Why This Series
Welcome to the Big Chaos Big Change Series. There’s a post here with an introduction.
This series is set up to help with big picture perspective on some of the huge challenges and hard realities we’re facing in the US. 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.
This nonprofit is set up to help us make shift together even as we navigate this intensifying era.
The Federal Government Does Not Have A Secret Plan To Address Multiple Simultaneous Catastrophes
During my time in government, I worked pretty deep in some of the policy and planning parts of the federal government and specifically in DHS. I did some work in places where I could dig deeper into what was behind the scenes. Some of the specifics are classified or considered to be “for official use only” (FOUO) so I have to be careful in what I say.
What I wanted to know is… given the whole disaster coordination landscape described in this post series (in Part 1 and Part 2), does the federal government have some secret-squirrel, deep, dark, hidden plan to deal with a high volume of disasters or catastrophes? Are there folks set up to handle some of the tough coordination, difficult choices, and high-pressure needs for prioritization to allocate critical disaster resources if the US ends up facing a series of major catastrophes?
The short answer is “no.”
As noted in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, there is no overall national coordination system set up to coordinate, prioritize, and allocate resources between the 10+ multi-scale and overlapping resource mobilization an mutual aid systems that support disaster response in the US.
There is no secret plan behind the scenes to somehow navigate around that hard reality. There is no secret plan for the critical coordination and conflict adjudication that would be needed if we got completely overwhelmed by catastrophes and various states or cities were clamoring for help. There is no secret plan behind the scenes to handle multiple catastrophes effectively.
It’s not nefarious. It’s not intentional.
It is a failure of imagination.
That failure of imagination persists in politics, too. Right now there’s no political will or political momentum to do a better job in this country with disasters and catastrophes. It’s covered a tiny bit when referencing climate change but that’s not the same as updating big picture strategy for quickly-intensifying disaster risks.
In any case, there’s no secret deep thinking strategy in government to deal with multiple huge catastrophes. We need to be doing more right where we live to be ready. Thus the Shift the Country approach and guide for action. We need tighter connection, stronger communities, and deeper resilience for what’s coming.
Critical Lifelines
One very neat development since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina is that now there’s an approach for talking about Community Lifelines. This helps us ask questions like: What do we need to do keep a community alive, or to keep all the communities alive across a whole catastrophe area? How do we do that most effectively, from the beginning of the emergency? What are the things that need to happen across a whole region to get the power back on? It’s good to see.
The evolution of all this is a whole different story and near and dear to my heart, but not the point of this post today. Sometimes there are sparks of light mixed in with all the chaos — the critical lifelines work is literally that.
Continuity Provisions & Approaches
There’s another source of light in potential chaos, and that’s government continuity work…. including continuity of government (COG) approaches and continuity of operations programs (COOP).
COOP stuff includes the systems and policies that keep essential critical things operating through a highly disruptive crisis or threat. COOP activities include fighting wildfires, monitoring for earthquakes, keeping an eye on the nukes, having the US Coast Guard operate, maintaining the borders, having a functional military, and so on. COOP specifics are often protected sensitive information at the FOUO or classified levels.
COG stuff keeps Constitutional US government functioning and includes things like keeping federal and departmental leadership intact. It’s most visible during the State of the Union (SOTU) and similar speeches where one member of the cabinet goes to an undisclosed location outside of the Washington, DC area “just in case.” Lots of the COG stuff is highly classified.
Some unclassified bits of all this continuity stuff are covered in this fun continuity directive, issued by DHS FEMA. There are National Essential Functions (NEFs) and derivatives of those called PMEFs (primary mission essential functions) and MEFs (mission essential functions).
The point of all this is that if there were to be major catastrophes or attacks — there would be people and agencies in the government that would theoretically keep the most critical stuff functioning to hold our government and our country together. So that part is good: there are systems, sites, and people who keep certain essential functions going. That reality can help ensure continuity of this country and of the response systems that do exist if disaster/catastrophe things get super bad and overwhelming.
Local and state governments also have COOP/COG approaches, provisions and systems.
Businesses and critical infrastructure operators use something called Continuity of Business (COB) and often use continuity standards and corresponding certifications to ensure ongoing operations of essential functions or infrastructure in crises, chaos, disasters, and catastrophes.
This whole set of continuity things help us have deeper infrastructure resilience, community resilience, economic resilience, and disaster resilience. That may be a small comfort, but these things are sort of spines behind the scenes meant to hold governments, infrastructure, and businesses together in the case of disruption.
These continuity provisions and approaches may help hold critical aspects of society together when and if things get really complicated due to a high disaster and catastrophe load; especially if the continuity capabilities are well assembled and supported when crises hit.
84 Days
It’s 84 days to the election. A lot can happen in 84 days. Friday’s post had a list of possibilities. We have 84 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.
We can do widespread civic engagement to reach and engage more voters before the election. We can speak about this stuff to groups as well — holler.
Specifically, the “disaster stuff” and “resilience building” civic engagement activities in this idea list from the Make Shift Happen page can help communities build strength and grow resilience too — on top of reaching and motivating voters.
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. Email team@shiftthecountry.com or call (515) 375-9027.
This nonprofit’s approach was designed with this risk landscape in mind. I’m writing this series to explain why, in more detail.
Keep the faith — in us. 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.