cent of casualties occur in the last of these periods. This is firstly because vernacular housing in many of the major seismic zones is the least safe place to be, and secondly because people cannot take self-preserving action when they are asleep. Behavioural research suggests that people's instantaneous reactions to the onset of major seismic shaking can have a very significant impact in reducing the death toll. Even so, the average number of people killed per building that collapses is only somewhere in the range 0.12-0.34, though in the Bam case the buildings were so weak and collapsed so readily that the final ratio is likely to be anomalously high. Nevertheless, in Bam the unsafeness of vernacular housing was graphically demonstrated: 60-70 per cent of it collapsed, with heavy loss of life.

The usual myths

This morning the television newsreader on Italian Channel 5 spoke solemnly of the high risk of epidemics caused by unburied dead bodies. His report was backed up by pictures of corpses being flung by the dozen into long, shallow trenches over which the dusty earth was hastily bulldozed. Meanwhile, piles of dead bodies were being sprayed with disinfectant, and so were survivors, rescue workers and collapsed buildings.

At least, as southern Iran is a desert area, the trenches will not flood and the bodies will not float out of them before they can be covered with earth, as has happened so often elsewhere. Time and time again, eminent and authoritative experts have pointed out that dead bodies do not constitute a health hazard. Indiscriminate burial demoralises the survivors and can lead them to be deprived of transferable pension benefits through failure to provide death certificates for pension-holders. Spraying wastes useful disinfectant, as well as manpower.

The Bam earthquake happened 18 months after the last mass-casualty seismic event in Iran, yet even the arrangements for disposing of the dead were utterly ineffective. Then there was the vexed question of looting.

Reuters reported that armed men stole Red Crescent tents and others on motorbikes chased trucks that were tossing out blankets to the survivors. Studies reveal that looting is a highly uncommon and circumscribed phenomenon in the aftermath of natural disasters, which are usually characterised by high levels of social participation. The Reuters report from Bam did not give any indication of its magnitude, which was probably small. Nor was there any indication of the social conditions that led to it (brigandage is endemic in the Bam area).

Neither is it very likely that the fabric of society stood any chance of disintegrating into chaos, another cherished myth. However, if nothing else, the image of blankets being tossed indiscriminately from the back of trucks implies a serious failure of relief distribution mechanisms.

International efforts

Along come the international search-and-rescue teams. No one would wish to belittle their efforts, and if one person is saved by their presence, then that would be a significant achievement. However, there were two reasons why in the Bam case the presence of international rescuers was even less effective than usual (apparently they saved 30 people during 48 hours' work). First, the local building materials (stone with little shearing resistance, poorly-fired brick and mudbrick) produced more dust than is commonly the case and hence both reduced the size of void spaces in rubble that might contain living, trapped victims and contributed to asphyxiation through dust inhalation. Generally, suffocation is much more effective at reducing survival times under rubble than are major blood loss, cranial trauma, hypothermia and dehydration. Secondly, the weather was cold. Within 100 hours of the earthquake, hypothermia would halve survival rates among trapped people.

There is now a huge amount of evidence, accumulated from natural disasters all over the world, that it is local aid that rescues people in significant numbers, and in sudden impact disasters the critical period can be as short as six hours. During this interval the degree of training and appropriateness of equipment of local rescuers will determine the efficiency of search-and-rescue operations.

Hence, a massive, expensive international rescue operation was launched to bring dead bodies out from collapsed buildings, something that could be done just as well with national resources. It probably will not function well, as the key to body retrieval is heavy plant, which is not supplied internationally.

National efforts

Even national aid is bound to be less effective than local efforts. Huge increases in the numbers of blood donors were reported from Tehran, resulting, no doubt, in a massive temporary surplus in available blood supplies in the Iranian medical system. This would not do much to help the survivors, as injuries that require major transfusion are seldom that numerous in earthquakes. Given the prevalence of crush syndrome in major earthquakes, kidney dialysis is much more important. Apart from that, pre-hospital treatment is the greatest key to survival, especially where crush syndrome is involved, and that once again highlights the importance of local efforts.

Local medical efforts were of course hampered by the collapse of two hospitals, echoing similar losses in, for example, the 2001 El Salvador earthquake. The decision to airlift 11,500 patients to medical facilities in other parts of the country is thus understandable--the local hospitals would have been overwhelmed even if they had survived. But as it involved a logistically cumbersome, medically risky, time-consuming and expensive exercise, it could hardly be described as the soul of efficiency.

Preparedness and planning

News reports from Bam contained graphic descriptions of improvisation and chaos in the relief efforts. All too often emergency planning is either unsystematic or totally absent. Yet there is very little in a natural disaster and its aftermath that cannot be foreseen by the systematic application of scenario methods and the use of reference events from the past. Iran has an unusually rich stock of the latter: so has Kerman Province, in which Bam is located, as it experiences a major earthquake about once every 8.7 years, surely such a short interval that there is no excuse for not having effective plans.

When disaster occurs, failure to plan in advance is suddenly, and often spectacularly, revealed as ineptness in the provision of relief and aid. By and large, not enough is being done to promote robust methods of emergency planning around the world. The need is obvious, the techniques are tried and tested, but the stumbling block is the matter of how to convince political hierarchies to devote a proportion of national wealth to such initiatives.

Rebuilding

There is no technical reason why at least 90 per cent of what has been knocked down should not be elegantly rebuilt, and to reasonably anti-seismic standards. It is purely a matter of economics and organisation. As the International Council on Monuments and Sites says, there is no technical reason why ancient buildings, including mud-brick ones, need collapse in earthquakes, as the know-how to render them safe has existed for decades (and in some cases centuries).

And so...

Paradoxically, earthquakes have the power to make the world a better place by encouraging the virtues of prudence, preparedness and organisation in the human populations of seismic areas. But is that what happens? The usual welter of accusations and criticisms began in the Iranian press the day after the earthquake. In itself this is not a bad sign, but will it lead to constructive changes or will the lessons be forgotten before they can be applied?

More than ever before we can say that the scientific know-how is there, the planning techniques, engineering methods and expertise are available. Perhaps it is time to devote a substantial proportion of our considerable research expertise in the disasters field to determining why obvious lessons are being ignored at the expense of future public safety.

The Use of Scenarios for Emergency Training

Figure: Scenario methodology for emergency planning.

Introduction

The idea that crisis situations are unique and unpredictable is a misleading truism. In fact, emergencies are made up of both foreseeable and unexpected elements. The way to manage them is to anticipating the former in order to minimise the latter. This can be achieved by building predictive models, or scenarios, of what is likely to happen in the future.

The models are a vital ingredient of both planning and training. In an emergency plan the reference scenarios can be taken from significant events that have occurred in the past, which must be updated to take account of modern conditions. The scenario can be elaborated in terms of hazard, vulnerability, impact and emergency response. A systems methodology should be used for this (see Figure) and the conditions tailored to a variety of situations, for example with respect to disasters that strike at night or during the day, the outcomes of which are, of course, related to aggregate patterns of human behaviour. As the essence of emergency planning is to anticipate pressing needs in order to supply them effectively at the critical moment, a well-constructed set of crisis or disaster scenarios is an essential aid. Coupled with an audit of emergency resources (vehicles, equipment, supplies, manpower, procedures and protocols) the scenario can help identify potential shortages and deficiencies so that these can be corrected before the next disaster strikes.

The other main use of scenarios is in training. As the field of emergency management becomes steadily more professional, course leaders must consider the problem of how to make training lively, realistic and relevant to actual crises. Scenarios can be used to provide a means of getting students to think their way into emergency situations. The scenarios should be chosen carefully, or synthesized from the most relevant events, and should be used with care in order to teach essential principles.

A training scenario example

By way of example, the following scenario, given in abbreviated form, was originally posted to an Internet search and rescue discussion group on 18 March 1996. The story has been modified to make it brief, generic and illustrative of the dilemmas that face the emergency manager in the field. Students or trainees are asked to consider how the emergency is developing, devise a strategy for co-ordinating the relief effort as it gets underway and consider the limitations to what can be achieved.

On the periphery of a large industrial city a factory that once produced vehicle batteries is about to be rebuilt into a wholesale warehouse. Inside it there are some large, rusting tanks that contain residues contaminated with arsenic and cyanide which are leaking slowly into the ground beneath. The roof of the factory, which workmen have begun to dismantle, contains asbestos.

Wood and aluminium scaffolding has been erected up to roof level and polyethylene sheeting has been rolled out to contain the asbestos dust. As it is winter, space heaters powered by bottled liquid propane gas are being used inside the building. Electrical power is obtained exclusively from a connection point at the perimeter of the site which is next to a storage area containing a large number of LPG canisters.

During the lunch-break there is a violent storm with heavy gusts of wind. Part of the scaffolding collapses and the polyethylene sheeting catches fire when it comes into contact with one of the space heaters. A large explosion leads to a fierce fire that generates temperatures of more than 1000EC. The building is rapidly consumed by flames, which burn out the site office and then move toward the LPG storage area. The site office and electricity point are destroyed.

The flames reach the gas canisters and the resulting explosion seriously damages the water supply hydrant and the drains, such that the toxic materials stored on site start to leak copiously into the sewerage system. Above the burning factory a cloud forms, rich in the combustion products of the toxic substances present at the site. The wind is blowing it gently towards a school, which is occupied, and an area of housing.

Within minutes you arrive at the site, the first incident commander to reach it. How are you going to manage the situation? What resources will you need and what can you count upon obtaining quickly?

Classroom strategies

Experience in the classroom with a wide diversity of student and trainee groups suggests that the discussants usually fall into two categories: those who are practical by nature and those who have yet to grasp the difference between what can be done and what cannot. To manage the emergency well, they must divest themselves of the purely academic approach. For example, there is no time to analyse the toxicity of the smoke, to measure wind speed or even to evacuate the school and the residential area. A warning can only be given if there is a safe way of delivering it, and the best strategy is probably to use a police car with loudspeaker and a series of telephone calls advising people to stay indoors with windows and doors closed. The first priority should be to warn the school.

With a little gentle persuasion, students can be encouraged to think realistically in operational terms, listing first the problems to be solved, secondly the needs that they generate and thirdly how to manage them by applying some simple rules.

The problems can be summarised as follows:-

- a high-temperature fire
- explosion damage and a continuing hazard
- the toxic cloud
- potentially severe pollution of the storm drainage system
- toxic substances at site (asbestos, cyanide, arsenic, etc.)

The principal needs generated by the emergency are:-

- evacuate the factory site and protect people against fire and explosion hazard
- protect residents and people in the school from the effects of the toxic cloud
- contain the fire and abate of the explosion hazard
- protect the sewerage system and limit toxic contamination

These are the possible operational strategies for devising solutions:-

- distinguish, list and prioritise tasks (it should become second nature to do this)
- where appropriate, delegate responsibility
- do not tackle problems that lack an immediate solution
- where it can be done, apply a workable solution

For example, five questions come to mind regarding the toxic cloud:-

- can a rapid estimate be made of where it is going and roughly how fast?
- where will it get to and approximately when?
- how much time is there in which to do something?
- what emergency resources are likely to be available in that time interval?
- under the circumstances, what would the most appropriate strategy be to limit the cloud's effects?

Operability

As it is not so much the seriousness of the problem that counts but the efficacy of the solution, what is needed is a form of mental triage. The 'golden rules' for applying this are three. First, all solutions must function in the very short term. Secondly, it pays to limit one's span of control, where appropriate by delegating responsibility for specific tasks (calling the HazMat team, for example, and explaining the situation to its leader). Thirdly, problems should be judged by the likelihood of achieving a solution quickly with the available means. If this cannot be accomplished a problem should be delegated or deferred in favour of more solvable matters.

For many students who are new to the field of emergency management, a classroom scenario such as the one described may be their first introduction to the concept of operability. They need to accustom themselves to working in an environment of great uncertainty, and hence one of the greatest challenges for the teacher is to reduce the role of hindsight and encourage the trainees to think themselves into the emergency situation, dealing with information as it arrives, when it is in short supply relative to what needs to be known and has yet to be verified.

The scenario listed above is an extremely basic one which has been cast in a generic form--i.e. without reference to any specific system of command and control or particular set of operating rules. These can, of course, be added in order to lend realism, but a balance must be struck between adding operational detail and obscuring the general picture

In synthesis, scenarios are both a fundamental input to emergency plans and a vital teaching resource. With a little thought and the distillation of field experience, what would otherwise be a mere anecdote can be turned into a useful tool for illustrating the basic principles of emergency management.

Further reading

Alexander, DE (2000) Scenario methodology for teaching principles of emergency management. Disaster Prevention and Management 9(2):89-97.

Janing J (1997) Assessment of a scenario-based approach to facilitating critical thinking among paramedic students. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 12:215-221.

Ringland, G (1998) Scenario Planning: Managing for the Future. Wiley, New York.

Walker, WE (1995) The Use of Scenarios and Gaming in Crisis Management Planning and Training. Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California.

This article is reproduced with permission from:-

Alexander, D.E. 2005. Use of Scenarios for emergency training. Chemical Hazards and Poisons Report 5, UK Health Protection Agency, London: 24-25.

Making Communities Resistant to Disaster

Global change and globalisation are threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. This is especially true with respect to disasters, whose impacts are increasing rapidly in scope, frequency and seriousness. In the world's disaster areas, survivors face increasing socio-economic instability, vulnerability and marginalisation. Yet it need not be so, for there are solutions to these problems.

It is a fundamental principle that disaster preparedness is best organised at the local level. Local people suffer the impact of disasters and, in the phase of isolation that immediately follows such events, only locally generated aid is available. Moreover, resilience, the inverse of vulnerability, is the key to surviving and recovering from disaster and it is best developed from within the community.

The proper degree of outside intervention by national governments and international organisations is the subject of much debate. It is clear, however, that disasters raise serious issues of democracy and empowerment. Development will only succeed if it takes into account the desires of local communities and does not ride roughshod over their traditional coping mechanisms. The world community is finally recognising that, as the cumulative impact of disaster can set back progress or even prevent it entirely, sustainable development, that elusive but attractive concept, must be combined with sustainable mitigation of catastrophes.
The benefit-cost ratios of disaster mitigation are almost always positive and sometimes overwhelmingly so. One dollar spent even only moderately well on avoiding calamity will usually save several dollars--and much unquantifiable misery--in losses that are prevented from occurring. Curiously, this almost universal fact has failed to convince many public administrators, and even some major donors, to invest more in preventing disaster. Moreover, it is not merely a question of money. Much can be achieved at very modest cost by improved organisation.

About 220 million people are directly affected by disasters each year. The world's hazardous places are well known, for disaster tends to strike repeatedly, often cyclically. Vulnerability is also a well-known result of factors such as population density, the fragility of natural and built environments, grinding poverty and the ferocity of hazards. Yet some places are repeatedly struck by disaster but are able to cushion the effects and recover quickly, while others are not. In part this stems from the unequal distribution of wealth, but it is also a question of an apparent reluctance to share technology and expertise with the world's needier communities. The unselective transfer of technology and management techniques from one culture and economy to another may actually increase susceptibility to disaster by inducing a dangerous dependence on unfamiliar and unworkable solutions. But there is ample, untapped scope for transferring technology, knowledge, training and expertise intelligently in such a way as to make communities more resilient and less dependent on the vagaries of nature or the arbitrary decisions of outside forces. The goal is therefore one of increased assistance but decreased dependency.

A Substantial Pageant?

The cloud‑capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1


The power and the symbolism of technology. Benign, boundlessly optimistic, and there in front of us, dominating the view, boldly defying gravity. Suddenly, those unquestioned certitudes dissolve into a roiling ball of black and orange flames. Towering assumptions fall like houses of cards, values stacked upon each other like the floors of skyscrapers suddenly topple into the abyss of fear and uncertainty. The technology that gives us an incomparable view over cityscapes, that carries us neatly through the sky from place to place, suddenly rounds on us malevolently. "Come fly the friendly skies," wheedle the advertisements, but abruptly those same skies offer that greatest of nightmares: entrapment, with death looming up in front of our terrified eyes. It is Hollywood spectacle as self-fulfilling prophesy.

The British social scientist Tom Horlick-Jones has interpreted disaster as a form of betrayal of trust; trust that the responsible authorities--governments, airlines, experts and officials of all kinds--will deliver us from evil. The horror of September 11th, 2001, was that we were all potential victims, we all mentally projected ourselves into those endless moments of betrayal. We were all poised on the window ledge of the 105th floor of the World Trade Center north tower, watching the flames and smoke advance inexorably toward us, or sitting frozen with fear in our airline seats as the building loomed up in front of us. In disaster, "human interest" gains a new meaning. In an age of television and the instant image, willingly or reluctantly, we all participate.

On a calm, bright morning in September the news breaks that airliners full of passengers have been turned into deadly weapons and flown full-tilt into two of the most prominent icons of American military, economic and technological prowess. The first reaction is to discount the entire story as a hoax. Sociologists call this the "normalcy bias," the desire to believe news that is comforting and routine, not that which is desperately disquieting. And then as the realization seeps in that it is all true, and worse is to follow: the storm breaks.

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Deep in rural Maryland, Route 140 passes through some pleasant but unexceptional countryside and enters the nondescript small town of Emmitsburg. It is Civil War country, America's historical heartland, the landscape of national symbolism. Here, at the main intersection, a side-road leads gently down into the shallow, green valley where lies the joint training center of the U.S. Fire Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Two- and three-story brick buildings are arranged informally in a verdant campus landscape not unlike a small private university, though without the usual groups of undergraduates. At the centre of the complex is a mansion and a whitewashed chapel. Latin mottos are carved on the lintels of several doorways, for it was a catholic girls' school until 1970, when the U.S. government bought the property and converted it into an emergency training centre. The air is scented with the smell of new mown grass and a faint tang of smoke emanates from the back of the complex, where several buildings are periodically set on fire and extinguished by trainee firemen.

Television screens are everywhere. Those in the dormitory rooms show earnest discussions of post-traumatic stress disorder and videos of firemen cutting into crashed vehicles or wading through floodwaters. The great hall, where solid, institutional meals are served three times a day, is bedecked with the flags of the republic, the states, and the emergency services, the symbolism that reassures Americans and gives them a sense of belonging to a vast and individualistic country. On the walls of the corridors there are portraits of firemen in reflective overalls and federal administrators in grey business suits. Down in the basement, O'Rourke's Emporium sells Fire Service and FEMA tee-shirts, tote bags, furry mascots and bumper stickers. A different kind of symbolism prevails, but symbolism leaves as heavy an imprint on the culture of the emergency services as it does on every other aspect of national life.

Down a winding path an alcove has been fashioned in the campus greenery. Here is the National Fallen Firefighters= Monument. Each year a stone plaque is erected with the names of those who died on active service during the previous twelve months. Fire departments, with their heavy equipment, uniforms, discipline and camaraderie, are paramilitary organisations. The names carved in stone remind one of a long-drawn out war, for each year tens of firemen are killed on the job. This year the death toll is in the hundreds and the whole monument will have to be reorganised to find space for the list of names. It is a sombre place, deeply charged with meaning, but the symbolism is wrong: at the centre an eternal flame flickers in the wind, almost mocking in its puny emulation of the great conflagrations in which firemen routinely put their lives at risk. Fire fighters, as the New York Times observed, use humour as an oxygen supply. They constantly rib each other in order to reduce the tensions of the job, but they are not given to black humour.

When I arrived at the Emmitsburg training centre I was greeted by a sign informing me that, as there was a contamination emergency, I was not to drink water from the taps. I took it to heart and made for the campus pub. Afterwards, fortified by several glasses of Sam Adams's Boston Ale, I went looking for signs of the concealed underground bunker in which Albright met with Arafat. Perhaps it is under the cabin by the stream. The cheery log fire in the grate, lit no doubt to drive away the autumn dampness, had the aspect of an all too innocent diversion. In such a setting, the whole building seemed too casual to be real, the ornamental lake by its side too contrived. Disaster is on everyone's mind at the training centre: the place exists to prepare people for the worst.

Snow and ice storms, tornadoes, floods, and, of course, the water main contamination episode: like everywhere else in the country Emmitsburg has its share of risks. Pondering on this during a break from work, I found myself strolling along towards the small, central building labelled "Security." On impulse I went inside. Behind a counter a man was sitting at a desk flanked by a battery of close-circuit television screens and a board full of coloured switches.

"Excuse me," I said, "but I was wondering. Does this campus have an emergency plan?"

He looked up thoughtfully and a slowly broad smile spread across his face.

"It does," he replied softly, "but I couldn't tell you about it. I work for a subcontractor and we're not told about these things."

Meekly I thanked him and left, biting back the questions which would so easily seem like accusations: "But what would you do if an emergency happened? Are you really in charge of all these switches and buttons? What does security mean to your company if it doesn't teach you any of the procedures?" and so on. The worst kind of emergency planning is that which involves mystery.

To symbolism one can add public relations. In moments of national crisis four things matter: what is being done, what measures are being described to the listeners and viewers, what they perceive is being done, and what symbolic significance they attribute to such actions. Emergency preparedness obstinately remains a job for the community. It has resisted all attempts at privatisation (too much risk and too few guarantees of profit). Moreover, it cannot successfully be improvised or carried out alone by inspired individuals. In disaster true heroism comes exclusively out of following a predetermined plan.

All this sits very uneasily with the individualism that pervades so much of American life and is vaunted by so many citizens as a cardinal virtue (they perceive it as freedom). What is more, emergency preparedness has the unusual property that it may work very well at some levels of government while failing at others. For the ordinary citizen who fears betrayal by the authorities when they are supposed to guarantee a modicum of public safety, it is as well not to place too much reliance on official pronouncements until they are backed up by the observable facts.

Emergency preparedness, or civil protection as it is known in most of the rest of the world (including Canada and Latin America), is an odd sort of calling. It was born out of the desperate attempts to protect the civilian population during the air raids of the 1940s and subsequently in the shadowy and preposterous exercise of civil defence during the Cold War. As if anything could be done to stop a major nuclear exchange from wiping out the hapless civilian populations! In comparison, the subsequent birth of preparedness against floods, earthquakes and transportation crashes seemed like a return to sanity. Yet, after two decades of growth, civil protection is still not a fully-fledged profession with proper standards of training and procedures, even in America, with its boundless talent for organization.

So we should not take emergency management on trust. Yet we do take it on trust. A fireman colleague of mine once observed that people at risk of disaster demand the best possible assistance that money can buy, technology devise and organisation provide, just as the victims of ordinary road accidents expect well-equipped ambulances to arrive promptly and hospitals to provide efficient care with high professional standards. We accept nothing less, but we only make such demands on disaster response when a great emergency is already upon us. Rarely do we demand action beforehand, in what people who work in this field graphically refer to as "peace time."

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A massive explosion shakes the World Trade Center north tower. The structure lurches, trembles and twists on its central axis of steel and concrete. Floors 93 to 105 of this 110-storey building catch fire and burn fiercely at temperatures of more than 800EC. Concrete is turned to dust and soot. Steel beams begin to buckle and eventually they melt. People hang out of windows and then tumble into the void beneath. Shouts and screams rent the air. Sirens begin to wail and carry on their mournful lament for days. Minutes later the south tower is hit. At 10.35, 105 minutes after the first impact, these great blocks of steel and glass are reduced to a 450,000-tonne pile of rubble no more than five stories high. An earthquake shock of magnitude 3.2 is recorded at the Palisades seismological station. In Washington, city of wedding-cake monuments and broad traffic-filled avenues, the Pentagon, the world's largest office block, labyrinthine symbol of solidity, bursts into flame and burns fiercely for more than a day.

In Washington eight hours after the start of the crisis, Mayor Anthony Williams issued a statement that read, "The District government took immediate steps to manage the situation here in the city and to take reasonable precautions to safeguard residents and visitors." In New York, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani moved to ground zero in downtown Manhattan and stayed there. But the situation was by no means as reassuring as these efforts would suggest. In the Big Apple the emergency operations room, the nerve centre of disaster management, was supposed to be in the World Trade Center, where the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had offices on the 2nd, 14th and 19th floors of the north tower, the first to collapse. It had been set up there after the 1993 bombing as an act of defiance. In the nation's capital some days later, a Washington Post editorial concluded that "A review of last Tuesday's events suggests that the District [of Columbia] was unprepared for the emergency and therefore unable to react and assist the public in a timely and effective fashion."

Reports from the front line in Washington were not encouraging. The D.C. police appear to have had no emergency plan (improvisation is the nemesis of good emergency management). The emergency broadcast system, with its sinister bleeps and silences that intrude into radio programs every time it is tested, was not activated. Health officials found they had no radio capable of communicating with hospitals and ambulances. Senators and Congressman wandered around the houses of government unsure of what to do (the evacuation plans were untested and out of date). E-mail messages were sent to D.C. government workers telling them to evacuate, and four minutes later countermanding the order. Satellite telephones remained locked in a cupboard while the regular phone services ground to a halt under the duress of impossible numbers of calls. The streets filled with vehicles as commuters made for home, and gridlock trapped the incoming emergency vehicles.

But the most serious problems occurred in New York. Some 343 firemen and 78 policemen went in to rescue victims of the World Trade Center fires and died there when the buildings collapsed. They were crushed with their emergency vehicles under a compact 450,000-tonne mass of debris. It was the greatest tactical error in the history of U.S. emergency management.

Hours later structural engineers were stating in interviews that as soon as they saw the size of the fires they realised that the towers must inevitably collapse. But hindsight is a terrible thing in emergencies, a scourge of conscience, a handy weapon for accusers, a distorter of truths. Moreover, the events of 11 September 2001 were unprecedented in scale, daring and degree of coordination. Yet no single element of the disasters was entirely without precedent. Hence, concealed deep within the fallout of this event, some essential truth lies waiting to be rescued and pieced back together again. It is this: in cities full of skyscrapers, knowledge of the behaviour of tall buildings under extreme duress should be an essential prerequisite for emergency planning. Emergency plans should be based on plausible and well thought out scenarios. A long time before the terrorist attacks of September 2001 voices were being raised down at Emmitsburg suggesting that emergency planners were taking too limited a view of disaster and that it was time to "think the unthinkable" and plan for truly horrifying events. Quite right: the last emergency exercise in Washington was based on the release of toxic gas at a hot-dog stand outside the Smithsonian Museum. In retrospect it seems almost laughable.

In a world dominated by the lust of big business for overweening symbolism, designers have surely underestimated the risks associated with tall buildings. At the World Trade Center, evacuees crowded the narrow stairwells and escalators to such an extent that it took many of those who survived more than an hour to get to ground level. They had to make way for firemen with their bulky equipment who struggled up the stairs, and in some cases they had to crawl over dead bodies in darkness and smoke and slosh through the water of failed sprinkler systems. Outside, in the black atmosphere of soot and dust, pieces of building the size of articulated lorries fell into the street with thundering impacts. People emerged so coated with dust that they looked like ghosts, an impression that tended to be confirmed by their horrified expressions.
No fireman=s ladder will reach further than the ninth floor of any building, but for many people entrapment is their worst nightmare. Now that it is all over, the fireman in reflective overalls with his tense expression and grubby yellow oxygen tanks and the couples who joined hands and launched themselves into the void are united in death. They both represent a failure to foresee and protect. Hindsight will send its insidious messages reverberating through the risk management community: maybe we could have done more it will whisper to us. Disaster is a sobering phenomenon, with its excruciating lessons, its awful process of learning.

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In Washington, D.C., the metro trains continued to run, swishing through those airy coffered concrete tunnels even as the firemen struggled with the flames at the Pentagon. Arlington County activated its emergency plan with commendable celerity. The world-renowned urban search-and-rescue team of Fairfax County, Virginia, leapt into action, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency shot trouble wherever it encountered it. In Manhattan, the supposed insularity of New Yorkers--psychological rather than physical, that is--dissolved in what sociologists, who have a penchant for jargon, call the "post-disaster therapeutic community." And some of the lessons of the tragedy were reassuring: panic, for example, rarely infected people, even among many of those who had to run for their lives. Looting did not happen. It confirmed the views of the disaster sociologists who have for years been relaying such a message to the deaf ears of a public conditioned by the mass media, eternal custodians of the myths and fables of social breakdown.

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In the Indian state of Gujarat the earthquake of 26 January 2001 killed 19,737 people, injured 166,836 and left more than a million homeless. In many other parts of the world, catastrophe is a persistent fact of daily life: Chechnya, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Mozambique, the list is a long one and it shows no tendency to get shorter. We live in the age of the 'complex emergency', a deadly amalgam of social, economic and military breakdown interlaced with the natural disasters of flood, drought or earthquake. But often the world community remains largely indifferent, for no measure of human suffering is ever used to determine the severity of one event relative to another. Perhaps there is no objective measure of such a thing. Perhaps 'donor fatigue' has overwhelmed us.

An earthquake can be a very frightening thing. It comes out of the ground with little or no warning and cannot be confronted face to face, for it is invisible until it strikes. But it is nevertheless an unambiguous threat, one that tends to break down barriers between enemies and rival factions. In contrast, terrorism is deeply ambiguous. It reveals the contradictions in human society. It uses human inventiveness--the same inventiveness that is the source of our optimism as a species--to strike at our own weak spots. It furthers causes that some people believe in and others abhor. It is ruthlessly partial, and finally it can convert apparently benign forms of technology into lethal weaponry. Hence it injects a new measure of suffering into the balance of events.

In 1755 the western world was convulsed when the gloriously florid commercial and imperial city of Lisbon was summarily razed by earthquake, fire and tsunami. The tremors struck one Sunday morning while the inhabitants were at prayer in the city's churches. As these buildings collapsed, the alter candles set light to draperies and the wreckage caught fire and blazed furiously. Citizens who escaped such horrors fled to the waterfront and were promptly overwhelmed as enormous seismic sea waves flooded up the Tagus estuary. There seemed to be no more graphic example of divine retribution for human wickedness. Even the superb rationalism of the Enlightenment was thrown into reverse gear as one by one the leading philosophers of the time began to take a more gloomy view of the future.

Something of that mentality seems to be developing in the wake of the American terrorism outrages. In this context, the parallels with the mid-eighteenth century are disturbing, not least for what they say about progress--or the lack of it. But wickedness is no retribution for other wickedness. All that is clear amid the betrayal, the dust, smoke and fear of New York and Washington is that the road back to reason looks set to be a long and arduous one.

On Disasters and Democracy

In his book Disasters and Democracy, Rutherford Platt (1999) did a superb job of analyzing the democratic imperatives and shortcomings of the American system of emergency preparedness and disaster mitigation. However, I believe the issue is much wider than his scope would suggest.

To begin with let us distinguish between participatory and representative democracy. The phenomenon was invented in Ancient Greece as the former and has since undergone the transition to the latter, while retaining forms of direct participation at the grass roots level. The transition has brought problems of isolation of the represented from their representatives, together with depoliticisation of the former and corruption of the latter.

Perhaps the contemporary problems of democracy deserve to be listed more fully before they are considered specifically in the light of disasters. [1] One aspect is globalization, or the loss of sovereignty by governments and its gradual accretion to multi-national corporations, that represent only their own interests, usually the making of profit. Given the present-day dominance of capital over labor, governments are held hostage to the private sector, owing to the political imperative to protect jobs. On the other hand, the excesses of globalization have at least resulted in spontaneous forms of participatory democracy (recently in Seattle, Prague and London, for example) by way of reaction.

Secondly, there has been phenomenal growth in the size and clout of underground economies. These are thought to represent about 20 per cent of world trade and drugs alone may account for 12-13 per cent. By and large, underground economies exploit people and create situations of harm, danger and illegality. They remove people from the protection of the law, and in fact usually pit them against the law. Revenues are not taxed, but the recycling of profits makes illegal economies thoroughly intertwined with legal ones. The "black" and "grey" (partially legal) economies are in no sense democratic.

Thirdly, at least in the Western countries and Japan, we are seeing the gradual isolation of populations from democratic processes. Clear mandates to govern are obtained on the basis of minority support. Factions are played off against one another, while political debates become too schematic or superficial to mean very much.

Fourthly, politicians spend much time trying to convince their electorates that they can pay fewer taxes and have more services. In this impossible equation, tax reduction wins, with the inevitable consequence of fiscal stringency. Services have declined as they have become more expensive and taxation has failed to cover them.

These issues are perhaps self evident, but I have listed them as a basis for discussion in the context of disaster. Fundamentally, one can ask whether catastrophes boost the process of disempowering people. Do they form part (perhaps fortuitously for the victors) of a subterfuge to consolidate the power of the rich over the poor? Here are some reflections.

With respect to globalization, labor has not internationalized as fast or as successfully as capital and, despite any impressions to the contrary, neither has disaster relief. Although the end of the Cold War led to a temporary boom in international aid, by 1995 this was already winding down. International disaster relief is strongly tied to development aid, which has not only failed to reach the target (0.8 per cent of the GNP of donor countries) set at Rio in 1992, but has been cut repeatedly as part of fiscal stringency. On the other hand, one cannot look to the private sector for solutions: the globalization of capital and production does nothing to reduce basic vulnerability to disaster. Western companies hold their manufacturers rigorously to prices and production targets so that there is no opportunity to develop responsibility for social progress, including resistance to or recovery from disaster.

Some economists view disaster as a form of accelerated consumption of goods. Others regard it as a "zero-sum game" in which there are no net losses. Be that as it may, there are obviously net losers and people who are forced by the brute circumstance of catastrophe to "consume" what they cannot afford to replace. The two ideas, however, are interconnected. Disaster stimulates the production-consumption function of society, which thus compensates for losses. The strong distinction between winners and losers in this process tends to reinforce globalization. In the usual pyramid, capital and profit are further concentrated in the hands of the producers--the few--and the losers are the consumers, the many. The only mechanism that counteracts this is government intervention in market forces. But governments are now caught up in a nineteenth century-style free-trade binge, with economic, if not geopolitical, excesses comparable to those of the heyday of colonialism. As governments weaken in the face of trade imperatives, they become less and less able to guarantee the sort of welfare functions that people demand in the wake of disaster.

Turning to the second aspect, the relationship between disaster and underground economies is largely unknown and unresearched. There have been attempts, some of them successful, by criminal organizations to take over post-disaster recovery and reconstruction or to pervert it. Disaster commonly fosters a black market in certain goods, such as foodstuffs, roofing materials, and cement. Clearly, the boom that ensues after disaster with full-scale reconstruction is ripe for intervention by criminal organizations and their "alternative economies." In other cases, stagnation results from the intertwining of disaster impacts (usually repetitive ones) with perversions of the local economy caused by elicit economic activity. In either case, the underground economy is an undemocratic force in disaster.

For Afghanistan, Clausewitz's famous dictum has been altered to state that warfare is economics (rather than politics) carried on by other means (Cliffe and Luckham 2000). In this extreme case of the isolation of a population from its democratic rights, democracy is suspended or abolished (if it ever existed in the afflicted area), it become subsumed by ideologies fuelled for convenience sake by illicit economic interests. More generally, the complex emergency, characterized by breakdown in politics, economics, society, environment and security is one of few models of how warfare and disaster interact. The principal victims are women and children and the only antidote is stability. But stability on its own does not usher in democracy, mitigate natural catastrophe or ensure democratic forms of recovery from disaster. Everything depends on the ability to build institutions, on how they are built and on what forces, internal and external to the society in question, act upon them.

With respect to disaster, in societies classified as stable democracies, the question of peoples' relationships with democratic processes (our third issue) is strongly related to the fourth question, that of taxation and fiscal stringency. Disaster prevention, mitigation and relief cannot easily be privatized, as they usually offer either no expectation of adequate profits or a long and uncertain gap between investing and reaping the returns. In point of fact, catastrophes represent a counter-tendency, an occasion for fiscal profligacy in order to satisfy the electorate. Governments that refuse to grant aid to those of their citizens who fall victim to disaster become unpopular and this induces many administrations periodically to break their own rules on fiscal stringency. For example, the number of US federal disaster declarations has virtually doubled in two decades, not necessarily because there are more disasters, but because such declarations are one way to obtain influence over the electorates of affected counties. If this is so, there is little incentive to involve the electorate in an open debate on the ethics, morals or efficacy of heaping aid on victims.

These observations are somewhat bleak, but one can also be more optimistic. Disasters are, or ought to be, opportunities to involve people in new or reinvigorated forms of participatory democracy. Even in the most individualistic places, emergencies are dealt with by socializing them. Disaster cultures and subcultures, forms of therapeutic community, and emergent groups are all forms of grass-roots democracy in action. We need to learn to build on them and turn transient responses into healthy forms of permanent participation.

Further thoughts can be read in my recent book (Alexander 2000).

References

Alexander, D.E. 2000. Confronting Catastrophe. Terra, Harpenden, UK, and Oxford University Press, New York, 280 pp.

Cliffe, L. and R. Luckham 2000. What happens to the state in conflict? Political analysis as a tool for planning humanitarian assistance. Disasters 24(4): 291-313.

Platt, R.H. 1999. Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events. Island Press, Washington, D.C., 320 pp.

Note

[1] The setting of modern democracy includes the following four paradoxes of modernity

(a) Ninety per cent of international money transfers are speculative, 80 per cent with return time of less than 1 week. Collectively, 358 billionaires are richer than 45 per cent of the world's population. 'Income redistribution' is thus a very relative term.

(b) Income differentials more than doubled in the second half of the 20th century and in the final decades 89 countries experienced decline in national wealth. 'Equity' is thus a very relative term.

(c) Since 1945, between 25 and 50 million people have died in about 300 conflicts. In recent wars about 84 per cent of casualties have been non-combatants, especially women and children. In all of this period there have been only 126 days of global peace. 'Security' is thus a very relative term.

(d) Half of the people in the world have never used a telephone and more than 90 per cent are not Internet users. 'Information technology revolution' is thus a very relative term.

What Makes an Extreme Natural Event a Catastrophe?

Abstract

This paper reviews a varied set of definitions and measures of disaster. These include the mathematical concept of abrupt hysteresis and bifurcation, the earth science concept of accelerated and widespread change in environmental conditions, the social science concept of radical, if transient, mutation of organizations, the engineering concept of major technological system failure, and the medical concept of mass casualty situations. In each of these schools of thought, the terms 'hazard' and 'vulnerability' are fundamental components of disaster but cannot adequately be defined independently of one another.

Apart from disciplinary orientations, there are other reasons why it has proved very difficult to obtain a consensus on the meaning of the terms 'disaster' and 'catastrophe'. Some scholars regard them as synonymous, while others consider them as descriptive of different levels of impact. Attempts to impose a numerical threshold on disaster have not proved particularly successful. Likewise, geographical extent and other measures of size have not led to a better functional definition. This paper uses examples of differences in the sizes of various important earthquakes and landslides selected from recent history to show how the magnitude and frequency of natural hazards are poorly correlated with their disaster potential. Instead, in most situations of risk, vulnerability--coupled with its opposite, resilience--tends to be a better predictor of damage, destruction and casualties.

The significance of disaster is measured in terms of both its effects and its potential for destruction. In this respect, the catastrophe potential of very large, very infrequent events is the subject of much theoretical, as well as practical, uncertainty. This paper explores some of the dilemmas associated with assigning values of low potential to risks that are extremely infrequent but potentially very damaging, such as asteroid impacts or some of the largest Quaternary volcanic eruptions.

The paper ends by considering trends and predictions for global disaster potential in the forthcoming decades. Some of these are contradictory and most present a bleak picture that may, nevertheless, underestimate human ingenuity in the face of adversity.

Introduction

A natural disaster can be defined as some rapid, instantaneous or profound impact of an extreme environmental phenomenon upon the human socio-economic system (Alexander 1993a, p. 4). Such a definition is, of course, as vague as it is broad, and beneath it is concealed a terminological minefield (Quarantelli 1998). In disaster studies, failure to agree on the meaning of terms stems from uncertainty about the significance of phenomena and the relationships between them. This paper will review what is known and unknown about the underlying causal relationships that result in natural disasters. Special attention will be paid to the question of how to characterise low-probability, high-consequence (i.e. very infrequent) geophysical events in terms of their possible impacts as disasters, not merely their rôles as extreme manifestations of Nature's power.

The basis of hazard, vulnerability and risk

According to a widely used general model,

H x V ( x E ) = R --> D (1)

a geophysical hazard, H, acts upon a situation, V, in which people or environments are vulnerable to damage and loss (conditioned by varied degrees of exposure to the hazard, E) to produce a state of risk, R (UNDRO 1982). Rather like friction, risk is a theoretical concept until it is mobilised, at which time it is transformed into the impact of the event (disaster, D) in terms of some combination of death, injury, destruction, damage, disruption or other form of loss. In an another formulation,

R = fcn { H, V, E, B, Rr, Dr, ... } (2)

risk is a function of hazard (H), vulnerability (V), exposure of vulnerable elements to the hazard (E), background levels of the hazard (B), the release rate of the hazard (Rr), the dose rate of those elements or people that absorb its impact (Dr), and sundry other qualifiers (Alexander 2000, pp. 14-16).

Most of the secondary factors in the relationship described above relate to hazard, rather than vulnerability--i.e., to the causal agent, not the population at risk. However, the latter requires qualification as well, to account for its dynamism over time:

Vt = fcn { Ra - Rm +/- Rp } (3)

where Vt is total vulnerability, which is affected by risk amplification measures, Ra (i.e. risk-taking), mollified by risk mitigation measures, Rm, both of which can be affected either positively or negatively depending on how risks are perceived by the various actors in the scenario, Rp (Alexander 2000, p. 15.

In synthesis, disaster is the outcome of risk, which is a product of physical hazard and human or environmental vulnerability. Whether or not these are truisms, it is essential to remember that in the risk relationship hazards are not hazardous unless they threaten something and people or places are not vulnerable unless they are threatened by something. Thus the concepts of hazard and vulnerability cannot be defined independently of one another.

Several other definitional questions deserve to be considered. First, the term 'natural disaster' has geological roots and stems from analysis of extreme geophysical events. Yet the crucial role of vulnerability signifies that 'natural' is very much a convenience term. According to an emerging consensus, disaster is defined rather more by its effects than by its causes (Hewitt 1997, Ch. 1). Vulnerability is seen as the key to understanding and forecasting impacts, and there is intense interest in examining the complex global, regional and local mechanisms that prevent vulnerability from being reduced sufficiently (Wisner 2001a). Thus the rather bald statistics listed in Table 1 demonstrate, not merely the difficulty of characterising earthquakes as disasters using any single measure such as magnitude, but also the highly varied nature of the impacts of large earthquakes regardless of the inherent physical energy for which magnitude is a surrogate index. [1]

Table 1. The impact of selected earthquakes in the magnitude range 7.1-7.8.

Earthquake Magnitude Hypocentral depth (km) Deaths Cost of damage (million US$)

California 17.10.1989 7.1 19 62 12,000
Romania 4.3.1977 7.2 94 1,500 800
Chile 3.3.1985 7.8 33 200 1,200
Japan 26.5.1983 7.7 33 104 600
Turkey 17.8.1999 7.4 15 15,637 20,000
El Salvador 13.1.2001 7.6 39 1,159 1,255
Bhuj, India 26.1.2001 7.7 45 19,739 800

Secondly, the semantic difference between 'disaster' and 'catastrophe' deserves attention. Some authors (Scanlon 1993) regard a catastrophe as a particularly large and notable disaster; others, including myself, consider the two terms to be synonymous. In any case, the threshold of seriousness at which an event becomes a disaster is not fixed and there is no abrupt change in any variable used to define disaster at which a higher order of effect, or catastrophe, naturally emerges. Attempts to characterise disaster empirically (Foster 1976, Keller et al. 1992, Keown-McMullan 1997) have generally not been widely accepted by the community of disaster researchers.

Magnitude and frequency

On 27 March 1964 the Great Alaska earthquake provoked a landslide of 29 million cubic metres of rock, which slid at an estimated 180 km/hr into the Sherman Valley in the centre of the state. No one was injured, no houses were destroyed and the event remained a geological curiosity, discovered by chance during an aerial photography overflight (Shreve 1966). On 21 October 1966 a landslide 193 times smaller in volume, travelling at a speed 25-30 times lower overwhelmed two schools and a residential district in the South Welsh town of Aberfan (Aberfan Tribunal 1967). Some 144 people, including 116 small children, were killed, in a disaster that is still widely remembered and commemorated. These two rather extreme examples illustrate how physical magnitude alone can be a poor predictor of disaster potential.

However, there are exceptions to this rule and to understand them one needs to consider the magnitude-frequency rule. Originally derived for physical, not human, relationships, this empirical regularity draws a balance between the cumulative effects of many small events and the occasional impacts of uncommon, large ones (Wolman and Miller 1960). Students of natural disaster have tended to discount the combined effects of small emergencies and seek to define a threshold beyond which a single event becomes large enough to have significant effects in its own right. However, not only is the threshold infinitely variable, but also the cumulative effect of smaller events is apt to be misestimated (Alexander 2000, pp. 231-234).

The characteristic magnitude-frequency curve that applies to almost all recurrent natural phenomena is in all probability discontinuous in its upper parts (i.e. very high magnitudes and very low frequencies). No measure of central tendency can be gained from the currently available data, which are incomplete in their upper ranges. Moreover, most estimates of the human impact of huge events are highly speculative and based on questionable assumptions. Thus the prediction that a major earthquake in Tokyo, of the maximum expected physical dimensions, would cost not merely hundreds of thousands of lives but also half of Japanese GNP for the year of occurrence (Shah 1995) has been criticised as wide of the mark (Wiggins 1996). It is certainly open to question: in another context, terrorism scenarios for anthrax infection in the United States predicted up to 1.5 million casualties and when it happened the number of deaths was eight (Ali 2000). [2] There will be more discussion of the magnitude-frequency relationship later in this paper.

Other definitions of disaster

A new vogue is beginning to develop for holistic approaches to disaster (McEntire 2001). It stems from the realisation that human well-being depends, not only on geophysical forecasting and engineering structural mitigation, but also on intangible factors of social and cultural origin (Oliver-Smith 1986, Alexander 2000). The applied dimension of holistic recovery strategies is not yet underpinned by sufficient fusion among the disciplinary approaches to basic disaster studies. These have tended to follow seven different paths and their protagonists have not infrequently been at loggerheads with one another (Alexander 1993a, pp. 12-14):-

(a) Catastrophe theory refers to the mathematics of hysteresis and bifurcation in the trajectories of differentially-derived variables through dimensional spaces (Thom 1975). In reality, only the most elementary of Thom=s theorems can be applied to direct causal relationships in real physical environments, and in many cases only be analogy (Kennedy 1980). Higher order >catastrophes= are nothing of the sort: they are abrupt changes in controlling parameters and cannot be used to describe the losses and disruption caused by disaster.

(b) The earth science definition of disaster largely refers to accelerated and widespread change in environmental conditions (Bell 1999). There is a tendency among earth scientists to refer to hazard independently of what the supposedly hazardous phenomenon threatens. This is inadvisable, as it ignores the crucial roles in creating disaster of vulnerability and feedback. Thus the classic model of causality

H --> V --> D (4)

in which hazard acts upon vulnerability to produce disaster, ignores the role of human action in modifying exposure to the hazard, if not the hazard itself (Hewitt 1983).

(c) The engineering approach to disaster concentrates on major technological system failures. Horlick-Jones (1995) has very rightly conceptualised this as a form of perceived betrayal of society by its leaders, planners and providers. Others have looked with suspicion at the technocratic approach to disaster in terms of its perceived use as a tool of domination (Hewitt 1983, Miller 1985). The principal problems with some engineering views of disaster are firstly the lack of appreciation of the social, economic, cultural and strategic constraints that drive vulnerability up rather than down and secondly the common lack of consideration of the wide variance in human impacts associated with engineering failures (see Zebrowski 1997).

(d) Sociologists and social psychologists have created a taxonomy of disaster based on interpersonal and organisational dynamics (Drabek 1986). They have given much attention to the radical, if transient, mutation of organisations, peer groups, family behaviour and so on during periods of crisis. Work has emphasised the resilience of human societies under stress and their ability to recover and regain stability (Nigg 1995). However, social science studies of disaster tend to be vague about the physical and technological underpinnings of events.

(e) Medical approaches to disaster have concentrated on mass casualty situations, though the definition of 'mass casualty' has not always been easy (Keown-McMullan 1997). They have also developed a sophisticated epidemiology of disaster, though relatively few exponents of this have delved deeply into the social, technological and physical causes of mortality and morbidity (those who have include Noji 1997 and Auf Der Heide 1989).

(f) Students of humanitarian aid have developed a portrait of the modern complex emergency, a phenomenon characterised by a mixture of military, social, economic, political and environmental instability aggravated by recurrent natural disasters and underpinned by regional or global political strategies (Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 1995). Proponents of the idea argue that the complex emergency is the fruit of globalisation, the shifting global power balance, decolonisation and the world arms trade (Copat 1981, Duffield 1996). Opponents argue that all disasters are more or less complex and the roots of the so-called 'complex emergency' are a matter of sustainable development and political stability. However, neither group would dispute the fact that people caught up in complex emergencies evolve patterns of coping and survival, sometimes spontaneously (Kirkby et al. 1997).

(g) Over the last 80 years geographers and anthropologists have developed the human ecology approach to disaster with emphasis on the adaptation of people and communities to natural environmental extremes (Burton et al. 1993, Oliver-Smith 1998). This has been very effective in influencing hazard management policy towards the adoption of a wider range of non-structural solutions to the disaster problem, but many of the characterisations of culture and its role in perceiving hazards have been crude and mechanistic (Palm 1998).

This brief review of schools of thought should be concluded with the observation that there are many more opportunities for interdisciplinary research than there are examples of it. In a previous work, I delved into the causes and effects of 'academic tribalism' and how it has hindered the development of a holistic approach to disasters (Alexander 2000, 30-36). The solution is first to base studies on an impartial assessment of what the most pressing issues are and what sort of solution they demand and secondly to look for the themes that might successfully link up the sectoral approaches. Two of the most important of these are the contextual and cultural underpinnings of disaster.

Context and culture

Disaster has several forms of significance for human communities. First of all, it is--obviously--a source of death, injury, destruction, damage and disruption. Ideas on what is a significant level of these vary considerably, often in relation to mass media 'constructions', or choice of elements to emphasize, of what is significant (Goltz 1984, Ploughman 1995). Secondly, disaster is a marker point in history and a milestone in the lives of survivors (Lifton 1980). Thirdly, it is an indicator of future catastrophe potential.

The four fundamental dimensions of disaster are magnitude (of the causal phenomena), intensity (of the effects of these phenomena), time (duration and frequency) and space (territorial extent and geographical variations in intensity). As most disasters are recurrent, the pattern of magnitudes and intensities distributed in space and time is cumulative (though one must allow for the lapse of individual events with the passage of time--see Alexander 1995). For example, the centralised bureaucracies of China registered some 1092 floods over a period of 2155 years and, despite the vastness of the lands in which these events occurred, natural disaster is undeniably a part of the history and culture of China (Jones 1987). Thus, as cumulative impacts and markers in people=s lives, disasters are absorbed into the stream of history which is transformed into human culture (Alexander 1991).

Culture is a phenomenon, or really a process, that conjoins ancient cultural survivals with modern cultural metamorphosis. Among other things, it interprets the technological developments, which form the impetus for so much modern change, in terms of standards established centuries before and progressively modified ever since. Technology is therefore both an integral aspect of modern culture (Meyer-Abich 1997) and an instrument of its change. The relentless evolution of technology provides sources of both vulnerability and its mitigation: it is a double-edged sword (Alexander 1995).

These considerations lead one to conclude that theories of disaster developed in the 1960s and 1980s are no longer adequate to describe the phenomenon and its dynamics in the 2000s. The >linear model= used by most students of catastrophe treats hazard as the cause and prime mover of risk and impact, through its action upon vulnerability (Burton et al. 1993). The first attempt to introduce feedback into the situation merely reversed the order of importance so that vulnerability took preference over hazard (Hewitt 1983). New models (Mitchell et al. 1989, Alexander 2000, Wisner 2001b) offer a more complex view of feedback relationships based upon the interactions of culture, context and the physical and social aspects of disaster (Figure 3).

One interesting aspect of this is that over history there has been remarkably little 'Darwinism' in the evolution of strategies to combat the risk of disaster. Comparatively rarely has there been a 'survival of the fittest' building, community, infrastructure, administration or emergency service: on the contrary, there has been an endless recreation of vulnerability, matched by geographical inertia in the use of hazardous locations (Alexander 1993, p. 12). One might surmise that over the span of recorded history disaster has done relatively little to put human ingenuity to the test. But could it all be changed by a Holocene-scale major event? The next two sections will examine the possible significance of the largest possible disasters.

What event to plan for: large, medium or small?

Mount Vesuvius in Southern Italy last erupted in 1943-4. It remains active and some vulcanologists believe that the longer the interval of time before it erupts again, the stronger will be the eruption that occurs (Dobran et al. 1994). Vesuvius is a complex volcano. In historical times it has given forth a wide variety of eruption styles, from the Plinian column of A.D. 79 to the pyroclastic flows of 1632 and the outpourings of a'a lava during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. A large eruption could produce large volumes of poisonous gases, deep ashfalls, rapid lahars and intense pyroclastic flows. The population of the 17 circum-Vesuvian municipalities exceeds 550,000 and somewhere between 300,000 and three million more people would be affected by a major eruption. Ash falls alone could cause the roofs of some 16,000 buildings to collapse (Barberi et al. 1990). In 1631, some 4000 people died when a pyroclastic flow ran through Portici: the current urban density of this town exceeds 18,000 people per square kilometre and is one of the highest in Europe (Alexander 2000, pp. 116-128).

As Vesuvius is one of the most widely-studied and intensively-monitored volcanoes in the world, there will be warning of an impending eruption and evacuation plans will be put into effect. People will be evacuated by road, rail and sea to all 20 of Italy's regions, and some probably abroad. But the situation is far from comforting: the problems of managing it are legion and it is only a matter of time before disaster strikes. The magnitude of the ensuing catastrophe will be determined by an exact conjunction between what happens volcanically and what is done to mitigate the worst consequences (Alexander 1999).

The size of the next eruption of Vesuvius is open to speculation, but it should be remembered that what is popularly supposed to be large is not necessarily that: the eruption of Mount St Helens in May 1980 emitted some 0.25 km; of magma equivalent, that of Santorini in 1600 BC emitted 11 km; and Krakatau in 1883 17 km;. But the prehistoric eruption of Taupo in New Zealand may have emitted more than 100 km; of magma equivalent (Sigurdsson 1991). Bearing in mind that the Vesuvian case represents just about the maximum event that could successfully be coped with (and that with a fair degree of muddling through) the large event is a thorn in the flesh for the emergency planner. By judicious application of modern technology and means of organisation it might be possible to push up the threshold of coping, but not by much. At any rate, it seems that we cannot begin to prepare for very large events until we have adequately coped with the more run-of-the-mill smaller ones, and in this respect there remains much to do.

What is the significance of the very large event in terms of catastrophe?

According to one set of considerations (IFRCRCS 2001), on average each year 220 natural disasters, 70 technological disasters and three new armed conflicts occur. The second half of the 20th century saw increases of 250 per cent in the number of disasters recorded, 1500 per cent in their economic impact and 500 per cent in both the number of people affected and the number of mass-casualty disasters (Munich Re Group 1999). Even allowing for the probable inflation of estimates in recent years, if the curve of these trends were extrapolated much beyond the year 2020 it would become almost vertical. Hence, something must give. Human adaptability will be challenged and stimulated into action by the cumulative weight of small, medium and large disaster impacts. There is no indication, however, that the balance must necessarily shift in favour of the world=s poorer countries, which currently suffer about 80 per cent of disasters and 90-95 per cent of deaths in disaster (Wisner 2001a).

The unknown factor is the very large, very low frequency and low probability event--the disaster with a Holocene-scale recurrence interval. Asteroid impacts and some of the largest prehistoric volcanic eruptions are potentially the main natural sources of such events. [3] Few guidelines exist as to the amount of attention that emergency planners should give such hazards. In another sphere, the events of 11 September 2001 in the United States have demonstrated that disaster planning has been based too exclusively on the run-of-the-mill event without developing an adequate capacity to plan for truly exceptional scenarios (Alexander 2002a).

Yet on the other hand some very real unmet needs are associated with mitigating the consequences of rather banal, small-scale events. Never has the gap between scientific knowledge and implementation been greater. It is a well-known principle that resources cannot be tied up in waiting for events that have only a tiny probability of occurring in any human lifetime (Alexander 2002b). But does this mean that they should be ignored on an operational level?

Few very large, individual extreme events have left their imprint on community consciousness or the progress of human history. No real evidence exists that disasters have ever 'destroyed civilisation' (cf. Antonopoulos 1992, Alexander 1993b). However, in the event of a major asteroid strike, or equivalent impact, we have no means of predicting casualty patterns, losses or capacity to respond. We have no prior knowledge of the social mutations that might possibly occur. Emergency planning relies on a mixture of theory and experience and both are in short supply regarding gigantic disasters. Despite the many experiences of smaller events, it is doubtful whether one could 'gear up' plans to cope with much larger scenarios. Moreover, there is little evidence either way that the 'disaster movie' situation would prevail and society would break down under the strain. Nevertheless, giant events would require draconian measures, and the current drift of disaster management is--quite rightly--to democratise the whole process of civil protection in order to make individual citizens more responsible for their own safety (Alexander 2002b).

Perhaps it is the millennium that drives thinkers into the arms of the neocatastrophists, but the future role of any very large geophysical event as a catastrophe is not sufficiently understood for speculation to be avoided, and speculation tends to invite catastrophism (Dury 1980). [4] It is quite possible that such an event could override most of the current provisions and mores for coping with disaster. It is equally likely that additional preparation is neither feasible nor desirable, given the probable cost and the low likelihood that it will be utilised during the next century or so. Terrorism scenario-building and strategic warfare modelling have given some basis for estimating the impact of huge events, and no doubt future years will see much refinement of the ability to predict major natural events scientifically. But none of this adds up to a blueprint for action.

In conclusion, the presence of a statistically small risk of cataclysm should not cause us to change our focus on preparing for the impact of smaller events, but perhaps it should induce us to widen our horizon with regard to the dynamics and implications of future natural catastrophes.

References

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Notes

1. In reality, bracketed duration and maximum acceleration are also essential determinants of seismic impact (Gutenberg and Richter 1942, Tiv 2000).

2. On the other hand, of 5000 people who sought treatment in the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo metro, 4000 were suffering from psychosomatic ailments or the so-called multiple idiopathic physical symptoms (MIPS) (Olson 1999).

3. At the time of writing the discovery of the Silverpit crater in the North Sea basin has given a fillip to neocatastrophism, but it should be remembered that it was created at least 60 million years ago and there might not be any recurrence during the next 60 million years. The average lifespan of a disaster plan is less than ten years.

4. A catastrophist viewpoint translates the magnitude-frequency rule into a curve of increasing energy or impact level and thus apportions more weight to high-magnitude, low-frequency events than to the combined effect of events of moderate magnitude and comparatively high frequency (Alexander 2000, p. 230).