Responding to Concurrent Public Safety Emergencies

Introduction

Murphy's Fourth Law postulates that "if there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong." The corresponding corollary to this law is that "if there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then," and the historical record confirms that is certainly the case with numerous public safety emergencies. The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss three unique challenges with respect to (1) initial responses, (2) the evacuation of endangered people, and (3) the treatment of injured victims that may occur in a public safety emergency situation involving the simultaneous occurrence of multiple manmade and natural disasters. Following this review, the paper provides a summary of the research and important findings concerning responding to concurrent public safety emergencies.

Initial Responses to Concurrent Disasters

There is growing recognition among emergency management authorities that responses to even a single disaster situation require a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary approach. According to Coaffee (2021), "Institutional responses have evolved from a focus upon small specialist networks to much larger multi-institutional, multi-scalar and multi-hazard responses to, and preparations for, complex emergencies that cut across numerous administrative jurisdictions" (p. 37). It is therefore vitally important for municipalities to have up-to-date response plans in place that are based on a risk assessment of their community-based resources and partner organizations in order to formulate timely and effective initial responses (McEntire, 2019).

One of the unfortunate realities of disaster planning, however, is the very real potential for the unexpected to disrupt — and even prevent — first responders from reaching the sites where people need assistance. Likewise, multiple threats may occur simultaneously, as in the case of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where people must be socially distanced and provided with face masks as well as emergency medicine, food, and water supplies as part of the first response. In this regard, Quigley et al. (2020) emphasize that "the aggregation of evacuees into communal environments and increased demand on medical, economic, and infrastructural capacity associated with natural hazard impacts may increase COVID-19 exposure risks and vulnerabilities" (p. 200). As a result, conditions such as a highly contagious virus will invariably affect the type, scope, and nature of the first response to concurrent disaster events (Quigley et al., 2020).

Clearly, formulating effective multi-pronged responses to concurrent public safety emergencies is not only a complex process — implementing and administering such responses may be difficult or even impossible under certain conditions. Consequently, when people's lives and property are at stake, flexibility and innovation are key to effective responses. While emergency first responders can help save lives and property, it is also essential to evacuate as many people from the disaster scene as possible, both before and after the onset of disaster events, in order to prevent additional human casualties (McEntire, 2019). As the recent, on-again, off-again evacuations of war victims from Ukraine have vividly demonstrated, however, this process can be challenged at every turn.

Evacuation of Endangered Citizens

Because the evacuation of large numbers of people is a hazardous and enormously expensive enterprise, evacuation routes and possible sheltering plans should be evaluated during the emergency preparation process (McEntire, 2019). As noted above, however, optimal evacuation routes may be disrupted or destroyed as a result of concurrent disaster events, and viable alternatives must be identified — sometimes "on the fly." Of paramount concern throughout the evacuation process is the need to ensure the safety of evacuees during and following their removal to another location (Boyd et al., 2009). The experience of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans stands as a stark reminder of how quickly evacuation plans can break down when infrastructure fails and multiple hazards converge simultaneously.

Conclusion

Complex problems typically demand complex solutions, and the research was consistent in showing that responding to a cascading series of natural and/or manmade disasters is certainly no exception. As the number of existential threats arrayed against humankind continues to increase — including climate change — it is not far-fetched to envision a scenario where wildfires, tornadoes, and floods combine simultaneously to threaten American lives and communities. In the final analysis, it is reasonable to conclude that careful planning for such scenarios is critically important, but so too is the need for flexibility in response to concurrent public safety emergencies.

References

Boyd, E., Wolshon, B., & Van Heerden, I. (2009). Risk communication and public response during evacuations: The New Orleans experience of Hurricane Katrina. Public Performance & Management Review, 32(3), 437–462.

Coaffee, J. (2021). Futureproofing against shock: Institutional responses to terrorist risk in London, 1990–2020. Applied Geography, 133, 37–42.

Li, G., Wang, L., Cao, C., Fang, R., Chen, C., Qiao, X., Yang, H., Hall, B. J., & Elhai, J. D. (2020). An item-based analysis of PTSD emotional numbing symptoms in disaster-exposed children and adolescents. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 48(10), 1303–1311.

McEntire, D. (2019). Introduction to homeland security: Understanding terrorism prevention and emergency management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Quigley, M. C., Attanayake, J., King, A., & Prideaux, F. (2020). A multi-hazards earth science perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic: The potential for concurrent and cascading crises. Environment Systems & Decisions, 40(2), 199–215.