Has disaster preparedness become too commercialized?

One of the more difficult issues with survival in disasters is communication and sphere of awareness. Common individuals from the public are oft accused of giving little thought or concern about preparedness until after the event – obviously much too late. Is it even fair to expect more? John and Suzy Q. have enough to worry about conducting their everyday lives. To them, the notion of preparing to survive in worst case scenarios smacks of cardboard plaques claiming the end is near.

Perhaps playing on both this and the sensational fear that follows every disaster event, some commercial products have arisen promising preparedness in a box. Just pay the freight, and never give a second thought while the kit gathers dust in some forgotten corner.

This is severe folly that could potentially cost more lives than having no preparations at all. An overconfident family may opt to ride out an incoming hurricane or shun help until it is too late to do so. Dr. Arthur Bradley, author of Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family summarizes the concept perfectly.

Bradley, A. T. (2012). Handbook to practical disaster preparedness for the family. Lexington, KY: Arthur T. Bradley, Kindle Location 482.

We all love one stop shopping. It’s easy, and there’s little thought required. Capitalizing on that line of convenience thinking, several companies now offer prepackaged disaster preparedness kits. Most are stored in airtight buckets or easy to carry backpacks-both good ideas. If you read the the retailer websites, you might be convinced that preparing offers nothing more than forking over $99 and finding a shelf on which to store the bucket of goodies.

Through an exhaustive step by step analysis, Dr. Arthur goes on to put a commercial family of four survival kit up against a real world east coast hurricane scenario. His conclusion was not surprising. The kit fell woefully short of meeting the most basic needs.

Bradley, A. T. (2012). Handbook to practical disaster preparedness for the family. Lexington, KY: Arthur T. Bradley, Kindle Location 529.

The bottom line is that, upon further analysis, the bucket DP kit falls far short of meeting your family’s post-hurricane needs. Test this kit against other scenarios, such as a winter storm, terrorist strike, or widespread blackout. No doubt you will agree that it does little to improve your chance of survival, let alone make the situation more tolerable.

The simple truth is that disaster preparedness is not unlike any other personal skill. It is not particularly complex, but does require a nominal expenditure of thought and effort. You can order today, but it’s of little use unless you act now.

Imagine if you will, having lunch at a local bistro with your best friend. Suddenly, you find yourself thrown flat among shards of glass, wood, and twisted metal. Your ears ring, vision blurs, and you can barely breathe. You realize there’s been an explosion of sorts, and you’re lucky to be alive.

Your friend is not so lucky. They lie a few feet away, a viscous gash running through their neck all the way to the spine. He or she spasms, choking, and gagging even as they bleed out. You are watching your friend die.

Just as the awful realization hits, your sphere of awareness begins to expand. Others are in similar disarray. Some are like you, others badly hurt, and some like your friend are clearly terminal if not dead already.

Soon enough a car veers toward the building’s remains, screeches to a halt, and its occupants rush inside. They claim to be off duty EMT personnel. One of them shuffles toward you, yells “yellow”, and orders you to wait outside. They then give your friend a cursory glance and declare “black”, moving on without another look. It doesn’t take any medical or emergency training to know your friend, your still living friend, has just been given up for dead.

Could you stand by, coolly detached, knowing this was done for the greater good? Now imagine thousands of other mental taxing disaster scenarios that may be thrust upon an unprepared John Q., ask a similar question, and picture the result. During a functional chemical weapon exercise performed in Cincinnati, the human disaster factor is summarized perfectly in this caption.

FitzGerald, D. J., Sztajnkrycer, M. D., & Crocco, T. J. (2003). Chemical weapon functional exercise–Cincinnati: observations and lessons learned from a “typical medium-sized. citys response to simulated terrorism utilizing weapons of mass destruction. Emmitsburg, MD: National Emergency Training Center. Page 209, image caption:

For decontamination and triage to be effective and efficient, early control of victims is essential. In a real event would the responding units be as effective at rapidly organizing the crowd of hysterical “victims” into an orderly decontamination line?

Conclusions were speculative at best, but researchers speculated in a real emergency the the herding cats principal would be likely to hinder response efforts.

FitzGerald, D. J., Sztajnkrycer, M. D., & Crocco, T. J. (2003). Chemical weapon functional exercise–Cincinnati: observations and lessons learned from a “typical medium-sized. citys response to simulated terrorism utilizing weapons of mass destruction. Emmitsburg, MD: National Emergency Training Center. Page 209:

Lessons learned. Anticipate initial difficulty in establishing scene priorities. In this scenario, the engine company that responded first was met by a stream of screaming victims, which distracted the company from initial scene evaluation. The four firefighters were pressed to gain rapid control of the situation, activate the incident command system, and begin gross decontamination. It remains unclear whether a small cadre of firefighters could gain control so efficiently in the setting of an actual terrorist event. It also remains unclear whether
such crowd control would be possible in the setting of 5,500 victims, as in the Tokyo incident. However, it is likely that the majority of people in a large event
would disperse prior to arrival of first responders, and that those remaining would comprise individuals too sickened to escape.

In short, to expect an organized triage of victims in any sizable incident is something of a pipe dream. Response personnel (and victims themselves) must prepare to not only handle the disaster itself, but to deal with the inevitable, mercurial human nature thereafter.

Racism is a problem. Let’s get that out-of-the-way right away. But as with any real problem, injecting it as a narrative into every known facet of society or life rarely produces any working solution.

Moreover it seems, that due to the political sensitivity of racism as a topic, scientific method no longer applies as a ground rule of discussion. As a primary example, let us look at the opening quotation of an article published by The Eastern Sociological Society: Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity.

See Sonnett, J., Johnson, K. A., & Dolan, M. K. (2015). Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity. Sociological Forum, 30(2), 328-347

We highlight an understudied aspect of racism in television news, implicit racial cues found in the contradic-

tions between visual and verbal messages. We compare three television news broadcasts from the first week

after Hurricane Katrina to reexamine race and representation during the disaster. Drawing together insights

from interdisciplinary studies of cognition and sociological theories of race and racism, we examine how

different combinations of the race of reporters and news sources relate to the priming of implicit racism. We

find racial cues that are consistent with stereotypes and myths about African Americans

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even in broadcasts

featuring black reporters

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but which appear only in the context of color-blind verbal narration. We conclude

by drawing attention to the unexpected and seemingly unintended reproduction of racial ideology.