Case Studies in Disaster Response and Emergency Management

Nicolas A. Valcik, Paul E. Tracy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315459356
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Designed to enable practitioners and students to evaluate a variety of real-life emergencies from every angle, this new edition of Case Studies in Disaster Response and Emergency Management provides clear, thorough, step-by-step descriptions of more than 50 major disasters or emergencies. Arranged chronologically, the case studies involve incidents from around the globe, with topics including natural disasters, industrial accidents, epidemics, and terrorist attacks. A series of questions throughout each case study encourages the reader to think critically about the problem at hand, to select a course of action, and to then see the results of the decisions that were made. This hands-on approach invites practitioners and students to apply learned theoretical emergency management techniques in a safe test environment.

Case Studies in Disaster Response and Emergency Management, 2e provides readers with the most modern and current case studies in disaster response and emergency management and can be used in group project settings, as individual homework assignments in training courses for first responders, law enforcement, and government employees, or to complement existing emergency management textbooks in Public Administration, Public Management, and Public Affairs programs.

1 Guidelines and General Information for Public Officials and Administrators

Key Issues to Consider in Emergency or Disaster Response Situations

Case Study Selection and the History of Disaster Response

The case studies in this book were selected for three main reasons. First, some case studies were chosen due to the impact they have had on the development of disaster response and emergency management in modern times. Events such as the Love Canal Disaster in 1970 were used as examples because they had a strong impact on the introduction of new legislation that attempted to prevent such situations from reoccurring. Second, other events were selected due to the sheer magnitude of the event and their impact on society, for example, 9/11, Charles Whitman’s 1966 attack at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Aum cult attack on the Tokyo subways. Third, other case studies were included due to their unique characteristics or complexity. These events posed unique challenges to the ability of public administrators to resolve them successfully. Events such as the great white shark attacks of New Jersey in 1916, the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in 1979, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake pose such challenges.

Throughout the history of disaster response, governments at federal, state, and local levels have attempted to prevent disasters or mitigate their effects by passing ordinances and legislation. Unfortunately, history has a tendency to repeat itself if public administrators are ignorant of the past, or worse, ignore the lessons of history. In such instances, administrators might become lax in upholding building codes or neglect to fully enforce existing legislation. With each disaster case scenario, this monograph will present possible solutions that could be applied or taken into consideration at each stage of the disaster, sometimes differing from what historically occurred. At the end of each case study section, the text will summarize the case study as follows: (1) failures in the case study; (2) consequences of the failures; (3) implications; and (4) items of note.

Basic Framework and Resources Needed for Disaster Response

Without question, public officials and administrators must always be concerned about emergency situations and the need to be strategically aware of the multitude of response issues that can arise from emergency situations. The public trust requires such diligence because, unfortunately, any community, anywhere, at any time, can be faced with an emergency that can negatively impact the community generally and specific public agencies in particular. Emergency situations can arise owing to a variety of different sources: (1) natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes, and floods; (2) accidents involving nuclear power plants, chemical spills, or other industrial incidents; (3) acts of terrorism; and (4) criminal acts, such as arson, snipers, and so on. These emergencies, regardless of origin, can pose serious threats to the health and well-being of the citizenry and to community infrastructure. Contending with these situations successfully can mean the difference between life and death, preservation and destruction. As Perrow has stated:

Disasters from natural sources, from industrial and technological sources, and from deliberate sources such as terrorism have all increased in the United States in recent decades, and no diminution is in sight. Weather disturbances are predicted to increase; low-level industrial accidents continue but threaten to intensify and the threat of cyber attacks on our “critical infrastructure” becomes ever more credible; foreign terrorists have not relaxed and we anxiously await another attack.

(Perrow, 2007: 1)

While no two emergency situations will be the same, there are crucial lessons that can be learned from the effects of past events and the manner in which they were handled that can guide public officials and administrators to make sound, effective, and rational decisions that can prevent, or at least mitigate, the deaths, injuries, or damage that can occur. For some situations there will be no perfectly successful strategies that can be implemented. Nonetheless, decision making can be guided by strategic imperatives that can possibly mitigate the harm and destruction that may be inflicted on the community.

Some organizations that are depicted in the case studies in this book were the first to experience a particular emergency situation (e.g., the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which involved the use of hijacked airplanes as weapons). From those past experiences public officials and administrators now know the possibilities that can exist, which may lead them to appreciate the need for having emergency response contingencies in place. The prior experiences of historical events and the way they were handled provide a distinct advantage for the contemporary administrator through experiential hindsight—an advantage that their predecessors did not have. To this end, therefore, the following topics represent general issues that a public official or agency administrator should consider when responding to an emergency situation.

Basic Framework

Plan of Action

A public official or administrator should always be thinking about how to implement a plan for a positive intervention when a situation arises. As Ricks, Tillett, and Van Meter have stated:

The only thing certain about planning to protect lives or property from natural or other person-caused emergencies is that there is no location in the world that is absolutely free from danger in one form or another. The varieties of potential dangers can be identified, and measures can be taken to reduce the risk of exposure or strike; however, thorough planning and preparation may prevent the escalation of a dangerous situation into a catastrophe.

(Ricks, Tillett, and Van Meter, 1994: 329)

For some organizations plans of action will already exist if certain threats are known to be a possibility for a particular community (e.g., a hurricane in a coastal area). Still, the importance of planning for a natural disaster cannot be overstated:

A natural occurrence can, of course, be more common to one area of the United States than to another … Modern technology has made most of these natural hazards somewhat predictable. Often it is possible to have several days’ warning, and some indication of the probable magnitude of the pending hazard. However, natural hazards can strike without warning, and it is at such times that pre-planning and immediate, adequate reaction capability is of the utmost importance.

(Ricks, Tillett, and Van Meter, 1994: 66)

When plans of action are formulated by an organization, the plans should take into account several key aspects of the situation.

First, an action plan should be based on a realistic inventory concerning what resources could potentially be available in times of a crisis. When possible (or available), several organizations can use key software tools, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to prepare mitigation plans, or disaster management plans if natural disasters are a possibility (Greene, 2002). By having such plans available, an entity has the potential to prepare effectively for natural disasters that may hit a community. One thing for public officials to keep in mind is that just because a community has resources available to it when the plan is originally formulated does not mean that those resources will be available at a later date. Therefore, it is important to update an action plan on a regular basis if a threat is known to exist and to keep an active inventory of what resources are available.

Second, a plan of action should also include an inventory of the vulnerabilities an organization may have to a certain type of threat. For example, if a community is built on a flood plain there will be several key facilities (i.e., hospitals, schools, etc.) that may be prone to flooding. For mitigation of the possible effects of such emergencies, it would behoove public administrators to use technologies such as GIS if these are available to them.

As stated by Thomas, Ertugay, and Kemec (2007) in referencing Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS), the level of coordination and scenario-building aspects necessary for a disaster SDSS may seem somewhat futuristic, but the increasing availability of geographic technologies make it more possible than ever to consider an integrated system that supports disaster management to reduce loss (Tung and Siva, 2001; Rodriguez, Quarantelli, and Dynes, 2007b: 86)

Thus, it is important to have a plan of action that addresses what steps the public administrator intends to take if certain facilities are faced with the threat of flooding from a storm. How will the administrator contend with providing medical services to patients if the hospital is under water? What will the administrator do with prisoners if a correctional facility is threatened by flood waters? The administrator will need to prepare for these types of questions along with answers to resolve the issues favorably. Clearly, there will be several factors in formulating a plan of action, which include the level or degree of authority the administrator has. Relevant questions in this regard are the following:

• What resources are available?

• Who needs to be contacted?

• What is the scope of the intervention?

• What types of threats need to be addressed?

• What are the organization’s major vulnerabilities?

Third, a plan of action can be either preplanned or developed as the emergency situation unfolds. A public administrator should be especially prepared, however, to make adjustments to the plan of action as events unfold. The plan should never be static, since often situations can be unpredictable and change throughout the course of a given event. Thus, emergency events are dynamic and fluid and no administrator should rigidly adhere to a plan merely because it was “the” plan. An effective plan should have a dynamic feature that allows strategic flexibility.

Communication Plan

Emergency preparedness not only requires an plan of action, it also includes another crucially important component—a comprehensive communication plan. Quite simply, without proper communication, an emergency response team runs a serious risk of implementing a plan of action incompletely, ineffectively, or failing to implement it at all. As stated by Sorensen and Sorensen:

Developing the warning system is both an engineering process and an organizational process. Warning systems are more than technology—involving human communication, management, and decision-making.

(in Rodriguez, Quarantelli, and Dynes, 2007a: 184)

Additionally, the communication plan should include aspects to address the situation as it unfolds to gain support and resources to help implement the plan of action. The communication plan often can be used to inform the public of important information and instructions that will be critical to the success of the public administrator’s plan of action.

The communication plan should incorporate not only the information that the public administrator needs to transmit and receive, but also the mechanisms by which the information is to be transmitted and received. During some emergency situations, it may not be possible to use modern equipment or convenient ways to communicate with other entities. Therefore, the public administrator will need to find other methods to send and receive information as timely and as clearly as possible. For example, if telecommunication networks are inoperable, a public administrator may have to rely on short-wave radio operators or even couriers for communication. When communicating with other officials, the public, or other organizations, public administrators should be clear and concise in how they communicate their intentions. Having good writing and oral communication skills is essential for public administrators and officials when trying to implement an plan of action.

Administrators will need to manage the media effectively. While journalists are seeking information to disperse to the public, administrators can use the opportunity to put a call out for resources that may be needed in a time of crisis. Administrators need to use very different strategies in response to a localized disaster such as the Oklahoma City bombing, compared to the type of response required for something large and regional such as Hurricane Katrina. Both crises will receive media coverage, but a localized disaster response situation will require administrators to be aware of the potential negative impact that the media can play in an ongoing response. For example, if the media discloses clues that can be used in apprehending a killer, it may hinder law enforcement’s ability to apprehend or convict the individual responsible for criminal activity. For a larger regional disaster response, media may not be able to access certain parts of impacted areas due to the danger that would be posed to journalists (i.e., flooding, etc.). The large-scale disaster response will require administrators to plan and use the media to benefit their situation in requesting assistance in gaining resources.

Public and non-profit organizations, if they are large enough, usually have a department or spokesperson employed to work with the media during such times of crisis. For smaller public and non-profit organizations, there should be a person designated to work with the media during a disaster as part of a disaster response plan. It is important that employees or volunteers who do not have the specific function of spokespersons, or designated as a spokesperson, should not engage with the media because incorrect or sensitive information could be dispersed, which could potentially render a disaster response plan compromised. An example of a compromised response plan is when Mayor Diane Feinstein (future U.S. Senator) unwittingly, via her press conference, provided information to Richard Ramirez (a.k.a. the Night Stalker) about evidence collected by the police department (Calhoun, 2016). The inadvertent tipoff by Feinstein allowed Ramirez to dispose of some of the evidence that was cited in the press conference (Calhoun, 2016). In short, spokespersons or designated spokespersons need to be aware of what information should not be disclosed, and if information is disclosed, the information should be accurate. The spokesperson should work with the media as much as possible and instill a working relationship with the journalist assigned to cover the situation. A good working relationship with the media can assist an organization greatly if the media can successfully tout the public for support needed to alleviate the disaster or crisis.

Emergency Response Plan

All public organizations should have an emergency response plan to at least provide a framework for how their organization will respond to different forms of crisis. For some organizations emergency response plans should be more specific if the organization can be potentially impacted from known threats (i.e., fire, riots, etc.). An emergency plan of action should identify the resources that are available to the organization as well as where resources can be gathered from external sources in times of crisis. Specifics that should be addressed in emergency response plans could include evacuation plans for populations or logistics for water transportation. These emergency response plans should cover contingency plans in the event that communications fail, electricity fails, medical assistance is unavailable, or additional facilities are needed, to name just a few factors for consideration. Emergency response plans should be widely distributed within the organization and should be easily accessible during times of crisis.

Resources

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1. Guidelines and General Information for Public Officials and Administrators: Key Issues to Consider in Emergency or Disaster Response Situations
• PART I: Natural Disasters
• PART II: Man-made disasters
• PART III: Terrorism and Criminal Acts
• PART IV: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Disasters
• PART V: Disasters Occurring in Museums, Libraries and Archives
• PART VI: Final Thoughts
• Index