The Guardian November 2010 Edition

November/December 2010

Volume 4, Issue 3

Inside this issue:

The Guardian A Publication of the International Association of Emergency

Managers Student Chapter at the American Public University System

Toll Free Access Number

1-866-706-1130

Participant Passcode 4201538#

Message from the President

2

Call us “Masters of Disasters”

3

Beyond TADD 4-11

Panic, Chaos 12 Katrina 13-17 Conference Notes 18 Books 19 Trivia Challenge 20

Upcoming Chapter Teleconference Dates:

Date Time

Sat., 15 Jan 1200 ET Sat., 19 Feb 1200 ET

Sat., 16 Apr 1200 ET

Sat., 19 Mar 1200 ET

Spiewak Speaks — MOD Distinguished Speaker Series By Hannah Vick IAEM-USA at APUS President On Monday, December 20, 2010 at 3pm Eastern Time, Mr. Daryl Spiewak will join us for the next installment of the Masters of Disaster Distinguished Speaker Series. Mr. Spiewak serves on the Certified Emergency Manager Commission and was the IAEM President in 2003-2004. He also serves as the Emergency, Safety and Compliance Programs Manager for the Brazos River Authority in Waco, Texas. Mr. Spiewak is scheduled to speak to our members on the CEM/AEM credentialing process. We hope you will join us for what is sure to be an interesting teleconference. If you have questions for Mr. Spiewak and/or plan to attend, please contact Hannah via email at [email protected]

Join us for our monthly meet-ing using the numbers/passcode below. Hope to hear you at the next meeting!

APUS Attendees at the 2010 International Association of Emergency Managers An-nual Conference, held Octo-ber 30—November 4 in San Antonio, Texas.

Distinguished Speaker Series Links Posted By Hannah Vick IAEM-USA at APUS President AMU/APU Student Affairs posted our recordings of the previous 2010 Distinguished Speaker Series events, hosted by our IAEM Student Chapter. If you missed them or would like to hear them again, here they are: Dr. Thomas Phelan: http://wpc.242F.edgecastcdn.net/00242F/academics/schools/public_safety_health/audio_recordings/phelan_mod.mp3 Ms. Kay Goss: http://wpc.242F.edgecastcdn.net/00242F/academics/schools/public_safety_health/audio_recordings/goss.mp3 Dr. Wayne Blanchard: http://wpc.242F.edgecastcdn.net/00242F/academics/schools/public_safety_health/audio_recordings/blanchard.mp3 Mr. George Haddow: http://wpc.242F.edgecastcdn.net/00242F/academics/schools/public_safety_health/audio_recordings/haddow.mp3 Professor Emeritus Dr. Thomas Drabek: http://wpc.242F.edgecastcdn.net/00242F/academics/schools/public_safety_health/audio_recordings/drabek_call.mp3

The Guardian Page 2

The Guardian

A quarterly publication of the American Public University

System Student Chapter of the International Association of

Emergency Managers

Officers

2010-2011

President

Hannah Vick

Vice President

Ryan Carpenter

Secretary

Jeanette Holt

Treasurer

Dawn Heyse

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Thomas D. Phelan

Program Director

Dr. Thomas D. Phelan

The Guardian

Staff

Editor

Dawn Heyse

Contributors

Hannah Vick

Hugo Costa

Kevin Schaller

Joseph G. Martin III

Darren Endris

Message from the President By Hannah Vick IAEM-USA at APUS President

This Fall has been very busy – but very productive! – for our chapter. It seems every time I turn around, members are volunteering to help with a committee or assist with a project; the AMU/APU IAEM chapter is a fantastic organization to be a part of! Our mem-bership has demonstrated time and again that our leaders are eager to share their exper-tise and volunteer their time to assist their community, their school and their peers. Wow! So, what’s been going on? • AMU and APU had a tremendous showing at the IAEM annual conference in San

Diego, October 29 – November 4. Dozens of AMU/APU students, faculty and staff attended and our AMU booth was one of the most popular at the EMEX trade show! Be sure to check out the conference wrap up on page XX to learn more. A huge thanks to Student Affairs for provided financial assistance to four chapter mem-bers attend the conference!

• In support of National Preparedness Month (September), the chapter joined with the

Epsilon Pi Phi honor society to launch a community service project with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America. Members of both student organizations can vol-unteer their time to help Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts earn an emergency prepared-ness badge, pin or patch. More than 25 AMU/APU IAEM student chapter mem-bers have volunteered and we expect even more as this project continues through the spring.

• Our chapter recently created a Governance Committee to bring our by-laws and

rules up to date. Bill Duchanse (Chair), Joseph Martin, Diane Robinson and Mark Bejarano are serving in this capacity and we really appreciate their hard work!

• General membership meetings are held every third Saturday of each month at 12:00

noon Eastern by teleconference. Join the conversation and hop on the call – there’s lively discussions and a host of ways to get involved!

Thanks to everyone who works to make this chapter one of the largest and most active chapters in the country! Our students bring a wealth of knowledge, experience and “can-do” spirit to our organization, making it a wonderful place to grow professionally and aca-demically. Best wishes for your family this holiday season, Hannah

[email protected]

http://www.ready.gov/america/beinformed/winter.html

mailto:[email protected]�

Page 3 Volume 4, Issue 3

Call Us “Masters of Disasters” By David Burns This article originally appeared in Campus Safety Reprinted with permission from the author I recently read Bill Taylor's blog "Does Your Job Title Get the Job Done?" in the Harvard Business Review. It made me ponder how people and administrators in higher education perceive the job duties we perform as emergency manag-ers. Taylor highlighted the excesses and rampant inflation of job titles in government. So when I say "cop" or "firefighter" most people know exactly to whom and what I am referring to; the jobs need no further explanation. When I am asked what I do for a living (emergency manager), most people say "huh" — what? Taylor's article forced me to think about my current job title: Does it get the job done in terms of describing what I do and how I want to be known? Probably not. My official job classification is Management Analyst II, with a title of Emergency Manager. If logic allowed us to actually create our own job titles, what would we actually call ourselves? How would we define what we do? Do we really manage emergencies? My answer is no. That is what field first responders do (cops, firefighters and EMS). I see my role and function more as a chaos wrangler. I see chaos and try to make things settle down, or at least bring some kind organization to it. I have a plan. So I took a shot at redefining what we do. If I could decide my own job title, it might be something like: I use the word "conductor" like an orchestra conductor, one who manages the orchestra but does not actually play an instrument. We manage chaos, emergencies and insane situations brought about as a result of an emergency or situa-tions beyond our control. The emergency manager acts as a conductor leading the band that does their jobs in the emer-gency operations center (EOC). The EOC is often called a place "where uncomfortable officials meet in unfamiliar surroundings to play unaccustomed roles, making unpopular decisions based on inadequate information, and in much too little time." (Art Botterell — 1989). Maybe the EOC should be called the chaos coordination center; it seems to be a more logical term. A Web site called "Fast Company" has a feature called the "Job Titles of the Future" where ordinary people submitted real, creative job titles to the publication. The best comparable job title I found came from Curtis Sittenfield of Fast Com-pany, the "Raging Inexorable Thunder-Lizard Evangelist for Change." Unfortunately, that nifty job title won't fit on my ID badge. Emergency managers are often considered troublemakers; disaster management rabble-rousers that make some officials uncomfortable trying to rise beyond ordinary challenges, deliver high quality services, sometimes challenging authority and fighting mediocrity. I hate mediocrity. Some folks like to wrap themselves in it like a nice warm blanket. Pre-paredness is hard, and doing the right thing is often very hard. Nothing worth doing is easy. What we do costs money. Preparedness isn't cheap. But it is equally important to remember that for every dollar spent in readiness and preparedness, approximately $7 dollars is saved in disaster recovery (Source: FEMA). We know the lessons of the past, yet we keep repeating the mistakes of the past, which brings about one of my favorite quotes: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana. These days, I'll rise to whatever or whenever I am called. I am just happy to have a job in a career field that I love.

David Burns is the director of UCLA's Emergency Management Office. He is also a higher education consultant who is a subject matter expert in mass casualty incident management, emergency notification systems, comprehensive plan de-velopment, emergency organization, EOC design, operation, crisis communications, threat and vulnerability assessment, disaster recovery, grant administration and auditing.

• Manager/Director of Mischief • Chief Chaos Wrangler

• Chief Mischief Manager • Chaos Facilitator

• Ambassador of Resiliency • Chief Disaster Conductor

• Solutions Engineer • Conductor of Emergencies

• Master of Disaster • Emergency Planning Evangelist

• Associate Conductor of Chaos • Executive Disaster Cheerleader

• Disaster Wrangler

The Guardian Page 4

Beyond “Turn Around Don’t Drown”: Vehicular Flood Fatalities and Mitigation By Joseph G. Martin III MA EDM Student This paper was originally written and submitted for EDMG515 in November 2010 Flooding in the United States is the second leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, behind only heat-related deaths (National Weather Service (NWS), 2005). In terms of storm-related deaths, flooding is cited as among the most frequent and deadly natural hazards in the United States (Drobot, Gruntfest, Barnes, Benight, Schultz, and Demuth, 2007; Maples & Tiefenbacher, 2008; Ryan and Hanes, 2009). Of the annual flood fatalities, vehicle-related flood fatalities (VFF) are consistently reported to represent the majority of these deaths, and to be the most preventable (Maples and Tiefenbacher; NWS, 2005; Rappaport, 2000). Although many researchers have investigated general flood fatality patterns in the United States over time, including data on VFF as a subset, such as Ashley and Ashley’s (2006) analysis of general flood fatality patterns, 1959-2005. Relatively fewer researchers have investigated patterns in VFF alone. Of those that have, the majority of research falls into one of two varieties. The first area of research studies the occurrence of VFF in a particular geographic location or during a particular event, sometimes using field research tech-niques. These studies also often combine study of general and VFF patterns. Studies in this vein have included Maples and Tiefenbacher’s (2008) study of vehicular deaths in Texas floods, 1950-2004; Ryan and Hanes (2009) analysis of North Texas flood patterns, 1995-2007; Yale, Cole, Garrison, Runyan, and Ruback’s (2003) look at North Carolina flood deaths during Hurricane Floyd; and Hammett, Pearse, Naito, Watts, and Hooper’s (2007) unique look at vehicle-related drowning deaths of U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq. A second avenue of research has delved into the behavioral and cognitive factors that influence flooded road-related driving decisions. One such study in this area has been Drobot, et al’s (2007) research into perceptions of vehicle safety related to flash floods in a sample of subjects in Denver, Colo-rado. What has been lacking in the research to date is a comprehensive review and exploration of VFF patterns in the United States. Little is actually known about the number and particular circumstances of VFF. Perceptions and under-standings may also be influenced by news reports and stories of individuals who intentional drive around barricades, only to drown. No prior research examined for this paper has attempted to discover whether this perception is rule or exception. Prior research has also failed to address the issue of vulnerability determination for VFF. Studies using GIS techniques have shown that flood events are not evenly distributed across the United States (Ashley and Ashley, 2006). This factor has yet to be incorporated into assessing vulnerabilities at state and local levels. This study attempts to fill in gaps in the current body of knowledge about VFF patterns, as well as discussing the results within the context of Emer-gency Management and hazard mitigation.

Method

Data Acquisition Data was acquired using the National Climatic Data Center’s (NCDC) publicly accessible Storm Events database (NCDC, 2010). This database contains storm reports from National Weather Service (NWS) offices across the United States and territories (who collect information contained in the reports from emergency management, emergency ser-vices, news reports, and other sources), which are sent to NCDC and published monthly in Storm Data (NCDC, 2010). Storm Data and the Storm Events database has been the basis for several previous studies of flood and weather-related fatalities (Ashley and Ashley, 2008; Mileti, 1999; Maples and Tiefenbacher, 2008; Ryan and Hanes, 2009). For the pur-poses of the study, only data from the United States was considered, and events in U.S. territories were omitted. An individual Storm Events report contains information concerning: the date(s) and time(s) of the event (if known, and a single report may cover a multi-day event); type of storm event; number of fatalities and injuries (if known); the state and county or counties involved; estimates of amount of property and crop damage; and a narrative of the event provid-ing the meteorological background on the event and any specific details known. An important part of this narrative is that only the narrative will contain information concerning the fatal circumstances, as well as the age and gender of the vic-tims. The narrative may conclude with a set of codes that gives this information, including one of seven codes for the location of the fatality, including a vehicular fatality code. Unfortunately, the coding appears inconsistently in the narra-tive, and is absent from many years’ worth of reports. Also, as first noted by Ryan and Hanes (2009), the NWS will sometimes code an individual who drove into flooded waters and was then washed out of the vehicle (or washed away while trying to escape) as having died “in water” as opposed to classifying it a vehicle-related death. Thus, Storm Events reports must be read individually and in detail to ensure the accuracy of transcribed data. One other issue that should be addressed is the possible underreporting of events. This likely problem has been pre-sented by several investigators, including Mileti (1999), and Ashley and Ashley (2008).

Continued on page 5


Beyond “Turn Around Don’t Drown”: Vehicular Flood Fatalities and Mitigation

As Storm Data reports themselves are collected from both primary and secondary sources, it is probable that some events go unreported and some of the information contained in the reports themselves may have inaccuracies. As Ash-ley and Ashley noted, however, there is no evidence of any systematic bias within the reports or the reporting system. Qualifications notwithstanding, the Storm Events database provides the best currently available source of comprehen-sive state and national storm fatality data. Dataset Construction The online searchable Storm Events database allows retrieval of Storm Data flood reports (flood, flash flood, and ur-ban and small stream flooding) dating from 1993 to the present. Reports can be searched for at a national, state, or county level, but due to query limits it is only possible to retrieve a limited number of records at one time. For the pur-poses of this study, the database was searched by state and years for flood events resulting in at least one fatality. 850 reports with at least one fatality were identified between 1993 and 2009. These were individually reviewed to determine the fatalities that were vehicle-related. For each report that was determined to have a vehicle-related flood fatality, infor-mation on the year, month, time, state, county, type of flood, number of fatalities, age, gender, and brief notes on the event were obtained. In addition, three categories were added into the dataset that were derived from the reports. The number of vehicle incidents resulting in the fatalities was generally not difficult to determine. Attempts were made to have only one fatal vehicular flood incident per dataset entry. For some reports, however, it was possible to determine the number of fatal vehicular incidents, but not possible to determine how the fatalities were distributed across the incidents. In these cases, the dataset entry included the total fatalities and total number of incidents contained in the report. For other reports (N=19) the total number of fatalities were given but included insufficient information to determine the number of inci-dents. In these cases, the dataset entry would have the total fatalities but the number of incidents was coded as “unknown”. Following the completion of the dataset, estimation of the number of incidents for these cases was accom-plished by dividing the number of fatalities in each unknown case by the dataset average of fatalities per known incident ( x = 1.38). Fractions were then rounded down to produce the estimate. For example, in a dataset entry where there were 7 fatalities and the number of incidents unspecified, the calculation would result in an estimate of 5 incidents. Coding for an estimation of the lighting conditions present at the time of the fatality was the second derived category added into the dataset. This category, when it was possible to be determined, was based upon the time of day directly specified or in some way indicated in the event report. One of four codes was assigned: DL (Daylight); DRK (Darkness); TL (Twilight); or UNK (Unknown). Determination of the lighting code was based upon three charts created using sunrise/sunset calculations obtained from NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab (2010). One chart, based upon 2000 data for Kansas City, Missouri, recorded sunrise/sunset times for the 1st day of each month. Kansas City was chosen for its rela-tively central geographic location. The chart included changes for Daylight Saving Time (DST). A second chart was cre-ated using 2000 data for Phoenix, Arizona, as that state does not observe DST. Twilight was defined as 45 minutes prior to sunrise and 45 minutes after sunset. Incident times were then compared to the appropriate chart for coding. Great effort was taken to assign the UNK code to any incident where reasonable doubt as to the timing was raised, how-ever it is understood that there is possible error in the assignment of these codes. The final derived category assigned to each case in the dataset was coding to classify the circumstances of the fatal incident. This category did not originate at the beginning of the study, but emerged as the first few years of data were put into the dataset. It became clear that particular circumstances recurred with frequency in the reports. Some of these incidents (particularly motor-vehicle accidents) in fact created concern as whether they should be included or excluded from the dataset. The existing data was then again reviewed and 16 Circumstance Codes were created to classify every incident. It was soon recognized that some incidents might be classifiable under two or more classifications, and that indistinct boundaries might exist between some classifications that required judgment determinations. It was decided that where an event might be classifiable under more than one code, occasional decisions as to which code best fit the incident would not undermine the purposes of the study. This solution, by allowing for the inclusion and classification of all of the events that NWS considers VFF, provides an important look into the wide spectrum of circumstances that com-prise VFF. Preparation for Analysis Once the dataset was constructed in Microsoft Excel, it was sorted by state, county, and year to allow the calculation of summary data across categories. At this time, particular counties were selected

Continued on page 6

Continued from page 4

The Guardian Page 6


based upon repeated fatality incidents occurring across multiple years. For these counties, and the United States as a whole, census data for 2000 was obtained to allow standardization (United States Census Bureau, 2010). The Storm Events database was also utilized again to provide the total number of reported flood events (both fatal and non-fatal) during the study period for both the United States and the selected counties. This was possible because although Storm Events is limited in the number of individual records it can provide at one time, it will always provide the total number of records found that match the query. The census data, together with the additional Storm Events data, allowed for the calculation of Vehicular Flood Fatalities Per Million Population (VFF/1M) and Vehicular Flood Fatalities Per 100 Flood Events (VFF/100FE).

General Results

The 522 cases within the dataset contain 722 vehicular flood fatalities that occurred between 1993 and 2009. These fatalities were produced by an estimated 583 separate incidents that took place in 45 states. 67.6% of the flood events resulting in VFF were reported as Flash Floods; 29.5% were Flood; and 2.9% were Urban and Small Stream Flooding events. In terms of the number of fatalities per case in the dataset, 77.6% (N=405) were single fatalities; 16.3% (N=85) involved two fatalities; 2.7% (N=14) involved three fatalities; and only 3.5% (N=18) involved more than four. The highest number of fatalities recorded in Storm Events for a single event was 12, which occurred once. Two events were also

found with 11 reported fatalities. Table 1 presents the breakdown of the circumstances involved in the fatali-ties. Over 62% of the fatalities were grouped into three general categories (Washed Off Road; Low Water Crossing, Arroyo, or Bridge; and one of the two variations of Stalled Vehicle). Surpris-ingly, the purposeful driving around barri-caded roads or blatantly ignoring a warn-ing of a flooded road (IGBW) accounted for relatively few of the reported fatalities (5.5%). In fact, this circumstance fell below the number of fatalities resulting from individuals who drove into a washed out road or bridge (BRWO) (6.8%) or that died through drowning or other causes resulting from motor-vehicle accidents

(5.8%). It should also be noted that a rather high percentage of fatalities were unable to be classified under any cate-gory (UNSP)(14.4%), either because of no or limited descriptive information on the fatality. Figure 1 shows a graph of Total VFF and Total Flood Fatalities in the United States during the study period. VFF averaged 54.6% of all flood fatalities. This result is consistent with the findings of other investigations, which have ranged from 40-60% (Ashley and Ash-ley, 2008; Maples and Tiefenbacher, 2008; Rappaport, 2000). One study, however, a review of 1993 Missouri flood fatalities, did report a 75% ratio of vehicle-related deaths (Centers for Dis-ease Control, 1993). Also, in a study of tropical cyclone fatalities, 1970-1998, Rappaport (2000) estimated 138 indi-viduals, or 23% of all hurricane fatalities during the study period were vehicular flood deaths. Due to the differences in study periods, it was not possible to determine how many of these fatalities are


Continued on page 7

Figure 1

Table 1



accounted for in the current dataset. Of particular interest in the graphical results is the similarity between the trends. Increases and decreases in both VFF and Total Flood Fatalities have generally occurred in tandem, and the proportions of one to the other have remained fairly consistent over time. This is of course, partly due to the fact that VFF makes up a substantial component of yearly Total Flood Fatalities. The pattern, however, is taken to also indicate the possible cor-relation of the two with a third variable. This topic will be addressed in the correlation results.

Note. VFF= Total Vehicular Flood Fatalities; VFFI=Total Vehicular Flood Fatality Incidents; TFE= Total Flood Events; VFF/1M= Annual Vehicular Flood Fatalities Per Million; VFFI/100FE= Vehicular Flood Fatality Incidents Per 100 Flood Events. a Standardized using 2000 Census data. b For reference, a VFFI/100FE of 1.0 equals a 1% chance per flood event of a VFFI. Table 2 presents a summary of key statistics for the United States and selected states and counties examined. States (with the exception of New York) are presented in order of highest to lowest Vehicular Flood Fatality Incidents per 100 Flood Events (VFFI/100FE). It is believed that this figure better reveals vulnerability to fatal vehicular flood inci-dents because it takes into account the different levels of exposure to flood events various locations experience. Raw fatality numbers or fatality rates (typically expressed as fatalities per 10, 000 but


Continued on page 8

State/County VFF VFFI TFE VFF/1Ma VFFI/100FEb

United States Total California Los Angeles San Bernadino Georgia Arizona Maricopa Cochise Pima Texas Bexar Grayson Hays Guadalupe Gillespie Dallas Tarrant Harris Oregon Missouri Howell St. Louis New Mexico Tennessee Alabama Minnesota Michigan Indiana New York Delaware Oklahoma North Carolina New Hampshire Pennsylvania Montgomery West Virginia

722

40 5 7

23 23 5 4 8

158 24 4 4 5 3

14 10 7 6

62 3 4

10 27 16 11 8

31 22 11

23 22 3

31 6

14

583

31 4 5

18 16 3 3 6

125 17 4 3 4 3

10 8 6 4

54 3 4 5

22 14 8 5

26 13 7

19 16 2

28 6

12

71660

1560 93

274 1136 1051 89

103 254

9067 168 58 74 74 75

160 200 111

367

4296 97 73

674 1954 1348 914 668

2863 2726 77

2150 1988 263

3067 110

1368

.151

.07

.03

.24

.17

.34

.09 1.9 .56 .45

1.01 2.13 2.41 6.8

8.47 .34 .41 .12

.1 .65

4.73 .23

.32

.28

.28

.13

.04 .3

.07 13.4

.39 .16 .14 .15 .47

.456

.81

2.5 4.3 1.8 2.0 2.2 3.4 2.9 2.4 1.7

14.3 6.9 4.1 5.4 4.0 6.3 4.0 5.4

1.6 1.4 3.1 5.5

1.4 1.4 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1 .5

9.1

1.1 1.1 1.1 1.0 5.5 1.0

Table 2. United States Vehicular Flood Fatality (VFF) Statistics 1993-2010 by Select States and Counties

The Guardian Page 8

expressed in this study as fatalities per million to ease understanding), which have been traditionally used to reflect fatal-ity statistics, because they do not take into consideration this fact, can lead to erroneous conclusions about the vulner-ability of states or counties. For example, Texas, which leads the nation in total vehicle fatalities (158) and Vehicle Flood Fatalities Per Million (.45), also has experienced by far more flood events (9067) than any other state. Its ranking when this is considered falls to fourth, which is still well-above the national average. Other states, like Arizona, Georgia, and California, have higher incident rates than either their population or flood exposure would suggest, are thus considered more vulnerable. Even more revealing were the findings at the county level, where numerous United States counties have incident rates staggeringly higher than both their state and national averages. This aspect of the results will be addressed again in the Discussion section. Time of Day, Gender, and Age Of the 722 national fatalities, it was not possible to determine the time of day in 31% of the deaths (N=225). Of the deaths where it was possible to determine the lighting conditions, 57.9% (N=288) occurred in darkness, 11.7% (N=58) occurred in twilight, and 30.4% (N=151) occurred in daylight. A chi-square test of goodness of fit was performed to see if the distribution of fatalities approximated the expected frequencies. Observed frequencies did not correspond to the ex-pected frequencies, X2 (2, N=497) =48.46, p<.001. This result is similar to results obtained by Maples and Tiefenbacher (2008), and suggests that lighting conditions may play a significant factor in VFF. When gender was considered, data was available for 95% (N=684) of the fatalities. Males accounted for 60% (N=411) of the deaths and females 40% (N=684). A chi-square test of goodness of fit was performed to see if the distri-bution of fatalities approximated the expected frequencies (using 2000 census data). Observed frequencies did not cor-respond to the expected frequencies, X2 (1, N=684) =33.08, p<.001. Males are thus, significantly more likely to be the victim of VFF than females. Again, these results confirm the findings of other studies (Ashley and Ashley, 2008; Maples and Tiefenbacher, 2008; Ryan and Hanes, 2009). Age of the victims was available for 80% of the fatalities (N=583). For statistical analysis, the fatalities were grouped into age ranges (0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, and 80+). Expected age frequencies were based upon the standard distribution of ages in the 2000 Census. A chi-square test of goodness of fit was performed to see if the distribution of fatalities approximated the expected age frequencies. Observed frequencies did not correspond to the expected frequencies, X2 (8, N=583)=33.16, p<.001. Thus, VFF affects age groups differentially. A closer look that the data for particular age groups revealed that the age ranges of 20-29, 60-69, and 70-79 had much higher than expected fatality frequencies. The finding of higher death rates among young adults and older individuals finds varying support in other research on the subject. Maples and Tiefenbacher (2008) noted the higher than expected rate for 20-29 year olds; Ash-ley and Ashley (2008) found that the ages of 10-29 and 60+ were most vul-nerable. Interestingly, data from the present research showed a lower than expected frequency of fatalities in the 10-19 age range. Ryan and Hanes (2009) noted the same findings as the present study, but also included the age range of 0-9 as being particularly vul-nerable. The reason for variable results found by different studies may be attrib-utable to the different years addressed by each study, as well as different geo-graphic areas under study. Correlations Figure 2 presents the plotting of the total VFFI in a state against the total number of flood events experienced by the state during the study period. There is significant correlation between the two variables (r=.931, p=<.0001). Furthermore, when the linear trend line is ap-plied, the line very closely approximates the national VFFI average of .81 fatal incidents per 100 flood events. As a re-sult, the graph allows a visual representation of VFFI vulnerability. States falling below

Continued on page 9


Figure 2




the line (e.g. California, Georgia, and Texas) have higher vulnerabilities, and the distance from the line shows the magni-tude of the deviation from the national average. The same is true for states falling above the line, except that reverse relationship is true. These states (e.g. Pennsylvania and Iowa) have VFFI vulnerabilities less than the national average. Additional significant correlations were obtained between VFF and Total Flood Events (r=.927, p<.0001); VFF and Popu-lation (r=.522, p<.001), VFFI and Population (r=.508, p<.0001) and Total Flood Events and Population (r=.464, p=.001). The only study found where correlations between flood events, population, and fatalities and vehicular incidents was conducted was Maple and Tiefenbacher’s (2008) study of Texas vehicular flood fatalities, 1950-2004. They found a sig-nificant correlation between population and the number of incidents, but no significant correlation between flood events and number of incidents. The discrepancy between the current results and Maple and Tiefenbacher may lie in two fac-tors: first, according to their data the number of reported flood events has grown dramatically over the past 50 years, suggesting that flood events were either significantly underreported between 1950 and 1990, or that because of the lower population and number of vehicles on the road, events that would now be classified as flood events went unno-ticed; and secondly, their study examined the correlation at the county-level, and it is very possible that the correlation that exists between states is not as strong when examined at the county level. This is an area that deserves further study, as there is sufficient evidence of a complex relationship between population, number of vehicles on the road, number of flood events, and the number of VFF and VFFI. One More Look at Texas In 2003, the National Weather Service’s “Turn Around Don’t Drown” public service campaign began in Texas (Federal Emergency Management Agency, n.d.; National Weather Service, 2005). In addition, the City of Dallas, Texas installed an automated road flooding warning system (ARFS) following 10 vehicular deaths in a single evening resulting from a

1995 severe thunderstorm, which be-came known as the Mayfest Storm (City of Dallas Flood Control Division, n.d.; Goodwin, 2002). The system became operational in 2000. In 2007, Hays County, Texas installed a similar system (Hays County Department of Emergency Management, 2009). The data for Texas counties presented in Table 2 was fur-ther broken down into different time peri-ods to allow a comparison of pre-and post-intervention figures (Hays County, however, was not divided into 1993-2007 and 2008-20010 figures because it is believed by this researcher that not enough time has passed to make the comparison reliable). Figure 3 shows these results, presented in terms VFFI/100FE. Dallas County has had

only one reported VFFI (resulting in one fatality) since installation of the ARFS. Other counties have shown mixed re-sults in the years since the beginning of the Turn Around, Don’t Drown campaign. It should also be noted that Hays County figures, which initially appear worse post-campaign, may appear very different in several more years, as there have been no fatal incidents reported since the 2007 installation of the ARFS. The impact of these particular findings on the selection of vehicular flood fatality mitigation efforts will be addressed in the next section.

Discussion Vulnerability Raw fatality or population-based standardizations of fatalities for weather hazards likely overestimate the vulnerability of areas that have high hazard exposure, and underestimate the vulnerability of areas with lower hazard exposure. Un-fortunately the majority of studies of general and vehicular flood fatality statistics use these or similar measures and rela-tively few can be found, like Mileti (1999) that account for hazard exposure in the measures. Future flood fatality re-search could perhaps learn from tornado fatality studies, where hazard exposure-adjusted statistics are emerging (Brooks and Doswell, 2002; Simmons and Sutter, 2006). What the present study and dataset are not capable of examin-ing is the relationship between fatal and non-fatal vehicular flood incidents. Storm Continued on page 10


The Guardian Page 10


Events reports, although they often mention numerous swift water rescues occurring in conjunction with fatal incidents, yet there is no reliable data to ascertain the ratio of fatal to non-fatal incidents. Should such data eventually be obtained, it would provide an even clearer picture of the vulnerabilities. Education and Mitigation Although efforts have been made to increase the awareness of vehicular flood dangers, particularly through the ef-forts of the Turn Around, Don’t Drown campaign, results from this study are mixed in terms of effects. An underlying as-sumption of these public service efforts, and even a significant amount of research, is that vehicular flood fatalities may primarily reflect a behavioral issue. Many researchers and authors have supported this view (Ashley and Ashley, 2008; Drobot et al., 2007; Gruntfest and Ripps, 2000). In this view, incidents are viewed as primarily resulting from driver error or judgment. This view, although it may play a part in some or even most incidents, could also lead to the mistaken ex-clusion of design, structural, and other factors that might influence driver decisions that lead them into fatal circum-stances. Very few incidents in this study were attributed to direct driver noncompliance with warnings. Also, a large number of incidents occurred during periods of poor visibility. In addition, the finding of a large number of incidents/fatalities at low water crossings and bridges (many of which may be marked with a yellow warning sign that says “Low Water Crossing” or “May Flood During Rain” or something similar) should lead to some consideration of whether such signs are an effective means of incident prevention. An important finding of several studies has been that those who die in incidents were often familiar with the roads (Drobot et al., 2007; Yale et al., 2003). Most of the existing warning signs warn of the possibility of a flooded road, not the actuality. An individual on familiar roads, in possible poor lighting condi-tions, who encounters a flooded road with no warning that the road is in fact significantly flooded, is likely to make flawed judgments of safe passage. With these thoughts in mind, the differences in fatal incidents pre- and post- ARFS installa-tion that have been observed in the study should lead to careful consideration as to whether the effects of flood educa-tion and public awareness efforts might be improved by the incorporation of signage improvements and technological mitigation through road warning systems in areas deemed particularly vulnerable to fatal incidents. Emergency Management Finally, the methods and analysis conducted in this study are directly applicable to the work of Emergency Managers, particularly those that work in some of the states and counties where probabilities of VFF and VFFI substantially exceed national averages. This study has made use of a database with several limitations as to the types of data obtained to provide a broad and mostly exploratory view of the phenomenon of VFF in the United States. At county and city levels, with access to fire, police, and medical examiner reports, a smaller amount of data to obtain and analyze, and the proper methodology, an emergency management staff has the ability to make very specific determinations as to their commu-nity vulnerability to VFF/VFFI. Such undertakings, which require mainly the expenditure of time, are entirely practical and beneficial to determining if the community’s current approaches to mitigating VFF/VFFI are effective, or whether other approaches may be needed. In thinking of implementing mitigation measures, it should also be noted that the em-ployment of the ARFS in the City of Dallas was included as part of case studies in mitigation best practices by both FEMA and the Federal Highway Administration (FEMA, n.d.; Goodwin, 2002). It is also understood, at the end of the day, that VFF and VFFI are relatively rare events. Even in areas with high vulnerability yet a low exposure, the number of annual fatalities are likely to be low enough to create problems justifying mitigation expenditures. Economic, political, ethical, and legal issues necessarily influence mitigation efforts. Emergency managers, particularly those in areas of low exposure but high vulnerability, should be aware that climate and weather patterns do change, and empirical methods such as the ones employed in this study can keep managers aware of and prepared for changing trends in patterns of exposure and vulnerability.

Conclusion This study has examined the phenomenon of vehicular flood fatalities in the United States and found evidence to sup-port the possibility that shifts in mitigation philosophy and methods may have greater effect in reducing these fatalities in the future than has previously been given credit for in the literature. Future research is needed to continue evaluating the long-term effectiveness of both public awareness campaigns and technological solutions, allowing Emergency Man-agers and officials to make better evidence-based decisions. Further study is needed to understand the circumstances leading to vehicle flood fatalities, as well as exploring relationship between fatal and non-fatal events. By further focus-ing research, the complexities of factors resulting ultimately in the death of individuals will eventually provide better tar-geting of education, prevention, and mitigation activities.


Continued on page 11



References Ashley, S. T., & Ashley, W. S. (2008). Flood fatalities in the United States. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 47, 805-

818. doi:10.1175/2007JAMC1611.1XXXBrooks, H. E., & Doswell III, C. A. (2002). Deaths in the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma City tornado from a historical perspective. Weather and Forecasting, 17, 354-361. Retrieved October 4, 2010 from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0434%282002%29017%3C0354%3ADITMOC%3E2.0.CO%3B2

Centers for Disease Control. (1993, December 10). Flood-related mortality--Missouri, 1993. Morbitity and Mortality Weekly Report, 42(48). Retrieved November 9, 2010, from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00022339.htm

City of Dallas Flood Control Division. (n.d.). Flooded roadway warning system. Retrieved September 14, 2010, from http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/sts/html/frws.html

Drobot, S. D., Gruntfest, E., Barnes, L., Benight, C., Schultz, D., & Demuth, J. (2007, January). Driving under the influence of weather: Perceptions of flash floods and vehicle safety. Paper presented at the 16th Annual Conference on Applied Climatology, San Antonio, TX. Retrieved November 10, 2010 from http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/117760.pdf

Federal Emergency Management Agency. (n.d.). Turn around, don't drown: A public awareness campaign. Retrieved October 5, 2010, from http://www.fema.gov/mitigationbp/ bestPracticeDetailPDF.do?mitssId=4466

Goodwin, L. C. (July 24, 2002). City of Dallas, Texas flood warning system. In Best Practices for Road Weather Management (Report prepared by Mitrtek Systems, Inc. for U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Trans-portation Operations, p. 42-43). Retrieved September 22, 2010, from http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/Publications/Case%20Studies/BP_RWM.pdf

Gruntfest, E., & Ripps, A. (2000). Flash floods: Warning and mitigation efforts and prospects. In D. Parker (Ed.), Floods (Vol. 1, pp. 377-390). Retrieved October 3, 2010, from http://www.uccs.edu/~geogenvs/ecg/pdffiles/Parkerchapter.pdf

Hammett, M., Pearse, L., Naito, N., Watts, D., & Hooper, T. (2007). Drowning deaths of U.S. service personnel associated with motor vehicle accidents occuring in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, 2003-2005. Military Medicine. Re-trieved November 12, 2010, from FindArticles.com Web site: www

Hammett, M., Pearse, L., Naito, N., Watts, D., & Hooper, T. (2007, August). Drowning deaths of U.S. service personnel associated with motor vehicle accidents occurring (sic) in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, 2003-2005. Mili-tary Medicine. Retrieved November 12, 2010, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3912/is_200708/ai_n19511936/?tag=content;col1

Hays County Department of Emergency Management. (2009). Hays County flood warning system. Retrieved October 3, 2010, from www

Hays County Department of Emergency Management. (2009). Hays County flood warning system. Retrieved October 3, 2010, from http://www.oem.co.hays.tx.us/HaysCountyFloodbrWarningSystem/tabid/61/Default.aspx

Maples, L. Z., & Tiefenbacher, J. P. (in press). Landscape, development, technology and drivers: The geography of drownings associ-ated with automobiles in Texas floods, 1950-2004. Applied Geography. doi:10.101016/j.apgeog.2008.09.004

Mileti, D. (1999). Disasters by design: A reassessment of natural hazards in the United States. Washington, D.C: John Henry Press. National Climatic Data Center. (2010, October 14). NCDC storm events database. Retrieved September through October, 2010 from

http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwEvent~Storms National Oceanic, & Atmospheric Administration, Earth System Research Lab. (2010, September 15). NOAA improved sunrise/sunset

calculation. Retrieved September 15, 2010, from www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html National Weather Service. (2005, March). Floods the awesome power [Brochure NOAA/PA 2000467]. Author. Rappaport, E. (2000). Loss of life in the United States associated with recent Atlantic tropical cyclones. Bulletin of the American Mete-

orological Society, 81(9), 2065-2073. Retrieved from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%282000%29081%

Ryan, T., & Hanes, S. (2009). North Texas flash flood characteristics (National Weather Service, Fort Worth Forecast Office, pp. 1-14). Retrieved September 3, 2010, from http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/fwd/pdf/ffpaper.pdf

Simmons, K. M., & Sutter, D. (2006). Direct estimation of the cost effectiveness of tornado shelters. Risk Analysis, 26(4), 945-954. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2006.00790.x

United States Census Bureau. (2010, October). American factfinder. Retrieved September through November 2010 from American FactFinder Web site: http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en

Yale, J. D., Cole, T. B., Garrison, H. G., Runyan, C. W., & Ruback, J. K. (2003). Motor vehicle-related drowning deaths associated with inland flooding after Hurricane Floyd: A field investigation (PMID: 14630576) [Abstract]. Traffic Injury Prevention, 4(4), 279-84. Retrieved from PubMed.


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Panic, Chaos & Disorder: Human and Organizational Behavior By Kevin Schaller MA EDM Student You're driving to work sipping coffee passing through a busy intersection. Suddenly you hear the screech of tires and a blaring horn. You snap your head around just as your car is impacted at the driver's door. You see the other driver's face...nothing else. Airbag deploys, coffee rains and you hear nothing. In crisis situations the human body goes through near instantaneous autonomic reactions. Commonly referred to as “fight or flight”, this reaction is triggered by the hypothalamus in our brain. When activated, a human “rocket fuel” of adrenaline, noradrenalin and cortisol dump into our bloodstream. Respiration rushes, blood flows to our limbs, vision narrows, pain diminishes and brain function changes. 1 Rational thought diminishes and reactive threat-detection thought pervades. Denial or disbelief of the event-trigger may occur, paralysis of action as the mind is overwhelmed by stimulus, or auditory exclusion is common. Awareness of this natural dynamic has been the impetus of stress inoculation training amongst military and law en-forcement to mitigate negative functionality. In contrast to traditional clinical settings mitigating effects of prior mental trauma, this training is commonly composed of three phases; conceptualization of stress and its' effects; mitigation and enhanced functionality skills; and finally increasingly realistic training simulation of critical incidents. 2 This training has been proven to enhance functional performance of operators and is replicated in one form or another across a variety of professions. Many of the same dynamics associated with fight or flight can be seen organizationally in stress settings. When faced with a crisis, the initial reaction is commonly disbelief (denial) often associated with paralysis of action. This can occur in the face of a slow-onset or an immediate critical incident. While leadership in an organization may be frozen in action, the next event is predictably a panicked attempt at identi-fying the threat. Much the same as the human brain triggers visual threat identification, the vision of leadership can be overly focused on the cause of the crisis. Similarly, as respiration increases when a person becomes panicked, organiza-tional hyperventilation can occur with chaotic overreaction to incident stimuli. Auditory exclusion is likened to the failure of leadership to listen to, or filter inbound information that can bring clarity to the event. Lastly, when some focus of action is established, resources are directed to combat the incident, in the same vein as autonomic blood flow to the extremities in preparation for fight. It is important for leadership to recognize that this redirection of resources must be balanced to maintain continuity of operations. In a study of corporate board behavior, researchers found two initial reactions that reflect these observations. 3 Ini-tially, leadership is rather insular which drives denial of the magnitude of the incident. Secondly, as panic ensues, boards often react with selfish interest short-term decision making that does not optimize resolution of the crisis. Awareness of these dynamics is important to Emergency Management leadership. One, it points to the importance of crisis management skills in organizational leadership. Concurrently, crisis management training, coupled with critical inci-dent planning functions as an inoculation strategy, can be shared with various stakeholders. One must also remember, emergency management organizations are not immune to internal crisis as well. Lastly, there is a certain predictability to crisis behavior, both in individuals and organizations. Foreknowledge of these behaviors facilitate more effective strategies when coming to the aid of organizations in crisis or facing crisis within your own. Food for thought.

References

Neimark, N., MD (2010) The Fight or Flight Response: Mind-Body Education Center. Retrieved from http://www.thebodysoulconnection.com/EducationCenter/fight.html

Saunders, Driskell, Johnston & Salas (1996) The Effect of Stress Inoculation Training on Anxiety and Performance. Jour-

nal of Occupational Health Psychology, 1996, Vol. 1, No.2, 170-186 Blackham, M. (2007). When boards GO BAD. New Zealand Management, 54(10), 66-67. Retrieved from Business

Source Elite database. Kevin Schaller is an acknowledged expert witness in the Ninth District Court on the subject of Use-Of-Force and Edged Weapons, and is a Master's Candidate at American Public University in Emergency & Disaster Management.


Hurricane Katrina: Failure in Risk Communications By Hugo Costa, Jr. MA EDM Student This paper was originally written and submitted for EDMG612 in February 2010 Hurricane Katrina formed as a tropical storm off the coast of the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. For the next seven days the storm traveled eastward gathering strength and making landfall first on the Florida peninsula on August 25, 2005 as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 80 mph. It continued traveling southwest into the Gulf of Mexico, continuing to intensify until it made landfall on August 29, southeast of New Orleans as a strong Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 127 mph (Graumann, et al.). Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in United States history. It completely destroyed or made uninhabitable approximately 300,000 homes, claimed approximately 1,300 human lives, and cost an estimated $96 billion in damages (Townsend, 2006). Critics have argued that the loss of property and life could have been further mitigated if evacuation and response plans that were in place were followed. The vast majority of lives lost in Hurricane Katrina were because of the failure to evacuate, either by choice or due to lack of transportation. Deaths were caused not only by the high winds, but also deep waters as levees broke and flooded New Orleans. Many invalid individuals died in their homes and at least 215 deaths occurred in nursing homes and hospitals due to loss of life support because of the associated power outages (Menzel, 2006, p. 809). Flood waters also contributed to the high amount of property loss. Surprisingly, however, evacuation plans were in place at the local level in New Orleans and the state level in Louisiana. While 80 percent of the population of New Orleans did evacuate prior to the hurricane landfall, the approximately 100,000 that remained were for the most part poor and African Americans (Comfort, 2007, p. 190). A major problem was the failure to effectively communicate those plans to all sectors of the public. Different stakeholder groups often require different styles of communication. Studies have found that differences exist in perception of risk because of race, ethnicity, and cultural differences (Andrulis, Sid-diqul, & Gantner, 2007). In emergency management, there are four universally accepted phases of responsibility. Those are planning, mitiga-tion, response, and recovery. Crisis managers operate in a three-phase model known as precrisis, crisis event, and post-crisis. The three phases of crisis communications operate within the four phases of emergency management. Crisis or risk communications must address planning in the precrisis phase, mitigation and response during the crisis event, and recovery in the postcrisis phase (Coombs, 2007, pp. 18-19). If risk communications is not addressed in all phases, the probability of failure to some degree is likely. In this paper I will briefly look at the precrisis and crisis event phases of hurricane Katrina and see how the failure to implement and adhere to risk communications standards may have affected the critical message describing the need to evacuate from New Orleans.

Analysis The catastrophic devastation that Katrina brought to New Orleans was not an unknown and should not have been a surprise to the elected officials and crisis managers of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana. In July 2004, an emer-gency management exercise in Louisiana was funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The exercise scenario simulated a catastrophic storm, “Hurricane Pam”, striking New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. Three hundred responders and decision makers from government and support agencies, such as the American Red Cross, participated in the event. The exercise revealed problems in the existing plans and recommended corrective ac-tion. Follow-up work sessions were held through July 2005 to develop new plans, but nothing was in place before Katrina arrived (Menzel, 2006). The Hurricane Pam scenario predicted that 60,000 people would die and the American Red Cross disaster services unit predicted a death toll as high as 100,000 (Derthick, 2007). This information reveals that there were plans in place and that key officials were given knowledge of the deficiencies in those plans. The challenge obviously was in communicating those risks to all residents and stakeholders in New Orleans. Two main issues highlight the risk communications failures and bear to be examined in more detail. Those issues are evacuation procedures and levee maintenance.

Evacuation Three highways lead out of New Orleans. These had been identified in the City and State plans as the major evacua-tion routes. The evacuation procedures called for using “Contraflow”, a process that turns all lanes of the highway into one-way routes out of the city. This was a well established procedure in use since 1998 and updated based on experi-ences from past hurricanes and evacuations. After approving the plan, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco initiated a public awareness campaign using media, local businesses and the Red Cross. More than 1.5 million copies of the Lou-isiana Citizen Awareness and Disaster Evacuation Guide were distributed. These guides included the Contraflow evacuation route map. The public awareness campaign and citizen guide were a proactive and positive approach in risk communications. Taking advantage of the precrisis phase, the State of Louisiana



Hurricane Katrina: Failure in Risk Communications

provided factual information that was clear in directing the public to the response that would be required in the event of a hurricane. The plan explained exactly when and how to evacuate. A crisis message must make clear directions regard-ing the crisis and what actions are expected to be taken (Spence, Lachlan, & Griffin, 2007, p. 541). The precrisis com-munications planning paid off for the majority of the stakeholders. In the two days before Katrina struck land, an esti-mated 1 to 1.2 million people from a population of 1.4 million, successfully evacuated the Greater New Orleans area via motor vehicle. (Derthick). Although the initial evacuations benefited from the precrisis risk communications, some problems were encountered. As Hurricane Katrina approached the Louisiana coast, Governor Blanco initiated the Contraflow evacuation plan on the afternoon of Saturday, August 27. The Governor also suggested a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans (Horne, 2008). The New Orleans plan called for evacuations to start 30 hours before a hurricane’s landfall. Mayor Ray Nagin called for voluntary evacuations 27 hours prior to landfall and waited until just 10 hours prior to landfall to order manda-tory evacuations. The city plan had identified that between that 100,000 and 130,000 residents would have no means of transportation, and individuals with “special needs” were not given adequate consideration in the plan. It was expected that school buses would be used to transport all those without vehicles (Col, 2007). By the time the mandatory evacua-tion order came, there were an estimated 100 buses available; however, there was a severe shortage of drivers and no provision to contact drivers to show up at the bus yards. By this time, winds and driving rains were already hitting the city making first responder activities much more difficult. More than 70,000 people remained in the city. Most made it to the Louisiana Superdome or other shelters on high ground in the city (Derthick, 2007). During the period when the Governor was calling for a voluntary evacuation, the Mayor still wasn’t calling for any evacuation, neither voluntary nor mandatory. Meanwhile, since Hurricane Katrina had passed Florida four days earlier, the National Hurricane Center had been issuing increasingly grave warnings regarding the potential landfall of Katrina in or near New Orleans (Horne, 2008, p. 24). These warnings were widely reported throughout the media on television, radio, and newspapers. One issue is very apparent in reviewing the calls for evacuation. There were mixed messages and a lack of unity when communicating about the crisis. The experts (the Hurricane Center) and the media were painting a clear picture about the impending landfall of Katrina. The Governor was calling for a voluntary evacuation. The Mayor hesitantly called for a voluntary evacuation very late into the crisis but did not call for a mandatory evacuation, even though it was within his power to do so. The mixed sense of urgency on the part of local, state, and national officials meant that there was no unified voice. There was no one, clear and unambiguous message from leaders when it came to the severity of the hurri-cane and the need to evacuate. One key guideline in risk communications is to “speak in one voice”. Speaking in one voice is a tactic to help allay pubic fears. Although different target audiences may require different messages or different kinds of messages, the message must convey the same meaning and call for the same course of action (Clarke, Chess, Holmes, & O'Neill, 2006, p. 161). One of the frustrations reported by Governor Blanco in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was why the people who stayed in New Orleans did not evacuate. If the word had gotten out, it hadn’t sunk in with a sizable group of New Orleans residents (Horne, 2008, p. 30). For risk communications to be effective, the message must come from a trustworthy source. The power to persuade people to believe your message and follow your directions depends on credibility, emo-tion, and reason. Trustworthiness is one component of credibility (Coombs, 2007, p. 109). As stated before, the majority of those who did not evacuate were poor and African American. These groups historically have had a distrust of govern-ment and government officials. Research has also shown that racial and ethnic minorities are “less likely to accept a risk or warning message as credible without confirmation of the message from others”, in particular those within their own social networks (Spence, Lachlan, & Griffin, p. 544). It would appear that family, neighbors, coworkers, and clergy mem-bers can be more persuasive than official government spokesmen when it comes to risk communications in some groups. Governor Blanco must have realized this to some extent, albeit late in the game. On Sunday morning, the day before Katrina’s landfall, the Governor’s office began calling African American ministers asking them to urge evacuation during their Sunday morning sermons (Horne, p. 30). By Sunday, however, the airport had closed and increasing rains and winds along with the lack of transportation was making it increasingly difficult to leave the city. Levees

Following killer floods in New Orleans due to Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1965. The legislation authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin a project to construct a new levee system around New Orleans to protect the city from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. The pro-ject was to be completed by 1978 at a cost of $85 million. It was designed to make the city safe in the worst hurricane conditions. When Hurricane Katrina hit, the levee system was still under construction and the cost had reached $750




Hurricane Katrina: Failure in Risk Communications Continued from page 14

million (Derthick, 2007). When the levees broke, approximately 80% of the city became flooded. An investigation of New Orleans’ flood protection system showed a farrago of stone and earthen levees, concrete and steel floodwalls, drainage canals, floodgates, and pumps. All were of varying age, design, and quality. Some levees fell short of their design height as much as three feet. There were also many parts of the system in states of disrepair (Derthick, 2007). There was a lot of confusion to the seemingly simple question of who was in charge of the levees. The key organizations were the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Orleans Levee District. There was reportedly long term tension between the two groups, mainly over who was responsible for the levee system. As each section of the pro-ject was completed, the Army Corps of Engineers would turn it over to the Levee District. The Levee District held the opinion that until the entire project was completed, the Army Corps of Engineers assumed total responsibility. Constant battles ensued over the costs of repair. At issue was the fact that flood protection was not the sole function of either or-ganization (Derthick). The City of New Orleans had routinely applied for funds to strengthen the levees but only received small amounts from Congress. By the time the Hurricane Pam exercise was completed in 2004, experts and emergency planners were well aware that the New Orleans levees would not withstand the storm surge of a hurricane the size of Katrina. By the summer of 2005, however, levee strengthening was not high on the budget list (Col). It was estimated that the New Orleans levees could be strengthened to protect against Category 5 hurricanes for an estimated cost of $5 billion. Hurricane Katrina cost over $96 billion in damages (Farazmand, 2007). The local and federal agencies also reacted in an adversarial role although they needed to work cooperatively. The intergovernmental rela-tions seen between the Levee District and the Army Corps of Engineers are similar to the antagonistic “layer-cake” feder-alism approach of the early 1900s. Intergovernmental relations do not only involve the transfer of funds for a project; it also involves the informal exchange of ideas that can enhance the policy or lead to innovation. A lateral flow of informa-tion and ideas needs to be created to keep all agencies on track and resolve issues without finger pointing (LeMay, 2006, p. 107). Risk communications in the precrisis phase calls for establishing solid and proactive lines of communication between an organization and its stakeholders. Once established, the relationships become invaluable in dealing with the crisis event and in the recovery postcrisis. Good stakeholder relations and communications allows for cooperative planning before the crisis and a coordinated response once the crisis hits (Coombs, 2007). The findings post Katrina point to fed-eral, state and local organizations unwilling to communicate and cooperate with each other. In hindsight, to the outsider, it almost appears that all parties knew the risks of not cooperating yet decided to turn a blind eye to those risks. One can only wonder what funding opportunities may have been missed due to the lack of proactive risk assessment and commu-nications between the various groups having responsibilities over the levee system. The apathy shown by government in regard to the levees sent strong messages to the residents living with the threat of flooding. Almost two decades of living with various levels of flooding and loss of property left many mistrusting govern-ment and in denial; relying more on prayer than any government intervention. Mistrust of the messenger along with mixed messages regarding whether the levees would breech or not during Katrina, once again weakened the impact of the crisis message for those who stayed to weather the storm (Cole & Fellows, 2008, p. 218). Discussion Part of the failure in New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina struck was not one of the responders or of the written plans; it was a failure of effective risk communications. Several key points can be learned from the analysis of the evacuations and the levee failures. First, warnings need to be heeded. The crisis message has to be delivered in a timely and truthful manner. In addition the message must be delivered by individuals and organizations that have gained the public trust. When delivered, the message must transmit the same key points, regardless of the messenger, and the message must be clear enough to instruct as to what action is expected. During the Katrina crisis there were several problems with the effective delivery of the message. Although there were some proactive risk communications efforts, after all 80 percent did evacuate, the messages were not always tailored to high risk stakeholders. Studies have shown that the poor and minorities are more at risk during crisis situations. They are less likely to heed the message from governmental authority figures due to mis-trust. Minorities may be at a disadvantage when it comes to crisis preparedness due to their lower incomes and they may live in areas that are more vulnerable. They are also less likely to accept warnings from those outside of their social networks (Spence, Lachlan, & Griffin, 2007). Risk communications must adapt to meet the needs of special stakeholders. Developing the risk communications plan should have begun pre-crisis. New Orleans officials were well aware of the demographics and culture of their city. In part because of many years of government apathy, there was a culture of denial among many ethnic groups and minori-ties in New Orleans. In many working-class neighborhoods of New Orleans a Gulf storm meant “party time”. People




would roll out their grills to the curbside on news of a coming storm. Families would barbeque chicken and ribs for the entire neighborhood. The premise was that the power will go out and the food will spoil, so let’s make the best of the situation (Horne, 2008, p. 5). The day before Katrina landfall there were reports of many hurricane parties in the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly poor and African American neighborhood. The messages regarding the severity of the storm were certainly received throughout New Orleans. A survey of those evacuated from New Orleans to Houston found that 73 percent had heard about the evacuation orders before Katrina stuck land. However, 64 percent did not evacuate because they did not believe the storm would be as severe as was being reported. Finally, 37 percent did not leave because they did not want to (Bentley, 2006). The challenge to the risk manager is to adapt the message to meet the needs of the target community. As previously mentioned, studies have shown that the African American community relates best to crisis messages and confirmation of those messages by those in their social network. With that in mind a crisis manager should be looking to develop a network of community groups and community leaders that have the respect and trust of the local residents. Building strong relationships with stakeholder groups is a key factor in crisis management. Once these relationships are developed they open up the lines for good communications. These communications lines can be extremely important when the crisis hits. Governor Blanco caught on to this fact, but much too late in the game. A strong network of African American ministers and com-munity leaders may have played a strong role in motivating the community to take the evacuation message seriously even though it was voluntary. A second lesson learned is that the risk communication needs to be unified in that key message points are being transmitted. This lesson goes hand-in-hand with the trust factor. During Katrina, messages were being transmitted from various reliable sources. The National Hurricane Center was providing hourly updates to the media as well as public offi-cials. The media to its credit did report about the dangers around the clock. While the media and experts were painting a bleak picture, local elected officials seemed to have a less urgent tone. When the experts are predicting the worse but the Mayor refuses to even issue an order for voluntary evacuation, the seeds of doubt are quickly planted. Mix messages can lead to watering down of the severity of those messages. The Hurricane Center may predict high winds, severe damage, and loss of life, however, if the local authorities aren’t calling for an evacuation then questions will arise. “Why should I worry?” “If it was really going to be that bad, they would tell me to evacuate.” The risk communications message must be unified in the sense that the same key points are being transmitted. If one authority is painting the picture of a severe crisis situation, another authority cannot be downplaying the crisis. Credibility will be quickly lost and the stake-holders will make their own decisions based on other sources of information whether they are factual or not. The percep-tion of it being adequate information is what is important. A third lesson to be learned is the importance of developing good avenues of communication and cooperation with other organizational stakeholders. Agencies need to assess not only their own risks, but also the shared risks in their community. The inadequacy of the levee system had been known about and discussed for over a decade. Disaster exer-cises detailed points of failure and areas of concern in regards to planning and policies. Instead of planning and working together to resolve the known issues, the many governmental organizations turned the other way and shed the responsi-bility off on each other. The crisis response to the levee breeches ended up being finger pointing. Pre-crisis communica-tions should have alerted those agencies that they shared a common threat. Knowing and recognizing the threat could then lead to plans designed to correct them. By not being proactive in taking responsibility for the levee system in its construction, maintenance, and repair, the various agencies involved also sent mixed messages to the community. Simi-lar problems existed with coordinating transportation resources within the city. The lack of transportation for a large sec-tion of the populace was known but never planned for. As the storm approached, hundreds of school buses where avail-able and waiting in city lots. The problem was that there was no one to drive them. No risk communications plan had been developed to mobilize drivers in the event of crisis situation. In advance of Hurricane Katrina weather forecasts provided 56 hours of advance warning as to the severity of the storm and the probable land fall. None of that time was used to mobilize resources for evacuations. The reason is that no risk communications plan was in place. Once again, we see a failure of a proactive crisis communications plan. All these shortfalls come back to the fact that public administrators failed to implement risk communications plans in a timely manner. Administrators must take initiative. Although response plans were in place, they were not carried out ef-fectively due to the lack of complete risk communications efforts. Public administrators need to actively participate in risk communications training to ensure their ability to perform the duties prescribed to them under their emergency plans. An important function is that of communicating with and directing the stakeholders by providing them with critical information and options. Intergovernmental relations must be managed effectively. Agencies must strengthen their commitment to communicate cooperatively and efficiently during disaster situations. This involves firm agreements signed by senior offi-cials and followed by routine training and testing of the agreements (Ink, 2006). Risk communications plans must be





enacted between all levels of government as well as with business and volunteer agencies. Organizations operate as open systems and are subject to influences from external forces on a daily basis. In the normal course of activities, those external forces are generally known and the manager adapts his responses to deal with the issues at hand. When managing in a crisis or emergency management mode, the external forces on the organi-zation go far beyond the day-to-day issues. Managers must learn to adapt to quickly changing situations. A pure top to bottom bureaucratic hierarchy will not function effectively, so the manager must be prepared to open his lines of commu-nications to help him in the decision making process. Disaster response requires skills and knowledge that is found mainly in career public service personnel. Those skills are rarely found in politicians or political appointees (Ink, 2006). The public administrator must assure that political polices regarding disaster management are implemented efficiently and effectively, and then continuously tested and modified as needed to ensure the public welfare. Risk communications is a vital part of the planning, response, and recovery process that should not be neglected. References

Andrulis, D. P., Siddiqul, N. J., & Gantner, J. L. (2007). Preparing Racially and Ethnically Diverse Communities for Public Health

Emergencies [Abstract]. Health Affairs, 26(5), 1269-1279.

Bentley, E. (2006). Raising Public Awareness about Disaster Response. Retrieved from http://www.csg.org/knowledgecenter/docs/sn0603RaisingPublicAwareness.pdf

Clarke, L., Chess, C., Holmes, R., & O'Neill, K. M. (2006). Speaking with One Voice: Risk Communication Lessons from the US An-thrax Attacks [Abstract]. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 14(3), 160-169.

Col, J. (2007). Managing Disasters: The Role of Local Government [Special issue]. Public Administration Review, 67(s1), 114-124.

Cole, T. W., & Fellows, K. L. (2008). Risk Communication Failure: A Case Study of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina [Abstract]. Southern Communication Journal, 73(3), 211-228.

Comfort, L. K. (2007). Crisis Management in Hindsight: Cognition, Communication, Coordination, and Control [Special issue]. Public Administration Review, 67(s1), 189-197.

Coombs, W. T. (2007). Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publica-tions, Inc.

Derthick, M. (2007). Where Federalism Didn't Fail [Special issue]. Public Administration Review, 67(s1), 36-47.

Farazmand, A. (2007). Learning from the Katrina Crisis: A Global and International Perspective with Implications for Future Crisis Management [Special issue]. Public Administration Review, 67(s1), 149-159.

Graumann, A., Houston, T., Lawrimore, J., Levinson, D., Lott, N., & McCown, S. (2005). Hurricane Katrina: A Climatological Perspec-tive. Asheville, NC: NOAA's National Climactic Data Center.

Horne, J. (2008). Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the near Death of a great American City. New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Ink, D. (2006). An Analysis of the House Select Committee and White House Reports on Hurricane Katrina. Public Administration Re-view, 66(6), 800-807.

LeMay, M. C. (2006). Public Administration: Clashing Values in the Administration of Public Policy (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Menzel, D. C. (2006). The Katrina Aftermath: A Failure of Federalism or Leadership? Public Administration Review, 66(6), 808-812.

Spence, P. R., Lachlan, K. A., & Griffin, D. R. (2007). Crisis Communication, Race, and Natural Disasters [Abstract]. Journal of Black Studies, 37(4), 539-554.

Townsend, F. F. (2006). The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned. Washington, DC: The White House.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2002). Communicating in a Crisis: Risk Communication Guidelines for Public Offi-cials. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services.


The Federal Emergency Management Agency now has a blog! Come join the ongoing conversation with other stake-

holders before, during and after disasters at

http://blog.fema.gov


Conference Notes

Are you an undergraduate or graduate Emergency Management or Homeland Security student?

Are you committed to excellence in your chosen profession?

Do you want to stand out among your peers?

Epsilon Pi Phi, the Emergency Management Honor Society, may be for you!

Membership criteria may be viewed at http://www.ffhea.org/3364.html

For more information, contact the APUS Chapter of Epsilon Pi Phi at

[email protected]

By Michael J. Kelley, Jr., AEM, ALEM BA EDM Student Epsilon Pi Phi President I would like to thank everyone for a fantastic time in San Antonio. While I have been to the Mid Year and Higher Edu-cation Conferences, nothing prepared me for the experiences I have had this last week. I would like to thank the IAEM-USA SR Executive team - Nancy, Jet, Eric and Mark, for all their hard work, the confer-ence committee for putting on a great conference, and Hannah Vick and the rest of the Chapter Leadership for mobiliz-ing and motivating our members to attend. Thank you all. A special thank you goes out to the professors and marketing team at AMU & APU: Thanks to Dr. Phelan, Prof. Hicks, Prof. Mangeri, Prof. Rovins, Prof. Jaffin, Prof. Prier, Prof. Casey and Prof. Cuthbert. All attended and did a huge job supporting the students and getting the word out about APUS. A special thanks to Amanda and the other members of the marketing department for the polos and hats, they are a huge hit and everyone at the convention (especially the other colleges) were extremely jealous. The entire week our students led the way. Student who knew each other only from online contact met each other for the first time in person, but acted like long lost friends. You couldn't walk 10 feet in the convention center or hotels with-out spotting the Masters of Disaster logo on something. The Student Region Executive Team, for the second year in a row, continues to represent the school, with 3 of the 5 members AMU students. Joseph Martin, one of our Master of Dis-aster and currently a graduate student took 1st place in the poster competition. And the items donated for the scholar-ship auction by students and faculty brought in over 1500 dollars for student scholarships. This is why I am so proud to be a student here, and so humbled to serve as your 1st Vice President. There is no doubt in my mind that everyone who attended the conference will remember Masters of Disaster and how we showed the world how an emergency management program should be, and how it should be supported. I hope that everyone did or will take the time to thank the University of North Texas chapter members. They did a great job as host chapter, and we may have some new students from that program coming our way in graduate pro-grams. In closing, thanks to everyone who attended, I miss you all already. I hope to see everyone at the Higher Ed confer-ence in June and at graduation, but above all in Las Vegas.

Masters of Disaster Distinguished Speakers Series recordings now available online!

See page 20 for links to specific speakers!


The Last Day: Wrath, Ruin and Reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, by Nicholas Shrady. Viking, 2008. 228p. From inside cover: The first shock struck Lisbon on the morning of November 1, 1755—All Saints’ Day. Several minutes later a second, far more powerful shock wracked the city, then a third. In less than a quarter of an hour, Lisbon, one of Europe’s most splendid capitals, toppled. Then a succession of three tidal waves crashed into the waterfront and consumed thousands of the living and the dead. If that weren’t enough, a generous wind fanned fires sparked by the quake, and the city burned for a full five days. Earth, water, wind and fire had all conspired to produce a singularly hellish disaster. Lisbon wasn’t so much decimated as thoroughly annihilated.

There had, of course, been other natural disasters, but those that approached a death toll and material loss on the scale of the Lisbon earthquake were either ancient or remote. Lisbon, however, was in the midst of a cultural golden age; the port was the third busiest in Europe after Amsterdam and London; and the city was the capital of a colonial em-pire with vast, if scattered, territories that extended from Brazil to the Far East. The Lisbon quake created the eighteenth-century equivalent of a mass media frenzy. Never before had the news of a natural disaster spread so far and wide and inspired such lurid fascination. And it wasn’t just the popular imagination that was captured by the disaster; some of the most eminent thinkers of the day—Voltaire, Alexander Pope, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau among them—took up the Lisbon earth-quake as a sort of cause célèbre and used it to pose questions of providence, human suffering, the existence of purely natural phenomena, and the role of a God by turns benign, indifferent, and wrathful. Lisbon was also the last stronghold of the Inquisition, so many of the faithful Catholics there questioned their apocalyptic punishment. In addition to challenging conventional theological wisdom, the earthquake and Lisbon’s subsequent rebuilding gave rise to a host of other fascinating developments, such as landmark social reform in Portugal, the first concerted effort at disaster control, modern urban planning, and the birth of the science of seismology. In short, the Lisbon earthquake was no run-of-the-mill misfortune; it was the first modern disaster and a watershed event that shook the pillars of an inveterate social order and sent reverberations throughout the Western world.

Books of Interest

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, by Simon Winchester. Perennial, 2003. 416p. From back cover: Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogota and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island’s destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all—in view of today’s new political climate—the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first out-breaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere. Krakatoa gives us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event.

Viruses, Plagues & History, by Michael B. A. Oldstone. Oxford University Press, 1998. 227p. From back cover: Nearly 300 million people were killed by smallpox over the course of the twentieth century. During the years 1918 and 1919, a deadly variant of the influenza strain claimed over 20 million lives. And today, we face new viral threats: mad cow disease, the Hantavirus, and, of course, AIDS. As Michael Oldstone illustrates here, the story of viruses and the story of humanity have overlapped since the dawn of history; the first cities formed not only the cradle of civilization, but spawning grounds for the earliest viral epidemics. In clear and engrossing prose, he explains the scientific principles of viruses and epidemics while also relating the past and present history of the major viral threats to human health. Now featuring an “Afternotes” sec-

tion written especially for this paperback edition, Viruses, Plagues and History gives us the full, fascinating panorama of our long-standing conflict with unseen viral enemies—from our successes, as with the eradication of poliomyelitis in the Americas, to our continuing struggles, as with Ebola in Zaire.

WANTED! Your book recommendations!

Have you read a good book on an EM-related topic? If you think your fellow students would find it interesting too, please

submit a brief write-up on it, following the format shown above. A thumbnail of the cover would be appreciate, as well. Send your book recommendations to Dawn Heyse via OrgSync!


Trivia Challenge Think you’re smarter than the student to your left and right? Take the Guardian Trivia Challenge* and find out!

Thanks to Darren Endris for contributing questions!

1. According to the National Response Framework, the role in establishing and assuring a resilient community is the role of the __________________. a. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) b. Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) c. Individual and the public officials. d. The federal government 2. The handling of domestic emergency incidents begins and end locally, and most are wholly managed at _________. a. The state level b. The local level c. The federal level d. The personal level 3. What phase of the emergency management cycle can begin hours or even days after an incident and can continue for months or years depending on the severity of the incident? a. litigation b. recovery c. response d. legislation 4. What is the first action that is taken to attempt to restore a community to normal? a. investigation b. mitigation c. preparedness d. response 5. For which Emergency Support Function(s) (ESFs) is NASA a supporting agency? a. 1, 3, 6, 8, 11 b. 5, 7, 10, 13, 14 c. 5, 7, 9, 13, 15 d. 6, 7, 9, 10, 15 6. For which Emergency Support Function(s) (ESFs) is the United States Department of Agriculture Fire Service the pri-mary agency? a. 11 b. 5 c. 4 d. 7 7. For which Emergency Support Function(s) (ESFs) is the National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters (NVOAD) the primary agency? a. 6, 14 b. none c. 1, 12 d. 8, 13 The first student to email the correct answers to all questions to [email protected] wins the prize be-low! If no one answers all correctly, the prize will go to the first student submitting the most correct answers. The answers and the name of the winner will be printed in the next issue of the Guardian! *Contest open to stu-dents only!

Trivia Challenge Prize! The Winner of this issue’s Trivia Challenge will receive a pocket-sized copy of the 2008 Emer-

gency Response Guidebook, a guidebook for first responders during the initial phase of a dan-gerous goods/hazardous materials transportation incident AND a Workplace/Auto Emergency Supply Kit In a Bottle, which includes a BPA-free water bottle, a small tote bag, a combination

whistle/flashlight/flasher, a small utility knife, a mini-first aid kit (with alcohol wipes and 1 pair vinyl exam gloves), an emergency poncho, an emergency blanket, an N95 dust mask, 2 hand warmers,

and family emergency planning information printed on water-resistant paper.

Documents

The Guardian November 2010 Edition