Natural disasters: Is your community ready?

[00:00:15]

SARA WHITLOCK: Hello, everyone, and welcome to SciLine’s media briefing on natural disasters and community readiness. In this briefing, we’ll explore how governments develop emergency response plans, how to communicate emergency warnings effectively, and the psychology behind why some people evacuate while others stay behind.My name is Sarah Whitlock, and I’m SciLine’s scientific outreach manager. A little background about what we do at SciLine. We’re editorially independent and we’re a nonprofit based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. We’re fully funded by philanthropies, so everything that we do is free, and our team aims to make it as simple as possible for journalists to use scientific evidence and expertise as your reporting. A little scientific research can deepen your stories with evidence and context, whether you’re covering a topic that clearly involves science, like heavy rainfall, or one where the science angle is less obvious, like funding for education or national parks. Most of our resources are available on SciLine.org, including interview opportunities and trainings, and you can click the blue, I need an expert button, if you need to speak with a scientific expert for your story. We’ll look for a source with the right background to answer your questions before your deadline. A couple of notes before we begin, I’m joined here by three experts who have studied emergency management during natural disasters. I’ll let each of them introduce themselves and their topic of research. So, Dr. Knox, would you go ahead?

[00:01:30]

CLAIRE KNOX: Thank you so much. My name is Dr. Claire Connolly Knox. I’m a professor at the University of Central Florida, and I direct the Masters of Emergency and Crisis Management Program. My research is focused on coastal resiliency post disaster. So I’m really interested in how lessons learned can be implemented in policies and plans.

[00:01:53]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And Dr. Sutton, would you introduce yourself next?

[00:01:56]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: Sure. Hi. My name is Jeanette Sutton. I am an associate professor at the University of Albany, State University of New York. I’m a sociologist by training, and my area of research is alerts and warnings and communicating effectively in disaster. I’ve been studying this for about two decades and funded through the FEMA IPAWS program for the last three years.

[00:02:24]

SARA WHITLOCK: Great. And Dr. Trivedi.

[00:02:27]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: Hi, I’m Jenn Trivedi. I’m an associate professor at the University of Delaware. I’m trained as an anthropologist, and I study the people part of disaster. I look at how cultural and historical context shapes the decisions that people make in disaster response and recovery.

[00:02:44]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. I’ll ask each of our panelists some questions before we start taking audience questions. So journalists, you can submit your questions at any time during the briefing. Just click the Q&A icon at the bottom of your Zoom screen, and please do let us know if you’d like your question directed to a specific panelist. We’ll be posting a recording of this briefing on our website later today, and then a transcript will be added in the next few days. So with that, let’s begin. Dr. Knox, can you explain what an emergency response plan typically includes, who is responsible for developing it, and how these plans are used in preparation for a disaster?

[00:03:18]

CLAIRE KNOX: Sure. So a comprehensive emergency management plan is the most common document that you’re going to find in a local or state jurisdiction. These include elements as to who’s responsible for what, any legal requirements. It also includes the results of a threat and hazard identification and risk assessment. It’s called a THIRA. The idea is that you, in your community, identify what are those threats, what are those risks, and then you make a plan accordingly. You include who is going to be responding to what, all phases of emergency management, as well as the action plans that are required for response and recovery.

[00:04:04]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And what are some of the key equity issues that need to be addressed in emergency planning?

[00:04:10]

CLAIRE KNOX: So some of the key equity issues, this is something we are still struggling with as a whole. The ideal is a whole community approach. These issues and these disasters are so complex that you need all hazards- I’m sorry, you need all sectors to be able to engage in all phases of emergency management. And so, what I typically tell my students is, and professionals, who is not represented at the table? Because that then indicates an element of your community that doesn’t have a voice.  Unfortunately, we saw this issue with Hurricane Katrina in which you had individuals who were abandoned at nursing homes, who had other issues that ran the gamut of issues that were impacted by the storm. But we saw those same things repeated during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Hurricane Ian, the list goes on and on. So a big part of equity is access to information, access to services in a language and in a way that the individuals in your community want to have that information. We saw in our research that in the state of Florida, we had analyzed tweets. Barely one percent were in Spanish, when you looked at the communication that was going out from these offices of emergency management at the county level. And so that’s just one indication that you’re not reaching potentially part of the population that might be most in need.

[00:05:50]

SARA WHITLOCK: Got you. And how has climate change increased- or the increasing frequency of disasters changed how we think about long term planning and community resilience?

[00:06:00]

CLAIRE KNOX: So, climate change, we call that a threat multiplier. It is going to intensify and amplify any vulnerabilities that a community might have. Part of the impacts of the frequency and the increased intensity of these disasters, especially hurricanes, is that it reduces the amount of evacuation times. It changes how quickly we’re having to incorporate and to activate our plans. But then all of a sudden, now you’re having multiple disasters hitting one particular community, which we saw during 2020 in coastal Louisiana, where we had a record breaking hurricane season with 11 hurricanes impacting the United States.

You have, all of a sudden, all the phases of emergency management start overlapping. So response is bleeding into recovery, that’s then going back into response. And so that taxes the resources that the community has available. But then also looking a little bit more long term, it can take two to three years to get fully reimbursed from FEMA to a local jurisdiction. And so now you’re having to really dive deep into your resources to be able to fund the disaster and then wait two or three years to get reimbursed from FEMA. And so that is an issue that a lot of local governments have, and I say that because every disaster begins and ends locally. So FEMA is just a very small part of this very large complex system.

[00:07:38]

SARA WHITLOCK: And how can reporters assess whether their local emergency plans have been updated to reflect recent disasters, new climate risks, or changing population needs?

[00:07:47]

CLAIRE KNOX: That’s a really great question. There’s a couple of things to keep in mind. One is that every jurisdiction has anywhere 15-25 plans, specific to emergency management, this is beyond their comprehensive emergency management plan. You have hazard mitigation plans, local mitigation strategies, terrorism plans. The list goes on and on. So I would start with your comprehensive emergency management plan. Ideally, every jurisdiction is supposed to have one. That might not always be the case, especially in smaller locations or more rural locations that simply don’t have the capacity to create an entire plan.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you’re going to have an external facing plan and an internal facing plan. So emergency management plans may have sensitive information, such as a terrorism plan. That will not be available on their website. And so I strongly recommend you as a media specialist to build that relationship with your local office of emergency management. It could be the fire chief. It could be the police chief, where in a lot of these smaller locations, you have one person who’s wearing many hats. So I strongly recommend looking at that. Ideally, they should be updated every year. Ideally, they should be trained. And you should train and exercise to the plans to make sure that they’re actually capturing what’s going to happen in real life.

And then the last thing, specific to climate change. During the Obama administration, there was an effort by the FEMA administrator Craig Fugate to require climate change to be incorporated into the state’s hazard mitigation plans to be eligible for Stafford funding. So the idea of trying to incentivize states to include climate change. And so, Florida, for example, was one of the states that did that, and that led them to have an enhanced comprehensive emergency management plan.

[00:09:51]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you so much. Let’s move on to you, Dr. Sutton. To start off, what makes an emergency warning effective? How does the message wording, timing, or delivery method impact public response?

[00:10:03]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: So we have seven decades of research on alerts and warnings and what makes them effective. This has been conducted by sociologists, and psychologists, and geographers to catalog how people receive information and the contents of the messages that they need in order to reduce the delay to taking action. And the message content is the one thing that an emergency manager can truly control. They have the ability to script the messages ahead of time, building templates for different hazards such as those that are in their THIRA that Dr. Knox was just talking about. And they can build those messages based on the best evidence that we have. We know that messages need to contain five things. They need to say who the message is from, the source. They need to tell people what the hazard is and what the hazard is doing or the impact on people. They need to tell people where the threat is occurring, when it’s occurring or when people need to take action by. And the most important piece of information that people will look for before taking action, is what they can do to protect themselves.

So the protective action guidance is extremely important. Each of those different pieces of content affects different outcomes that we measure in the lab, such as understanding the message and believing it, and being able to make a decision based upon the contents, and then also the other environmental indicators around us. But in every case, people will do something that we call milling, which is confirming the information by checking with others, which is one of the reasons that we need to think about the ways that information is delivered, also, the different channels that are available, because we use different channels to confirm that information such as contacting a friend or a family member or looking on social media to see who else is talking about this message.

And I think that one part of your question was related to warning effectiveness. And not only are the words really important, but warning effectiveness is also related to time, the timeliness of the message. And there’s often a concern that if a message is issued, that people will panic and that instead of responding appropriately, which is what most people do, that they will choose to respond in irrational ways. But truly the times that we hear about warnings gone wrong is when they’re not issued. And so choosing not to issue a warning and choosing to issue it too late is the time when people become the most endangered.

[00:12:53]

SARA WHITLOCK: Got it. Thank you. And what are the biggest challenges coordinating agencies face in reaching vulnerable or hard to reach populations during a crisis?

[00:13:03]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: The first thing is related to technology. We have a lot of different channels that can be used to reach people, but relying on technology means relying on things that may not always work. Sometimes the power goes out. Sometimes people are not logged in to different things. Like, you have to be logged into X or Facebook to actually see those messages that you might want to be able to see from a local alerting authority. But there are other kinds of channels that can be utilized, such as opt in messaging. Historically, the rates of people opting in to receive messages are very, very low, and part of that is related to trust. People not wanting public officials to have access to their information, but they may not also recognize the importance of being opted into those systems in order to receive those messages. And if they are not selecting to receive messages from emergency management, then they may not receive anything.

And so some of the challenges in order to address those things is to partner with organizations to actually get that information out to the vulnerable populations. Dr. Knox mentioned Spanish speaking people and how difficult it is to reach people who have different languages. Most of our messages that go out across the country are in English. Even though there is the possibility to issue wireless emergency alerts in Spanish, large metropolitan areas frequently require their emergency managers to issue messages in multiple languages up to 15 or 20 in some of our largest areas. But that is a real challenge for emergency managers who then have to find professional speakers to help them to translate, or they rely on things like AI and just hope, and wish, and pray that they are translating correctly.

[00:15:02]

SARA WHITLOCK: And a related question is that, given the growing reliance on digital tools like cell phones, how are agencies preparing for communication system failures like power or cell network outages during a disaster?

[00:15:15]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: So I have a colleague that I work with who has said that when the world ends, it will be broadcast on AM radio because it’s our one channel that will not go out, that will stay on air and will broadcast the end as it’s coming. We’ve seen that in other events where it’s the radio personality who gets to remain on air and becomes the voice of what’s happening and helping people to get resources and recover. But I think the true answer is that we can’t rely on just one system. We have to think about all of the different possible channels, the digital channels, the word of mouth channels, the get on your bicycle and ride to the other end of town channels. Kind of like Paul Revere jumping on his horse and riding from one end to the other. It’s one of the reasons that one of the most powerful ways to get people to move is to go and knock on their door, which we see often, and in some states, the high low sirens on a police vehicle are a necessity to get people to move.

[00:16:16]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And what are the risks of over warning or inconsistent messaging, and how can agencies build a communication strategy that helps them to maintain credibility over time?

[00:16:27]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: So we have recent research on over alerting, where we’ve identified the dimensions of over alerting, which allows us to then measure what are the real reasons that people choose to stop paying attention. We know that over alerting happens when people perceive messages being too frequent, not relevant to them, such as being outside of the geographical area of impact. But a lot of times the real problem with over alerting is that messages that arrive on our devices are just not useful. And it’s this practice of not receiving training to learn how to write good, clear, informative messages that help people to understand the value that is being delivered in those messages.

And by changing those practices, I believe that it’s possible to actually increase the trust, increase willingness to receive, and recognize that the emergency managers are aware of what is happening and are choosing to use the most powerful channels at the times when immediate action is needed and writing really good messages.I think another strategy that agencies need to really embrace is the idea of not being absent. When they are not part of the communication strategy, other people and other voices will fill the gaps frequently with information that does not fit what the emergency managers are trying to communicate. And so consistent messaging also means being part of the conversation from the very beginning.

[00:18:05]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thanks so much. So now let’s move on to Dr. Trivedi. When a community is told to evacuate, what are the main reasons some people decide to leave while others stay behind? And are there common misconceptions or beliefs that lead people to underestimate the risk and decide not to evacuate?

[00:18:21]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: Thanks for this. It’s a really important question. I think there are a couple of reasons that have come out in the research, why people choose to not evacuate in a disaster, and they’re all really important. So they really boil down to a couple of categories, resources, time, and personal circumstances. So with resources, we know that evacuation can be really costly. It can be really costly in the short term in terms of filling your car up with gas, and in terms of finding a place to stay, paying for food to take with you, but it can also be really costly in the long term. So evacuating may mean staying away from work for several days or even several weeks. It may mean owning and maintaining a vehicle that you can get out in, and it may mean maintaining relationships with people outside of your area. And so these things can start to accrue costs over time that particularly people who are low or middle income can’t maintain themselves. And so we see people often struggle with making these decisions. Can I pay for evacuation now if it means not being able to afford rent next week? And we often see these expressed differently, depending on when the disaster happens. So with Hurricane Katrina, for example, it hit at the end of the month, and people made some different decisions than they might have if it had hit a week later at the start of the month after payday had happened.

We also see this happen with things like timing. How much time does it take to get out? This relates to what Dr. Knox and what Dr. Sutton have been saying about when the evacuation orders actually go out, when this messaging happens, but it also relates to more personal time management. How long does it take for you to get your family together? Are schools let out in a timely manner? Do offices and businesses close in a timely manner to allow for evacuation? And personal circumstances really do come into play with this. Sometimes people may choose to stay because they’re the ones responsible for running local shelters. They may also choose to stay because they feel responsible for taking care of elderly neighbors who aren’t evacuating. And sometimes they’re basing it on personal experiences. They were either okay in the last disaster or when they evacuated last time the evacuation went badly. And so there’s a lot of risk and benefit that people are weighing. They’re not making this decision lightly, and I think that’s the biggest misconception we see is that people are choosing not to evacuate for somewhat frivolous reasons. And in reality, they’re putting a lot of thought and effort into their decision making, and a lot of factors come into play with it.

[00:20:58]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And you’ve touched on this a little bit, but maybe you can expand more on how past experience with disaster shapes what people do the next time that they experience a disaster.

[00:21:08]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: So when people have a good experience, the evacuation goes smoothly, it can reinforce that evacuating is a good idea, and that it’s something that they can do again. But when it goes badly, it can also reinforce that maybe staying in place is a better option. I’ve talked to a lot of people, especially when I interviewed folks after Hurricane Katrina or after Hurricane Matthew, who had bad evacuation experiences. They were trapped on the highway, they ran out of gas, they didn’t have anywhere to go, and that reinforced that maybe staying at home was less of a risk. On the other side, I’ve talked to people after similar disasters who did okay when they stayed put. They were safe. Their house was far enough away from the water that it wasn’t damaged. And so they felt that a comparable disaster might be something that they could ride out safely. And so people are factoring in these previous experiences as they’re making these decisions.

[00:22:04]

SARA WHITLOCK: Got it. And again, we’ve talked about this a little bit, but what are some of these barriers for families who want to evacuate but face obstacles like cost or transportation? And maybe how are the transportation planners accounting for those things?

[00:22:16]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: I think the cost of transportation is a big one, and we think about it a little bit in the short term. Can you fill up your car with gas? And I think transportation planners are factoring some of this in. Sometimes we see highway responders building up and planning and driving along congested highways to help folks who run out of gas. But it’s also more complicated in the long term. And we know that folks who don’t have a vehicle that can travel far distances can sometimes choose not to evacuate because they don’t think their vehicle’s reliable. But we also have large populations of people who can’t transport themselves. They may not own a vehicle, they may not be safe driving themselves, and so these folks may need additional help getting out. Sometimes this is a cost issue. They can’t afford a vehicle. Sometimes it’s a decision where they live they don’t need one, or sometimes it’s an accessibility question. So there are, again, lots of different populations and questions that come into play with this that have to be factored in by transportation officials and others when they’re making these decisions.

And we’ve seen some organizations and communities do well with this. We’ve seen particular private organizations evacuate hospitals or nursing homes well with things like ambulances for folks who need them. We’ve also seen larger cities do this. The city of Savannah several times, has stood up large fleets of buses to get as many people out as possible, including homeless populations, including low income populations. It’s not gone 100 percent well. I’ve talked to people who talked about pros and cons of it, but it was a good, clear effort to try to get people who didn’t have transportation out. And again, this comes down to a lot of long term issues that come into play long before the actual disaster starts.

[00:24:08]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And thank you to all of you for sharing your expertise. We’re now going to begin asking questions to our experts, and I want to remind the reporters on the line that you can submit your questions using the Q&A box that’s found at the bottom of your Zoom screen. But first off, I want to ask all of you about the news coverage you’re seeing when natural disasters happen. Do you have any advice for reporters covering how communities are responding in the face of natural disasters and maybe what isn’t being covered that should be? So, Dr. Knox, I will start with you.

[00:24:37]

CLAIRE KNOX: This is a great question. Thank you. So, things that are being covered. So I would love to see more of the lessons learned from the previous disaster and show how the local government has been making those changes to make the community more resilient. I feel like sometimes that messaging and information gets lost in the covering of a disaster.

[00:25:15]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And Dr. Sutton?

[00:25:18]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: After the July 4th events in Texas, we saw a tremendous amount of attention on alerts and warnings and rightfully so. And since then, I’ve heard of quite a few emergency management organizations across the country putting some serious focus on improving their alerts and warnings, their systems, their protocols, their messaging. But there’s still a lot that fall through the gaps, and it has not become a priority for a lot of reasons, maybe they’re wearing multiple hats, and they simply don’t have the time and the resources, or they don’t know that there are free resources available to them.

So while I’ve seen some good reporting on the messaging and the communication to people, I still believe that we need to continually reinforce the need for good messaging and investigating that as part of reporting, which means understanding the systems that are utilized and are available for local emergency managers, such as the wireless emergency alert service, which is not well understood because it’s very complicated. So becoming familiar with that as well as the opt in messaging channels and the requirements to issue messages, I think is really important.

[00:26:42]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And Dr. Trivedi?

[00:26:45]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: One of the biggest things is paying attention to the close informal networks that exist between people. So thinking about the ways in which people communicate outside of official systems and support each other outside of official systems. So lots of times we hear about people relying on family and friends networks or community relationships and this has been, I think, touched on in several places, but not just listening to official orders, listening to their little old lady at the church and listening to their corner barber and understanding and paying attention really closely to how those networks and relationships start to shape response and recovery. They’re really critical, and they’re talked about sometimes, but I think really paying attention to those helps understand how communities work and support each other.

[00:27:36]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And we have a question from the Houston Chronicle, which is, what is the most effective thing local governments can do to prepare communities for natural disasters? So maybe I’ll start with you, Dr. Knox.

[00:27:47]

CLAIRE KNOX: Sure. Great question. From where I sit, I see two primary things. One is mitigation. I don’t think mitigation is discussed enough to be able to reinforce not only our social networks and our social capital that we have that Dr. Trivedi was just mentioning, but then also the infrastructure. So your energy systems, levees, et cetera. The second part is that local governments can’t do it all. And so building the capacity of the non profits and faith based organizations and maintaining those connections with the private sector is going to be critical when it comes to the response and recovery aspect of emergency management. So for me, I see it as twofold. One is mitigation, and the second is to strengthen the capacity of those other sectors in your community.

[00:28:47]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. Anyone else have something you’d like to add on that question?

[00:28:53]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: I will jump in and add for the other end of the timeline for what Dr. Knox is saying and think about long term recovery, too. I think long term recovery from one disaster blends into mitigation for the next disaster, and it’s often really not thought about from local government perspectives. They don’t often have the capacity to think about recovering from a disaster 20 years later, but they often find themselves in that situation. And I think planning for that in advance can be really critical, especially if they are pulling from outside sources of support and thinking about that can be really helpful.

[00:29:35]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: I’d like to add, it’s going to start sounding familiar every time you talk to me. But, we’ve had two months of blue sky days, essentially. Hurricanes haven’t started hitting yet, and I hope they won’t right. But in that time, there’s been time to prepare communities, preparing organizations to communicate effectively. And that public facing communication from an emergency manager is one of the most important things that they can do at the time of an event or as something is being forecasted to help people to prepare in those hours leading up.

And having a good message and understanding what people need to hear in order to make sense and make a decision is just so incredibly important. And maybe it’s not directly to an individual member of the public, maybe it’s working with partners to get that information out. But determining those strategies is just vitally important to the preparedness of a community.

[00:30:43]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And we have a follow up question from the reporting organization, Covering Climate Now, which is, can you give some examples of good emergency messaging?

[00:30:53]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: Sure. So we know that messages need to include the five contents that I mentioned earlier. It needs to say who the source of the message is, the hazard by name, and not just saying, evacuation warning or evacuation order and assuming that people understand that jargon. The explaining what the hazard is doing or could do, the location of the event and the timing that people need to take action, and then providing guidance on what people need to do to protect themselves.

We will occasionally, if you go to a website called PBS – WARN [warn.pbs.org], you will see occasionally some examples of good messaging. Frequently, we see very incomplete messages, and those messages are the ones that are being issued over our wireless emergency alert service, which means that they are broadcast to everyone whose cell phone is still capable of receiving a WEA, who are within the geographical area where the alert is issued. They’re the most powerful messages that we have, it’s the most powerful channel. And communicating effectively, it’s a challenge. We don’t see it as often as I would like.

[00:32:08]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And we have a couple of questions about this, but I’ll start with one from WBUR in Boston, which is, what worries you most about natural disasters if there’s a government shutdown? What might happen with FEMA or the National Hurricane Center? And then, has there ever been a natural disaster during a government shutdown before? So I will open the floor on that one, if any of you wants to chime in first. Maybe Dr. Knox, if you will.

[00:32:35]

CLAIRE KNOX: I’ll chime in a little bit. So part of that I can answer. So the National Weather Service, NOAA and FEMA, some of those employees are exempt when it comes to a government shutdown. Those are essential employees that are funded no matter what. With FEMA, specifically, it is funded under the Disaster Relief Fund, and that’s more the response mechanism of FEMA. And so, while if there is a government shutdown, FEMA will be working under a limited capacity. However, I want to remind everyone that FEMA is about coordination. Every disaster begins and ends locally. So the disaster is local. If there’s a need, there’s a disaster declaration that’s issued or requested from the state governor, you have mutual aid agreements that kick in from other surrounding jurisdictions, whether that’s counties or the next neighboring state. And then it can get up to FEMA. So I say that because a lot of people immediately think, Oh, FEMA, FEMA, FEMA, when actually the majority of the work is done at the local and state level.

[00:33:53]

SARA WHITLOCK: Makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And we had a second part of that question, which was, do we have examples of natural disasters that have happened when the government was shut down? Not sure if we know of any of those on the top of our heads.

[00:34:09]

CLAIRE KNOX: I would have to look that up. I know Christie- oh—I’m blanking on her name, the previous FEMA administrator, I know that she had to prepare for a number of potential shutdowns, and so she had plans written in place. That being said, I’d have to look it up.

[00:34:28]

SARA WHITLOCK: That makes sense. And we were talking about the granular parts of what FEMA does, and we have a related question from a freelancer based in Wisconsin, which is, aside from disaster funds, what services are now provided by FEMA that states and localities cannot do without? In other words, if the Trump administration downsizes FEMA, what, in your opinion, would be the impact of that?

[00:34:54]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: I’ll start by talking about IPAWS, which is the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. That is considered an essential capability, an essential service. And because it is the service that provides the support for all presidential or national alerts, it should not be endangered by budget cuts or presidential or government shutdowns. In the budget cuts that have occurred thus far, the personnel at IPAWS they did not lose federal employees. It is a system that cannot be replicated at the state and local level, it is a national system, and it needs to be maintained in order to provide that continuity and allow for those national level alerts to be issued should they need to be.

[00:35:54]

CLAIRE KNOX: Oh, go ahead, Jennifer.

[00:35:57]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: I was just going to say, I’ll also step in and add that one of the points for FEMA and having a federal system in general is it alludes to what Dr. Knox was saying a minute ago, was that if the local system is overwhelmed, it can go to the state. And one of our things with FEMA is that if one of the states is overwhelmed, it can go to the federal government. There’s a capacity question involved, and it takes that- it has to reach a certain threshold, and the state has to request it to come in. But there is a need for a system that we need when there’s a certain capacity reached, right? We do have disasters that are large enough. Multiple states are affected, or states are so affected that we do need a larger presence, or we do need additional resources brought to bear immediately or long term. And that’s where FEMA comes in, or having these mutual aid agreements between states become really critical because it allows for a larger response to happen than any one location or any one state can bring to bear, no matter how big of a city or state that they are. And so there’s also a capacity issue that’s really important here to keep in mind.

[00:37:10]

CLAIRE KNOX: I’ll follow up with that because what we’ve seen so far is reduction in funding for hazard mitigation grants, which a lot of jurisdictions simply do not have the capacity to fund. They can maybe do response and some initial recovery, but the idea of long term recovery, as Dr. Trivedi mentioned, as well as going into mitigation, a lot of jurisdictions simply don’t have that capacity. And to keep in mind is that in order for—so if FEMA gets decentralized, if the budgeting goes down tremendously and now it’s upon the states to pick up that gap, it can take two to three legislative cycles at the state level in order to change the budgeting model to allow there to be more funding at the local jurisdiction level. So this can be a potential two to three year issue until these states decide to go ahead and change that budgeting model to free up money down to the local governments.

And then I’ll just highlight that FEMA is seen as an exemplar as to how to do emergency management by other countries. So you have, for example, Australia, they have developed their federal response emergency management response system like FEMA. So we’re seen as kind of the leaders when it comes to that and the professionalization of our profession and our discipline has followed suit. So there’d be some other ramifications that could come out of it.

[00:38:46]

SARA WHITLOCK: And to dive a little bit more into some of the funding for these efforts. Another question from a freelancer based in Wisconsin is, would it make sense for the feds to provide states with formula block grants based on FEMA’s risk assessment, population, etc., and delegate administration of the money to states so they can avoid federal red tape and provide immediate financial assistance post disaster? This is the format the U.S. Department of Energy uses in its state energy program. Anyone have thoughts on that? Maybe, Dr. Knox?

[00:39:16]

CLAIRE KNOX: It’s a great question. I wish I had some research to be able to talk specifically to that. That is definitely, I’ve been listening in on the FEMA review council meetings, and that is one of the options that they are entertaining is to look at how other federal agencies distribute funds and to figure out if a similar formula could work for FEMA. So, I answer with possibly, but I would love to see some research and to see what that would look like. I will say to the recent research that I completed with some of my doc students, looked at states capacity across the United States to take on some of these extra responsibilities based on their previous funding opportunities and previous disasters, we’re seeing that it’s going to be inconsistent across states, which is what we would expect. Some states are going to go above and beyond through all phases of emergency management, and some states are only going to focus in on just the response component and forego preparedness, mitigation, and recovery.

[00:40:31]

SARA WHITLOCK: And a question related to how all of this emergency management is happening is from a freelancer based in Massachusetts, who asks, since the DHS moved to bar local governments and non profits from helping undocumented immigrants during a disaster, what do you see local emergency managers doing? How are they meeting these rules? I can leave that open to whoever wants to answer. I see Dr. Knox.

[00:41:00]

CLAIRE KNOX: This one’s hard. And this has come up with, when you have shelters open, for example, during disasters and you have sex offenders that show up and undocumented individuals, in the middle of a disaster, the first goal of emergency management is to save lives. And so this is something that I know a lot of emergency managers are grappling with. For example, if it’s a sexual offender who has paperwork that shows they’re supposed to self identify. Ideally, that should be the case, and I know a case study in which that happened, they were able to quarantine those individuals into a different part of the school that was being used as a shelter. And then as soon as the waters receded from the flood, they were able to relocate those individuals to a separate shelter. So I will say that this is something a lot of emergency managers are grappling with, specific to undocumented individuals.

[00:42:00]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And a question related to access and how we’re alerting people to things that need to happen. This is from WCAB News in North Carolina. And that question is, why is it required to issue alerts in other languages when English is the official language of the U.S. per the president’s executive order? So maybe I will direct that to Dr. Sutton.

[00:42:22]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: I don’t know that it’s a requirement at the national level. In fact, I don’t believe it is. The wireless emergency alert service makes it possible to issue messages in English and Spanish. In other words, the technology makes it possible to write in Spanish characters. It does not mean that emergency managers are actually writing those messages and sending them in another language. Local jurisdictions, local cities and states do make those requirements at the state level. So I know California requires messages issued in multiple languages, Washington, New York. And they’re trying to meet the needs of all of the populations that might be at risk, regardless of the language that they speak.

And it’s as Dr. Knox was saying, that the objective is to save lives. And so it’s choosing not to speak in the language that people need to hear a message in, means that those lives are at greater risk. And frequently, it’s not because people are choosing not to speak in that other language or send a message in the other language, it’s because they don’t have the resources to do so. And the wireless emergency alert service does not yet offer language messaging in other languages which have other kinds of characters that are not English and Spanish, such as in Arabic or Chinese. We don’t have that capability yet.

[00:44:00]

SARA WHITLOCK: That makes a lot of sense. A question from KXLN Univision in Houston is, we’ve had a relatively quiet hurricane season, however, as journalists, our priority is to help keep as many people safe as possible. So in today’s climate, how can we ensure that the Hispanic community is truly protected? In Houston, we’ve seen wildfires that have forced communities to evacuate, yet many hesitate to go to shelters out of fear. What advice would you give, not only about how we deliver the message, but also about keeping them safe in every sense? So maybe Dr. Trivedi and Dr. Sutton, these are for you.

[00:44:34]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: I think this comes back to a theme that we’ve been repeating throughout, and that’s relationship building. I think developing and reinforcing relationships even outside of disaster contexts is really, really critical between emergency management, and government officials, and weather announcers, and officials, and local reporters with their communities is really essential. Because when we think about what Dr. Sutton’s been saying with the warnings and we think about how people respond to these things and how people make decisions, a lot of it is about hearing and listening, but also trust.

And so part of this is ensuring that these relationships and this sense of trust exists well before the disaster actually happens. And so if we’re thinking about knock on wood, thus far, quiet hurricane season, taking this time to build these relationships and reinforce who knows what and how people engage with one another in all senses, in every part of a community is really essential because that’s really going to come out in the most positive way in the moment of disaster. So when you need it, you’re going to have wanted to build those relationships beforehand because that’s really going to help make sure that the communication is clearer, that people trust and believe and listen to it more effectively, and that people who need to can reach out to who and where they need to when the moment actually happens.

[00:46:19]

SARA WHITLOCK: Anything else?

[00:46:19]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: I’m not sure that I have a whole lot to add to that, honestly. We have limited research on how to communicate alerts and warnings effectively in the Spanish language. There has been research funded by NOAA to investigate that for weather hazards. But other hazards, we haven’t had as much attention. And different cultural groups that are Spanish speaking have different ways of thinking about some of the words that are used for alerts and warnings also, which makes it more complicated.

So we have some gaps in our capabilities to communicate. But in places like Texas, where you have native Spanish speakers and people who are very familiar with their populations, they can draw from that expertise to craft messages that are culturally appropriate to their population in order to communicate effectively. Once it’s communicated, I don’t have answers, that’s where I would rely on Dr. Trivedi’s answer.

[00:47:32]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you, both. And a question from the Palm Beach Post turning more to the actual infrastructure surrounding disasters. The question is, the effort to harden infrastructure has been happening in a systemic way since Hurricane Andrew hit. Do you think that there’s any amount of money that would create an electrical grid that can withstand whatever a disaster dishes out? And what would be the most important feature of a resilient electric grid, if we know? So perhaps Dr. Knox, this one is a question for you.

[00:48:02]

CLAIRE KNOX: Great question. What I can talk about is a lot of the changes in policies that we saw post Andrew. So you mentioned really focusing on building the resilience of those different infrastructures. We saw things like changes to the building code to require tie downs, and that’s now normal. But even though you mentioned Hurricane Andrew and fast forward to Hurricane Michael that impacted the panhandle of Florida that completely knocked out communication systems, all the energy for months, is that it’s one thing to require it, it’s another thing to actually implement it. And so what we find, unfortunately, in a lot of communities is that, while there might be good plans and good policies on the book, they simply don’t implement them for various reasons. It could be political, financial, organizational, et cetera. I’ll pause there, see if anyone else wants to jump in.

[00:49:08]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: Well, I mean, I’ll add that it can take a lot of time for these things to be implemented, way longer than many people think. And sometimes things get grandfathered in. I know when I was talking to people on the ground about Katrina recovery, they were telling me about quote unquote, temporary housing that was still in place after Hurricane Camille from 1969.

So this can take far longer than I think many people are aware of and for all the reasons that Dr. Knox referenced, but this is a time and resources question as well, and that really complicates things. And we can look at other examples internationally and think about really well adapted systems that work really hard to preparing these infrastructure questions that even then you can hit a scale of disaster where things become problematic. I think, thinking about Japan in 2011, and the scale of earthquake that they were faced with Tohoku. Sometimes you just do hit a point where the disaster and the hazard outweigh the infrastructure. And so there are limits to human construction. And I think that’s always important to remember, and we should still prepare the human side, no matter what .

[00:50:34]

SARA WHITLOCK: Makes sense. And as we think about what is happening after these disasters. We have a question from WCAB News in North Carolina. And this question is, is there any research, or do you have any comments on disaster tourism after hurricanes? It’s a big issue in Henderson County, North Carolina. People in neighboring towns and counties need access to roads. Some locals feel like they’re on display for the wrong reasons. Does anyone have thoughts about research answers to those questions?

[00:51:02]

CLAIRE KNOX: I’ll just jump in really quick, is that you have to plan for that. We saw during Hurricane Andrew that hit in August of 1992, hot, South Florida, you had trucks coming in from around the United States that had coats, winter coats. People just cleared out all of their closets and dumping all these donations. So donations management is a huge issue, and it still remains an issue. You have to prepare and plan for that work with your nonprofit organizations to be able to manage that.

For me and from the emergency managers I’ve talked to, it should be up to the community as to when they want the tourism to start back up. There’s a, you need the economy to get up and running for various reasons, but then in the same respect, you’re having to manage all those individuals. You’re having people show up. The hotels are beyond capacity because of all the line workers and all the other entities that are there that need to be there to help recover. And so it’s a dwindling of resources, potentially for that local jurisdiction. So any emergency manager I talk to say, let us tell you when we can welcome you back.

[00:52:19]

SARA WHITLOCK: That makes a lot of sense. And a question from the Maine Monitor. Many emergency managers in rural parts of the country have multiple roles. They’re also town managers, town clerks, and tax collectors. How can cash strapped towns strengthen their emergency plans and resilience efforts when they’re already so overburdened?

[00:52:44]

CLAIRE KNOX: Is that a me question again?

[00:52:45]

SARA WHITLOCK: Oh, please, Dr. Sutton.

[00:52:49]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: I was just going to share that there are resources that have been paid for by the federal government that are free, especially in space of alerts and warnings. And so the FEMA IPAWS program funded my university research team to build something called the Message Design Dashboard, which allows an emergency manager to log in and write a complete message from beginning to end and gives them the contents that are necessary to address what is the impact of the hazard and what are the actions people can take to protect themselves. And when they finished writing the message, they copy it and paste it into their wireless emergency alert software. And so that kind of resource is freely available. It does mean that they need to become a little bit familiar with it before they use it. But at least knowing how to log in and that kind of thing. But there are other things that FEMA paid for to make free, as well. Like, we built something called the Warning Lexicon, which is available. I can put that in the chat. We paid for it so that it’s open access through the Natural Hazards Review, the journal, and it’s been downloaded 15,000 times and internationally, too, so that people have the contents that they need to build good messages and the step by step workflow.

So I think part of this is recognizing that those resources are there and that they’re not going to go away and being able to find them when you need them. But I’m happy to put that in the chat if you’re interested in knowing where those resources are living.

[00:54:26]

CLAIRE KNOX: To compliment that, FEMA has free independent study courses that provide you some basic understanding. If you’re getting thrown into the emergency management world and you don’t know what NIMS or ICS is, these are free courses that will go over and provide you certificates, so it allows you to build your resume in addition.

The second thing is that, your universities are a huge amazing resource, not only for the research that Dr. Sutton was talking about, we have here at UCF, hazardaware.org, and it gives you parcel level risk and hazard information that then jurisdictions can use to write reports and to update their plans. There’s the Social Vulnerability Index that also is out of South Carolina. But universities, we have students. We do internships. We do service learning projects. And so what we’ve done with a lot of the smaller entities in Florida is that we partner with them to update their plans as this class assignment, and to even create a drafted plan. The final thing is that there are tons of templates that are available through FEMA’s website to write a COOP Plan, a continuity of operations plan, hazard mitigation plan. It’s a basic templates. We all use the same language, and so those are some really great starting points.

[00:56:00]

SARA WHITLOCK: I’ll just-

[00:56:03]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: I’ll go. Sorry, Sarah. I’ll just echo that universities are here, and we’re always looking to help. I mean, that’s I think a big reason why many of us are in this field is to do this kind of work and get it accessible and out to communities. I know the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, we’ve got a team who’s been working to make research more accessible through a program called DRCit!, with accessible documents and even animated videos to make it accessible on lots of different levels, too. So there’s lots of different ways that people are making these materials accessible and understandable from the government side and from the university side, just trying to be more helpful. So also don’t hesitate to reach out to those people in your area.

[00:56:58]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. It’s great to hear about all these resources that exist that people can access. Now we have one more question, which will give our experts a chance to quickly cover the most crucial insights here. First, I want to flag that journalists you’ll receive a short email survey when you sign off from this briefing. If you could take even 30 seconds to give us any feedback you have, it would be really helpful to design our services to give you what you need for your reporting. So for our final question, in about 30 seconds, what is one key take home message for reporters covering natural disasters and how communities respond to them? And I’ll turn to Dr. Knox first.

[00:57:29]

CLAIRE KNOX: Thank you again for this amazing opportunity to talk to you today. Emergency management is not just FEMA. Every disaster begins and ends at the local government level, and it is a facilitated, networked approach to managing a disaster, and all sectors need to be engaged because these issues are wicked, they’re complex, they’re dynamic, and it’s going to take everyone on board to bring their expertise to be able to help our communities be resilient.

[00:58:00]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And Dr. Sutton.

[00:58:05]

JEANNETTE SUTTON: In 30 seconds. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of alerts and warnings for helping people to be safe and initiating the practices of writing those templates ahead of time, preparing the community to understand what it means when a message shows up on their phone, and writing good messages that are understandable and actionable. It’s vital to community safety and delaying sending warnings, it puts people’s lives at risk.

[00:58:45]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. And Dr. Trivedi.

[00:58:48]

JENNIFER TRIVEDI: Thank you so much for this. It was really great. And I just want to say that people matter. They’re really at the heart of all of this. And understanding and remembering that relationships and connections between people start long before the disaster does and continue long after the disaster is over. And that can really help understand and approach how we get through them.

[00:59:14]

SARA WHITLOCK: Thank you. Huge thanks to the panelists here for sharing so much information and wisdom today, especially as hurricane season is underway. I’ll also flag that we will provide links that we’ve discussed here in our conversation, in our followup email with the video and the transcript of our conversation. And from all of us at SciLine,  thanks to the journalists who logged on to gain insight and contexts that will enrich your coverage. So I hope we’ll see you at our next briefing. Thank you.