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Knowing What to Expect: Hazards, Vulnerability, and Disasters

STARTING POINT

Pretest to assess your knowledge on hazards, vulnerability and disasters.

Determine where you need to concentrate your effort.

What You’ll Learn in This Chapter

• The possibility and probability of disasters.
• General emergency management responsibilities.
• Types of natural, technological and anthropogenic hazards.
• The interaction of hazards and vulnerability.
• Anticipated changes and demands after disasters.
• The need for response and recovery operations.

After Studying This Chapter, You’ll Be Able To

• Understand the impact and scope of various disaster levels.
• Differentiate among the diverse hazard categories.
• Comprehend the relation among hazards, vulnerability and disasters.
• Examine the relationship between response and recovery functions.
• Identify needs to be addressed during and after disaster.

Goals and Outcomes

• Compare and contrast different disaster magnitudes.
• Define and use basic disaster and emergency management terminology.
• Evaluate distinct types of hazards as well as common disaster characteristics.
• Predict changes resulting from disasters and resulting implications.
• Advocate for the importance of response and recovery operations.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the intriguing disaster discipline and the indispensable emergency management profession! As a current/future emergency manager or related specialist, it is vital that you are aware of the important concepts and principles relating to your duties and responsibilities that must be performed when disasters occur. It is especially imperative that you are able to distinguish among differing hazard types as well as the factors that lead to and exacerbate these devastating events. For instance, it is vital that you understand natural, technological, and civil/conflict triggering agents as well as how they interact with the vulnerabilities people and organizations create in society. Comprehending the causes and consequences of disasters and the changes that become visible when they unfold is likewise necessary if you are to be able to react to them effectively. Being cognizant of the goals pertaining to response and recovery operations will also help you become a successful emergency manager. These are a few of the topics addressed in this introductory chapter of Disaster Response and Recovery: Strategies and Tactics for Resilience.

1.1 The Occurrence of Disasters

Everyday people around the world are impacted by events that produce injuries, cause death, damage buildings/infrastructure, destroy personal belongings and interrupt daily activities. These disturbing experiences are categorized as accidents, crises, emergencies, disasters, calamities or catastrophes. Such incidents adversely affect individuals, groups, communities and even nations. Each of these events is similar in that they require action from government officials, businesses, nonprofit organizations, citizens/bystanders, and the victims and survivors themselves. However, these occurrences vary dramatically in terms of magnitude, extent of duration and scope. For example, a routine traffic accident can typically be handled within minutes or hours by a few police officers who file reports and a tow truck that removes wreckage. A structural conflagration may require one or two fire departments, but it can displace the resident or family for weeks or months. When a mass shooting occurs, resources are needed to neutralize the threat, investigate the incident, and address the longer‐term psychological toll that may possibly result from these intentional acts of violence. Alternatively, an airplane crash may necessitate the participation of firefighters and emergency medical service (EMS) personnel as well as airline officials and government employees such as a coroner or public information officer. If the plane crash does not take the lives of all of the passengers and crew, the victims and survivors of the ordeal may be injured or permanently disabled and require long‐term medical care. Finally, when a major earthquake or hurricane affects an urban area, many organizations will become involved. Besides first responders, additional personnel will be needed to remove debris, repair utilities, provide relief assistance and coordinate rebuilding endeavors that could take years. Thus, the impact of a minor accident is both quantitatively and qualitatively different than a major disaster or catastrophe (see Table 1‐1) (Quarantelli, 2006). While this book does discuss common emergencies and less frequent catastrophes, it focuses most of its attention on larger disasters and how to deal with them in a more effective manner.

1.1.1 Important Concepts

Disasters are defined as deadly, destructive, and disruptive events that occur when a hazard interacts with human vulnerability. Disasters are significant societal events that injure and kill people, damage structures/infrastructure and personal belongings, and complicate the routine activities people undertake on a daily basis (e.g., sleeping, bathing, cooking, traveling, going to school, working, etc.).

Table 1‐1 Comparison of Event Magnitude.

In the simplest of terms, there are two categories of variables that interact to produce a disaster. A hazard is the risk, trigger or threat that initiates a disaster. Hazards include natural, technological or anthropogenic (human‐induced) agents like earthquakes, industrial explosions, or even terrorist attacks that negatively affect people or critical infrastructure. Vulnerability, on the other hand, refers to the proneness of people to disasters based on factors such as their geographic location, exposure of property, level of preparedness, income and/or other social variables. The ability of individuals, organizations, and communities to deal with disaster also determines the degree of vulnerability. Vulnerability is therefore the human element of disasters, while hazard agents may or may not always have a direct social cause.

Although disasters result from the interaction of both hazards and vulnerability, the two concepts have distinct implications for practical application. Because it is not always possible to prevent or control hazards, people and organizations should give extra attention to efforts that reduce their vulnerability to disasters (McEntire 2005). For this reason, the knowledge and expertise of individuals that are employed in emergency management and related professions are required to deal effectively with mass emergencies, disasters, calamities and catastrophes (Figure 1‐1).

From an academic standpoint, emergency management “is the study of how humans and their institutions deal with hazards, vulnerabilities and the events that result from their interaction” (Jensen, 2013). The emergency management discipline accordingly seeks to create and disseminate knowledge about what people and organizations can do to diminish the frequency and impact of disasters. From a practical perspective, emergency management “is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters” (Blanchard et al., 2007, p. 4). This suggests the need for highly educated and trained individuals who are given the responsibility to advance the goals of reducing disasters and reacting to them in an effective manner. These professionals are known as emergency managers; they have a keen “interest in disasters and a strong desire to alleviate the suffering of those impacted” by these adverse events (Phillips, Neal and Webb 2017, p. 106).

Figure 1‐1 Emergency management personnel often attend meetings to prepare for future disasters.Michael Rieger/FEMA.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/ef‐scale.html

Put differently, emergency managers are public servants that help jurisdictions reduce the liabilities that lead to disasters. These employees (governmental and even non‐governmental) also work closely with many concerned stakeholders and endeavor to build...