Why are we not ready for crisis?

Recent catastrophes illustrate that communications are the key to surviving large crises. New technology allows us to implement a great system at very low cost

by Dan Crawford

There have been numerous instances where an anticipated catastrophe or crisis unfolded but no emergency plan was in place to effectively deal with it. In a small number of cases the emergency was severe enough that people miles away took notice and decided to prepare themselves just in case the same event were to unfold in their own area.

The Vancouver E-COMM—Emergency Communication Center—was born out of one such episode. It was back in 1989 when the world witnessed a devastating earthquake that hit San Francisco just as the World Series was about to get under way. Many people watched in real-time as this event unfolded, completely transfixed by images on their televisions. The underlying message conveyed that day was the cold reality of what lurks behind every danger—time. And given enough time a danger will eventually manifest itself into a full-blown emergency, a reality that cannot be avoided or understated.

This same message came across loud and clear more recently with both Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and their damaging effects, especially for New Orleans, a city that couldn’t be better designed to be flooded. Again, it was only a question of time.

Nearly all of our emergency preparedness and planning has come about as a reaction to the actual emergency occurring. Without the occurrence people do not feel justified in putting any resources into being ready. Sadly, the indisputable justification only arrives after the loss of life has happened.

At a recent PlanTalk meeting in downtown Vancouver the focus of discussion was on emergency planning and the lessons learned. A man from Kelowna gave a detailed talk about his experience as the director for handling the Kelowna forest fires emergency in 2003. He made a very interesting statement about how valuable their web site had been in disseminating information and communicating with those affected during the emergency. He then revealed that one person was behind the entire site and it was by pure luck that it even materialized. As it turns out the person was the husband to one of the women working on the emergency team and he happened to be at the right place, at the right time with the right skill sets to rapidly design and deploy a web site. A happy coincidence for the residents of Kelowna.

Looking more into emergencies, they almost always boil down to one problem—disruption of how we normally live our lives. Many natural disasters are short lived but cause parts of our critical infrastructure to fail. Once that happens the real emergency begins simply because basic needs can not be adequately met. In a situation like this, it is important for people to be educated about what is happening and how to deal with it in an appropriate way. The appropriate way is normally to organize and work together by using less resources and making do with what is available. The way to educate is through information sharing. The information that is shared has to be accurate and accessible in order to be useful.

Off hand, where does a person go for that kind of information during an emergency? Right now there is no one place dedicated to this cause. Nor do communities have inexpensive low-power FM transmitters to broadcast messages to a localized population. Likewise, citizens invariably do not own small crank-up radios to receive the broadcasts. Online there is not much in the way of emergency web sites to turn to, and municipalities do not readily advertise one. Very few communities offer any kind of group exercises to help refine emergency response techniques among their residents.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. Through the use of incentives, citizens will want to participate in an emergency framework.

Here's the pitch: An open source (free software) project that implements a web-based emergency response solution. The central purpose behind the project would be to provide services that are immediately useful to a community so that awareness and involvement would be ongoing instead of just at a time of crisis.

To accomplish this, a focus would be placed on a feature-rich ride board service along with a complete telecommuter package. Email registration for emergency alerts and updates would be included as well. More features could be easily added over time such as events and classified listings. Educational materials would be made available too. A community could manage their own site and support it financially through the selling of emergency preparedness kits to its citizens. This way they could promote the web site and at the same time keep track of who was involved and prepared, where they live, and all of the person's contact information.

Mobility is one of the keys to handling a response during a crisis. Traffic jammed express ways have been the result of every hurricane evacuation in the US. In many cases, people who did not own a car were left behind. With the appropriate ride-sharing and car-pooling software a community would be much better at rolling-out an organized evacuation, especially if the community was already using and familiar with the web site. The other aspect is to standardize a telecommuting package for Canadians and encourage companies to adopt telecommuter guidelines for their employees. During certain kinds of emergencies, having less traffic on the roads and keeping people in their homes is a requirement and this would be an ideal time to employ widespread telecommuting. This would also help in the dissemination of information by making it easier to push instant messages or emails to all of the registered users from the community.

In emergency situations where a power outage has occurred, people could use their crank-powered radios from the emergency preparedness kits they had bought as their key information source. If they had been making use of the ride-board features, then they would also be able to take advantage of the connections they had made from previous car-pooling experiences. A point rarely mentioned is the effectiveness that ride-sharing can have on community building.

The real beauty behind this is that the tools offered would also help Canadians reduce their costs of living. Plus there is the added bonus of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the same time as helping people to reduce their car dependencies.

What resources would be required to turn this idea into a reality? My guess is that Canada could have an implementation coded, running and serving Canadians for under $1 million. Which brings us back to the initial question: Why aren't we ready?

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