Emergency readiness -- I am curious, muddy

[jhetley]

Item for discussion, which I hope will remain non-political and looking forward.

Should the United States maintain a disaster-response "capability" of people, supplies, and equipment large enough to cope with the destruction of a major city and its surroundings? Should this "capability" be ready to move within 48 hours of alert? That latter condition precludes using the materials and equipment (and many of the personnel) in the normal course of government business....

Keep in mind that this country does not have such capability now and has not had such for decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The closest we've come to it is the Civil Defense preparations of the 1950s and 1960s, oriented toward nuclear war rather than natural disaster, and _that_ was dismantled in the 1970s and 1980s. One example of this dismantling is the CD command bunker about ten miles from where I sit, gutted in the 1980s and abandoned, the doors welded shut....

Comments

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

I'm for maintaining the capability to respond to a catastrophe. I always have been.

We have most of the pieces necessary to respond to a catastrophe. That said, we need much more equipment and an incredible amount of supplies. Purchasing and maintaining such supplies is much more expensive than the government, and maybe even the people, are willing to spend.

We also need leadership. We have FEMA, Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, etc. ad nauseum. These agencies, singly and together, can do a lot to make life easier for disaster victims, but only if there is adequate leadership to tell them when to go, and to coordinate them, make them work together.

Finally, the job isn't over when we finish evacuating people. It's just starting. I think that will become abundantly clear over the next weeks or months. Homes, jobs, schools.

This disaster will not be the last we face. Whether from enemy attack or, more likely, natural catastrophe we will be at this point again.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: In the emergency preparedness literature, there's a lot of verbage about the "first critical 72 hours." In that time period the first responders have gone in, and the state and local governments have brought up their emergency management centers. Lines of communication to FEMA have been opened since the first realization that a problem was developing.

The logistical problems can be dealt with, in large part, by contracts with civilian providers. Home Depot has lumber all over the country. UPS and Overland Freightways have trucks all over the country. Many other trucking companies have significant regional coverage, and could be brought in to contingency contracts. The Federal Government already has such contracts with airlines and shipping lines so that we can rapidly move people and materiel overseas. It's a straightforward matter to execute similar contracts with domestic companies. In times of disaster many domestic companies want to help but are hindered by bureaucracy.

Engineering equipment in the stricken area will probably not be available, but can be trucked in from more distant areas. I would bet significant amounts of cash that rough terrain bulldozers are sitting on the Terex lot in eastern Ohio right now when Terex would love to make them available on the Gulf Coast. A pre-existing contract with Teresi trucking (a company that hauls tanks and armored vehicles all over the country for the Army Transportation Corps) would have made it possible to start moving those dozers south early this past week.

We don't need a 1950's style Civil Defense plan. We need a 2000's style Civil Defense plan. We know with absolute certainty that Mother Nature is going to attack the US every year, and it's folly to disregard that.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Got any proposals for moving people out of (and into) the disaster area once the shit hits the fan? That seems to be one of the major glitches on Katrina.

Hauling a hundred thousand people out by Chinook takes a bit of time.

On that critical 72 hours -- we have SAR teams leaving Maine _now_, headed for the area. For actual victim rescue, earthquake and such, 24 hours is the figure I've heard.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Moving lots of people takes lots of passenger capacity. In some parts of the country you can still do it with trains. Most places require busses. If a big hairy mother of a hurricane is bearing down the time to evacuate is before it hits. Once the winds are howling and the rain is pouring down, nothing of any size can move. So evacuations have to wait until the storm ends. (I think I have a Baltimore evac plan sitting around somewhere. Though Baltimore has the advantage of being built on hills that slope down to a harbor, so even with a 30 foot storm surge all that gets flooded is the first two blocks coming up from the water. Annapolis is a tougher logistical problem to evacuate, but it's smaller.)

That said, busses can be staged in a ready area a couple of hundred miles off to the side of the storm track. It wouldn't have been impossible to commandeer 1000 school busses and stage them in Dallas, then roll after the storm moved on up into northern Mississippi. Of course people would have howled and bitched about how it was disrupting the education of their children...

As for the 24 hour number, that's right. SAR teams like to be in the area just as soon after the wind stops blowing / rain stops falling / ground stops shaking as possible. At this remove SAR is mostly a recovery operation instead of a rescue operation.

We (the MD Defense Force) sent off some emergency medical teams today. Several emergency trauma surgeons are on the way, and they'll have plenty to do. We'd all like to go, but as our General pointed out, hurricane season's not over yet. Hurricane Isabell slammed us pretty hard two years ago, and there's no reason to think we're immune this year.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about rolling a thousand busses on the morning after. Them roads, they're some kind of mess.

But basically it comes down to a 3C problem -- communications, command, control. As you well know, with your background.

All three seem to be royally fucked, this time.

(Our town also gets hurricanes every now and then, but topography helps. I sit maybe a quarter mile from tidewater and 100 feet above it. But the dingbats in charge are like dingbats everywhere -- they just chose a site for the new county/district court, on land I personally have seen under six feet of storm tide....)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Did you ever find yourself wondering if the problem is that things have just gotten to the point where the people who understand reality have been systematically pushed out of government?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

"Reality is greatly overrated."

"Reality is for people who can't handle drugs (or science fiction, or....)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I don't wonder at all. It seems transparently obvious that this is exactly what has happened over the past 30 years or so. Oddly enough, that's also pretty much the time frame of the Christianist "master plan" to seize political power. Coincidence? Maybe...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I would have a hard time characterizing the government response (on all levels, not just federal) as Christian.

On the other hand, maybe "Love thy neighbor as thyself" tells us there's a lot of self-hatred in government?

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

I'm with Bill on this. It doesn't need to be government supply depots so much as contracts with civilian companies who have the supplies as part of their regular business dealings. Costco, Walmart, Home Depot. All the big box places who have warehouses full of stuff, and the trucks to move them - with the understanding that the government will pay for stock used.

The government's repsonsibility then boils down to saying the word and providing whatever personnel would be necessary to distribute supplies and ensure clear routes of entry into the stricken areas. Where that personnel would come from would seem to be a problem if, as now, the country is at war, but I'd guess you start with local police forces and the Red Cross and go from there.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

From hearsay (other blogs), the Red Cross is actually barred from New Orleans at this point. Don't know about Gulfport or Biloxi.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

I've heard that as well. Im not sure of the reasoning for it, but would like to assume that there exist good and valid reasons.

The problem still seems to be finding personnel.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I believe that it's a "Cold Equations" decision. Red Cross, or other, aid _in_ New Orleans would make it possible for people to stay. FEMA wants _everybody_ out. Last week, if possible....

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

This is the information age. I don't think you need stockpiles of things as much as the ability to know what's where and how to move it.
Don't tell me your supermarket chains don't have warehouses; and you have no camping stores and trailer parks.
And you need to do risk assessment *before* it comes to a catastrophe, and you need to do the equivalent of earthquake awareness in flood areas, and you need to make sure that every kid in school gets told what the hazards are and how to react to them and give them glossy brochures to take back to their parents and have websites and make sure that *everybody* is aware.

The difference between survival and not often seems to be knowledge. With emergency rations and water purification etc etc one could have made the current situation bearable.

There are emergency relief structures in place all over the world; it should not have been impossible to extend them to the US.

Of course, it would have helped if public transport hadn't shut down before the carless poor were told to evacuate...

It would have been possible to set up a relay of busses. I don't know what the nearest railhead is, but even in the US there should have been *some* capability. And in an emergency, you don't need air-conditioned luxury; you need troop transport - baggage cart, high capacity, people in and away, sort out later. *Attitude*.

It seems the US administration is running mighty short on that.