Getting Better at Dealing with Disasters

There are many ways individuals can deal with disasters. These ways will be broken down into categories, which will be explained. This will help contextualize how disaster risk professionals think about disasters, and will also hopefully assist the reader with any analysis of their own in the future.

The main ‘pillars’ or categories that are commonly used in disaster risk reduction (DRR) are: prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. These pillars are both phases in an incident or disaster, and are categories that are used to contextualize strategic objectives. For this article’s purposes they will be used in both contexts.

Prevention

The point of prevention is total elimination of the hazard or vulnerability. The idea is to ‘prevent’ the disaster from occurring altogether. The ‘phase’ of prevention refers to the planning period before an incident/disaster. Technically, prevention is ongoing constantly until it fails.

There are two ways broadly speaking that people can prevent disasters:

1. The removal of the hazard.

2. The elimination of the vulnerability.

Hazard removal generally looks like avoiding certain behaviours. If one never bungee jumps, then the risk of dying during bungee jumping has been eliminated. At times this strategy can become impractical. An example would be avoiding being nearby roads at all times without exception.

For other particularly dangerous things, prevention can often be the simplest and easiest strategy. No guns in the house, no smoking indoors, shut off the power before touching wires, etc.

If there is a particular type of disaster that bothers someone, then attempt the following:

1. Identify what the hazard(s) involved in the disaster are.

2. Figure out if these hazards can be eliminated and how.

3. Determine if it is practical and decide.

Vulnerability removal basically comes down to two broad concepts:

1. One cannot lose something they do not have. An example would be not owning property as one cannot lose something they do not have.

2. Becoming so ‘strong’ that the impact is mitigated to such an extreme degree, it has effectively been prevented. An example would be a billionaire incurring a $100 loss, they don’t care.

The way to approach this is basically as follows:

1. Identify how the hazards impacts the target (Self, family, business, population, etc.). This is known as the vulnerability.

2. Determine the nature of the vulnerability. Is this something that can be removed? Is it a scale or spectrum that can be strengthened or weakened?

3. Figure out what actions can be taken based on 2.

4. Determine what is practical and decide.

Prevention solutions can become fairly extreme, total elimination of a hazard or vulnerability can be fairly involved.

Mitigation

The point of mitigation is to ‘lessen the blow’. Mitigation and prevention are very similar, the main difference is that mitigation is partial, while prevention is total. The phase of mitigation is also similar to prevention in that it tends to be constant. 

Uniquely, the ‘phase’ of mitigation can persist throughout the incident/disaster acting as a constant force ‘mitigating’ perpetual impacts. If that is confusing, then when solutions are explored it should make more sense.

Similar to prevention, mitigation also either approaches from a hazard or vulnerability angle. Unlike prevention, the less extreme goal allows for a broad range of strategies.

As an example, flood risk mitigation could involve landscaping, physically raising a house, and moving the valuable contents in the house to a different floor.

The vulnerability side should get some special mention here.

A pretty significant segue is going to happen here. The reason for this is that to best identify what one might want to improve on the process basically is:

1. Identify what makes people vulnerable.

2. Figure out what of these things affect the target (self, family, business, etc.)

3. Determine what can be done.

4. Practicality and decision.

Here is help with the identification part.

When disasters occur, they are often studied and investigated. One of the main things that is looked for are the groups or categories of individuals that are disproportionately negatively impacted. Across multiple countries, disaster categories, and over time, a few different categories have been continually identified as making people particularly vulnerable:

Physical Vulnerability

This is basically one’s proximity to flawed or vulnerable infrastructure that they depend on. Poor quality housing, insufficient water treatment, unreliable power, etc.

Economic Vulnerability

Being poor makes things difficult. A lack of financial resources during a disaster tends to result in one of two outcomes:

1. A lack of flexibility and choice, significantly increasing one’s risk of bad-outcomes. Being unable to afford bus-fare in an evacuation when the buses are not free is an example (this happened in Hurricane Katrina, 2005).

2. Engaging in criminal activity through perceived necessity. If the decision is between death and stealing food, people steal the food.

Economic status and one’s capability to make long-term decisions are heavily correlated. It is exceedingly rare that an individual is ‘made whole’ in a disaster. People in poverty do not have the economic ability to ‘take the hit’.

Social Vulnerability

Certain individuals are less capable of interacting with society due to social characteristics that their society has used to separate or sort people. To many, social vulnerability will be less obvious than physical and economic, so with that in mind here are some social vulnerabilities and some of the effects they can have:

• Age: Children are dependent on adults, but also may enjoy greater leeway or preferential treatment during a crisis. The elderly are often forgotten or ‘written off’.

• Disability: In many disasters a utilitarian ‘save as many as possible’ approach will often be adopted. When disabled individuals become inefficient to rescue, the able-bodied individuals will often be prioritized. People in wheelchairs being last to evacuate down the stairs in high-rise buildings is an example of this.

• Education level: When resources are limited, self-sufficiency becomes more important. People that are incapable of following instructions or adequately adapt in a disaster find it much more difficult to survive.

• Language: Similar to education, but separate. Not speaking any of the dominant languages in a given culture puts one at a significant disadvantage in a disaster. One of the most important things in a disaster is information. One needs the language to receive the information, and the intelligence to act on it appropriately.

• Gender, race, discrimination, etc.: In many societies it is easier for some people with particular social characteristics to access resources or interact productively than others. Whether this is right or wrong is not relevant, in most societies it is a reality. This is a very broad category, so with that in mind here are a few examples:

  • In some countries, women are considered effectively property within the family structure, this limits their ability to be socially flexible in a disaster.

  • Being an illegal immigrant precludes one from accessing significant government resources in many societies.

  • Women and children have historically been given priority in evacuations. Being a man in this situation has effectively resulted in voluntary sacrifice (death).

  • A variety of policies exist across the world which prioritize individuals associated with the majority or the minority disproportionately. This creates unique case-specific social vulnerabilities.

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Medical/Health Vulnerability

The healthier one is, the easier it is for them to react and adapt in a disaster. There is both a positive and negative side to this risk.

Negative side – Preexisting conditions that require consistent medical care create an additional resource that someone needs in a disaster. Oversimplifying, if the healthy person has three resource dependent things that can kill them, the medically vulnerable has four.

Positive side – The healthier an individual is the better they can adapt to the environment. Tolerating extreme temperatures, smoke and particulate matter, evacuating quickly, lifting heavy objects, walking great distances, etc. When a disaster necessitates some sort of physically stressful feat, being able to perform said feat gives one an advantage.

Post segue:

In looking at the vulnerability identification section, people can figure out what areas particularly affect them. After doing so, determine what would be involved in improving in these areas, which ones are practical to improve on, and decide.

It is easy to say “just move to a more agreeable location, run an ironman, and don’t be poor.” For many, any or all of these things might not be immediately practical.

Preparedness

This is all about not being surprised. The ‘phase’ of preparedness is essentially the section right before the incident/disaster. Plans, training, research, learning about the ‘enemy’ or the ‘bad thing’ so that it doesn’t catch one unawares.

Preparedness is fairly simple to plan out. Determine if one is looking at the hazard or the vulnerability. 

If hazard: learn about the specific hazard that is concerning.

If vulnerability: learn about how one is affected by ‘bad stuff’ (disasters).

Generally, it is a good idea to make preparedness habitual. By making preparedness tasks a more regular occurrence two risks can be reduced in particular:

1. Forgetting something because it has been too long since it was last reviewed.

2. Not doing it at all due to procrastination.

This could be doing an internet search, watching an educational video, asking a friend who is a professional that works with the hazard, etc.

Response

The point of response is to react to the incident/disaster as it happens. The ‘phase’ of response is fairly intuitive, it is the portion of time in which one is responding to the incident. When the destruction is over, those who can be saved have been saved and the focus entirely shifts to ‘where do we go from here?’ response will have effectively ended in practice.

What one does here is largely subject to what they did in other phases. Effectively, this section is putting into practice the work one put in previously. 

• The degree to which one is surprised (preparedness) will dictate the variety and accuracy of their decisions.

• The severity of the hazard (mitigation – hazard) will dictate how great of a threat this particular incident will pose.

• One’s current state of vulnerability, or lack thereof, (mitigation – vulnerability) will dictate the range of options that are available and will influence what decisions may be effectively forced.

If someone wants to get better at the response portion, then almost preemptive any action they do is effectively added within mitigation or preparedness. If one seeks out disaster situations to get better at being in disasters, what they are effectively doing is using real events as full-scale exercises; this is a preparedness action.

Recovery

The point of recovery is to answer the question “where do we go from here?”. The recovery ‘phase’ lasts until the person or people in question have completely transitioned away or moved on from the incident.

On an individual level the goal of recovery is to have as optimal of a result as possible. If this sounds a bit vague and general, that is because individual priorities can be varied.

These priorities may include:

• Speed: prioritizing ‘getting it over with’.

• Value maximization: getting the biggest payout for destroyed property.

• Health outcomes: broad category but with traumatic incidents there are numerous priorities individuals may have.

• Reputation: people and businesses can have a variety of social considerations that may be a significant priority.

• Don’t let a crisis go to waste: numerous ways to interpret this.

  
  

Similar to response, the main way to address recovery is to look at what other components affect the recovery priorities one cares about and then focusing on those components.

Pay special attention to vulnerability as the impacts that one would need to recover from are usually the same things that one is vulnerable to losing in the first place.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.