The Big Chaos Big Change Series: Part 2, The Disaster Resource Mess
In US Disasters, There's No Overall Coordination System For Who Gets Essential Resources
Why This Series
Welcome to the Big Chaos Big Change Series. This series is set up to help with big picture perspective on some of the huge challenges we are facing and some of the hard realities out there.
There’s a post here with an introduction. Basically, we’re in a time of transformation nationwide and worldwide; the pro-democracy coalition in the US is now being more pro-active and on offense than being reactive and on defense; and we’re better positioned to drive change now than at any other time recently. We should get ready to drive big change.
This nonprofit is set up to help us make shift together even as we navigate this intensifying era.
As things unfold, we’re going to need people to keep their wits about themselves and to help each other through. Having some situational awareness about what could happen and how rickety our society and governments are in the US can help us be more ready together for the unexpected as things get crazier.
We’re Not Set Up Well For More Than One Catastrophe At A Time
One reason why things could get very intense up in this country in the next few months or years is that the US is not set up well for responding to more than one catastrophe at a time.
This is in an era where we’re having more frequent and severe disasters due to climate change on a finite planet with a growing world population — and when millions of those people live in high-hazard zones.
The first post in this series (Part 1) got into why situational awareness of all of this hard reality can help… but it also gave a big picture take on this year’s wildfire season and its severity. Since that series kick-off post (Part 1), the US’ wildfire response has gotten international aid from two countries, and wildfire’s National Coordination System remain at its highest activation level (Preparedness Level 5).
When you look at emergency preparedness in the US, it can seem like we’ve got pretty good systems for handling disasters. That’s mostly true — when we don’t have a lot of catastrophic stuff happening simultaneously.
When you dig deeper, disaster response can be a lot more chaotic than what we might prefer from our collected government agencies.
There Are 10+ Competing Resource Mobilization & Mutual Aid Systems In The US
US government agencies at all levels do do some national coordination of resources and mutual aid when we have more than one disaster, more than one type of disaster, or disasters in several regions. To a point.
But, due to federalism and other complexities of this nation… we essentially have about 12 or so different multi-scale and overlapping resource mobilization and mutual aid systems that mobilize and demobilize disaster response people and resources to and between disaster incidents.
People and resources can include anything from fire engines to helicopters to Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Teams to map specialists to batteries to drinking water to on-site weather equipment… and even to things like mobile kitchens or shower units that serve thousands.
Critical resources are those resources that are crucial to addressing life and safety factors that are happening in the disasters or catastrophes. For example, helicopters or ambulances are often critical resources. In the early Covid-19 pandemic, N-95 facemasks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) were critical resources.
Federalism is what its called when powers are divided between a federal government and other regional or local levels. The US’ system of local governments, state governments, Tribal governments, and the federal government is a federalist system. It’s part of why disaster coordination in the US is super complicated — although it’s not the only reason.
The 10 most-used resource mobilization and mutual aid systems in the US include:
EMAC for state-to-state (interstate) mutual aid;
Tribal mutual aid;
Wildfire’s National Coordination System (more in this post);
The DHS partnerships framework for critical infrastructure protection and resilience (including for coordinating infrastructure restoration);
In-state (intrastate) mutual aid systems for structure fire or law enforcement;
Private sector mutual aid for infrastructure restoration;
Non-governmental organization (NGO) responses such as those through NVOAD;
The US Military;
the US National Guard which can be mobilized either by the federal government or by state governors and used through Dual Status Command authorities.
These multi-scale and overlapping resource mobilization and mutual aid systems operate with varying levels of protocols, coordination, and cohesion. Some are more ad-hoc while others have robustly developed policies, protocols, standards, and technologies.
After 9/11 the US was working on standardizing this some of this a bit more through the National Incident Management System (NIMS). NIMS efforts have not been fully successful for reasons that are not the point of this post (but which I could go on about for hours). Some but not all of elements of the NIMS at FEMA have shifted cooperatively to the All-Hazards Incident Management Teams Association, a nonprofit.
Even if NIMS had been fully implemented, it was not slated to include any kind of national resource coordination system.
A national coordination system over and between all of these resource mobilization and mutual aid systems has never been planned.
A proposal for a national coordination system was floated by the national security community under the Bush Administration after 9/11. The idea did not make it past a draft version of executive order HSPD-5. That fact is not public information and has not likely been published elsewhere.
In the final HSPD-5 (PDF) signed on February 28, 2003, the mandate for a national coordination system from a draft version had been removed. HSPD-5 was signed one day before the US Department of Homeland Security officially started as a department on March 1, 2003.
That was an era of great change, but we didn’t do all the things we could have to be better ready for big chaos. We did spend billions. But we didn’t necessarily spend it in ways that would help us find, mobilize, and effectively coordinate response resources for future catastrophes more effectively… because here today we’ve still got all these competing, overlapping systems.
The US resource mobilization landscape is inherently messy. It’s messy when there aren’t even very many disasters nationally. It gets ever-more complicated when there’s more than one major disaster or — heaven forbid — more than one catastrophe.
When there are a lot of disasters or more than one catastrophe, these 10+ US disaster resource mobilization and mutual aid systems end up competing for critical disaster response resources.
That’s a challenge, because there is no established process to adjudicate the competition for critical disaster response resources between these systems.
There Is No Established Process To Prioritize & Allocate Critical Disaster Resources
Why does all of this matter?
It matters because when there are lots of disasters or multiple catastrophes, we have no established process to adjudicate the requests, competition, and conflicts for critical disaster response resources between our 10+ resource mobilization and mutual aid systems.
In theory, FEMA’s set of frameworks and plans would cover all of this… but in reality it doesn’t. Not by a longshot — because of our complicated country; its many levels of government (i.e., federalism); the various ways in which we do resource mobilization and mutual aid; and the complicated disaster strategies, response systems, agencies, policies, funding, and laws set up by a disjointed and frequently deadlocked Congress.
When there are many disasters or when there’s more than one catastrophe, certain critical resources tend to run out fast.
Because we’ve got no way to prioritize critical resource requests or to adjudicate conflicts, critical resources often go to to the entity or agency that happens to be the closest, that happens to have asked first, that has the most money, or that’s just lucky enough to get the resource at the moment they get it. Those entities requesting or ordering resources could be local governments, states, Tribes, nonprofits, private sector organizations, or even individuals.
This haphazard approach is not efficient or effective. It leaves us less resilient than we could be in an era when disaster risk is increasing.
Several of our 10+ resource mobilization and mutual aid systems also don’t have mechanisms for prioritizing and mobilizing the most critical resource needs within their internal request and mobilization processes.
This is also less than ideal. It means that often in disasters, less critical resources may be processed before more critical resources… even as Americans are waiting for help. It also means that the closest resources may not be sent but rather that resources could be mobilized from very far away… even as time is critical for saving lives.
These deficiencies have dramatic effects for Americans desperate for help in the midst of disasters and catastrophes.
The types of critical resources vary for each disaster and catastrophe.
For example, in a disaster with widespread power outages, gigantic generators are a critical resource that large facilities need in order to get restarted. In a set of catastrophes, will those precious gigantic generators go to oil companies to restart refineries… or to communities that need huge generators to restart their water plants to get a region’s water running again? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s often a crapshoot.
There are very real impacts to where critical disaster resources end up going.
For example, if we can get local communities to get their water and power back on fast after a disaster, we’re more likely to see people and businesses stick around in the community even if there’s been a lot of damage.
When the infrastructure goes out and stays out for more than a week, businesses start to fail. If it stays hard to live in a place for a long time, people who left during the disaster may not return afterward. Small businesses may never recover.
If we were able to prioritize debris removal resources in an impacted area to help get electricity restored and to prioritize getting a giant generator to restart a water plant… one community might have a faster, more robust recovery. Once both electricity and water are running, lots of other things can happen more effectively in the impacted area. That makes it easier for people and businesses to stay, or to return.
That’s just one hypothetical situation; critical resources vary by incident.
The better job we do with all the aspects of disasters — the better chance our communities have to survive and thrive long term even when they do experience disasters. The more disasters we have at once, the harder this gets.
We’re not working aggressively to make our overall disaster response system tighter even though the disaster risk is rising.
Imagining More Than One Giant Catastrophe
I always get nervous when the US wildfire system hits Preparedness Level 5 and stays there… especially when it happens during hurricane season (which it usually does). Because if there’s a huge hurricane disaster, the wildfire system usually sends quite a number of response resources to help.
So who helps for a potential hurricane catastrophe when the wildfire system is already in Preparedness Level 5? Well, whoever can. And then we’re into mobilizing even more of the 10+ multi-scale and overlapping resource mobilization and mutual aid systems; many elements of which are already activated for fighting wildfires.
What if we also have a cyber attack on infrastructure even worse than the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack while we already have a major fire season and a huge hurricane impact? What about another 9/11 at the same time? Or a major earthquake? A major oil spill? Any of that is possible simultaneously, but our imaginations don’t conceive well of multiple concurrent catastrophes. In fact we’re often surprised and shocked by how severe just one catastrophe can be.
We need to imagine bigger to be better ready for an increasingly complicated world.
We need to imagine bigger so we push politicians to better address these risks.
We need to imagine bigger so we do more locally to be ready in case the next catastrophe hits where we are… and response systems are maxed out because there are already other catastrophes happening.
What if no one is coming to “save” us?
We need to be more ready for that. That’s part of why we advocate for connection, community, and coalitions here. We need to get more resilient in the places where we live.
85 Days
It’s 85 days to the election. A lot can happen in 85 days. Friday’s Big Chaos Big Change post (Part 1) had a list of risks/possibilities.
We could do things now together locally or regionally to help us deal with the challenging realities of the very real risk landscape we’re facing. We’ll handle it all better if we face the hard realities, make plans, get people together to get into it, and build it into our politics, too.
Since VP Harris became the presumptive nominee, the possibilities for huge, transformative change are opening up.
We have 85 days in which we could be doing amazing and highly engaging civic engagement activities that help motivate people to vote for Democrats who can help us make bigger changes that we’ll need to help with what’s in front of us.
The “disaster stuff” and “resilience building” civic engagement activities in this idea list from the Make Shift Happen page are ideas communities can use to reach and motivate voters — while also building strength and growing resilience.
Other aspects of this nonprofit’s 5 Things approach can also help us collectively better navigate this tricky risk landscape. In fact this nonprofit’s approach was designed with this risk landscape in mind. I’m writing this series to explain why, in more detail.
There is not another organization like this — Shift the Country is uniquely structured for the huge challenges in this transformative time. If you want to talk more about how, set up a time — or just invite us to your group to speak. Email team@shiftthecountry.com or call (515) 375-9027.
We can get started now.
Take care. Keep the faith — in us. We got this.
And keep your wits about you.
Onward.
Vanessa Burnett is the Executive Director of Shift the Country, a unique nonprofit set up to drive civic engagement, public pressure, and voter turnout to create a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable democracy. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with 25+ years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, emergency management, land management, continuity of operations, and disaster information sharing.
1. "the US is not set up well for responding to more than one catastrophe at a time."
So true. Not only from a response resource standpoint, but from an emotional/attention span issue. Think about how we were all cheering for one little country in eastern Europe, single-handedly holding back the world's second most powerful army. Until Oct 7. Then poor Vlad couldn't buy his way onto anything more pressing than page 6. And as our attention faded, so did support.
2. "we have no established process to adjudicate the requests, competition, and conflicts for critical disaster response resources"
This may be a factor in FEMA's push for Lifeline reporting -- so they can see how many red lights are flashing (literally), but since FEMA plays a role in very few of those 12 overlapping systems, even a perfect Lifeline reporting system won't help much. What you're saying is that there are many "marketplaces" for localities and states to "shop" for help, and with not much of an "invisible hand" those marketplaces become competitors as much as they are collaborators.