DFW isn't ready for large disaster

"Imagine an F-5 tornado touching down in North Texas. A terrorist attack. Or another Gulf Coast hurricane that sends tens of thousands of people fleeing to North Texas.

As many as 37,500 people would need immediate food and shelter over a 10-day period, according to local projections – but a new report says the region isn't prepared."

DMN Story

Another reason I always plan ahead.......

That organization is all volunteer/charity, and with the economy as it is, it's going to be a Slow Go.

So...... what's the DFW government doing, if anything? Are private businesses getting together with a plan?

In dealing with situations of magnitude, we need to INSIST that government agencies leave their massive egos behind. This ongoing problem of different agencies (govt, private and charity) fighting over who's boss has got to stop.

Look at what happened on 9/11 -- has anything changed since then? I'll bet that even in NYC, the bureaucratic nincompoops are still playing king of the mountain, and if something similar happened, they would be as unprepared as they were NINE YEARS AGO. Still no comprehensive communication, no overall plan, just let the people die and reduce the surplus population.

Has anyone actually heard of a good-sized city with a decent disaster plan?

Or is it what Lt. Gen. Honoré: they always plan for the best-case scenario instead of the worst-case scenario?

Sue

IMO the problem is that people want it both ways. On one side people want the government to step and decisively take charge. To have vast stocks of supplies and plans and to have it all regimented like a military operation. On the other hand every single move toward making those sorts of plans and preparations is vilified, spun into a mythology about a vast conspiracy to create a dictatorship and haul the good people people off in trains to FEMA camps. Anything that gets done is carefully sabotaged by design. Any good done is obscured by endless nit-picking and jawboning.

Inevitably the government gets blamed on both ends. The people who claim government can do no good are dead set on making sure it does no good. And then laying blame on anyone who fails to agree with their articles of faith. The people who think government might do some good end up with watered down, half-funded efforts that do little good.

America build superhighways, went to the moon, and put 156,000 troops ashore, under fire on D-day but we can't get our act together now. Too much profit to be had, both financial and political, in things being messed up.

Its an interesting but limited dilemma to me - DFW should look to some cooperation agreements with surrounding areas, sharing resources in the event of the F5 or terrorist disaster they want to prepare for. Surrounding cities can get cots, blankets, tents, food, water, and the rest to DFW within 24 hours - if its available, and if you plan for it ahead of time. In the PNW there's been some planning along these lines in preparation for the Green River Flooding - staging of cots and supplies outside the area such that they can be moved in quickly to house folks in mega shelters. Numbers get better the more you plan and cooperate with others.

Harder nut to crack is training volunteers - Red Cross has a program known as Ready When the Time Comes, which lightly trains folks to help out in a disaster alongside regular RC volunteers. We started a RWTC program last fall, and came up with over 600 volunteers. We can add to that, but it would take a heck of an effort to train 3,000 or more. Then the hard part is retaining all those volunteers, keeping them interested, reminding them of their training, such that when the time comes, they're still Ready.

Also fwiw on the training issue - you can only attract so many volunteers, DFW might also train 'captive audiences', municipal employees. The tend to be co-located with their cities, and should be available to work shelters should the need arise. And for a day's training you can bring a fair number of people up to speed on the how-to's necessary to do the job of sheltering and feeding alot of folks. If the problem is numbers, I would look to that to drive them up.

CERT does a decent job with this. The training is free and you don't need to join the team to get trained. Take a look at http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/ and see if there's a CERT where you live.

It's a risks and costs analysis. What is the risk of another Katrina-style hurricane sending 30,000 people to Dallas? The article said "north Texas" had 30,000 evacuees, but that's a big area - it's not just DFW. And many of the evacuees stayed in motels at their own expense. It wasn't all destitute victims with nothing.

And what's the cost of having food and shelter for the potential 37,500 people?

I'm not sure the odds justify the expense.

I do think the north Texas area should be prepared for a force 5 tornado - those things happen all too often. But I suspect you won't have 37,500 people lining up for food and shelter after a tornado hits. I'm not sure I'd worry about a terrorist strike in North Texas, though. Not something that would require food and shelter for 37,500 people for 10 days.

As others have commented, people demand that there should have been better preparation _after_ the disaster, but they sure don't want to pay for it before it happens.

I think the article raises the point of preparation, and I hope people who live in the area will do some self-analysis and get their own plans. But if I lived there, I'm not sure I'd want to budget the costs of food and shelter for 37,500 people for ten days and pay to have that sitting around all year every year waiting for the next Katrina.

I'd rather have the government plan on tornadoes and the recovery effort after that particular disaster. I think that differs significantly from victim overflow from the Gulf Coast.

CERT has a specific role and very specific training - generally inapplicable to sheltering or feeding folks after a disaster. CERT is good stuff, just different stuff (and fwiw I think CERT as such is a bit more amorphous to address the community's sheltering and feeding needs after a significant disaster).

One of the local CERTs is in fact training and specializing in sheltering. Other CERTs nearby specialize in other things -- I'm new to the team and still learning about what we can do as well as what our neighbors can do. The idea is that we can call on teams that have specialties we may need, and vice versa.

That's how I came to the Red Cross myself - I could wait forever for a call for CERT (filling sandbags and EQ duty were the only tasks available - and 5 years after initial training I can recall one sand bag call), or our CERT unit could train with the Red Cross, and be called out for any fire, flood or feeding event, anytime. The key difference and qualifier was the Red Cross training on sheltering and feeding, nothing specifically from CERT. And a background check, which I don't recall during the CERT process. I like it, its year round duty, opportunities to practice what I've trained at, room to grow. I figure I'll be a CERT person again someday, probably for the first 24 hours of some large and local disaster. Then I'll transition to Red Cross duties. If your training is through CERT, that's great, but I would still ask, whose shelters will you staff, under whose supervision, and in what context?

The main problem is that the unprepared government TAKES control, even if they can't handle it. Then they cry for the military, which takes time. Then the government bureaucrats whine that it isn't their fault, the military moved too slowly, the Red Cross wasn't ready, ad nauseum.

I'm not saying that they have to be prepared to handle everyone in the affected area, because many people will leave ahead of the problem, and have places to go even if something happens with no warning. But when different state/local government agencies aren't even capable of COMMUNICATING with each other, that's just plain stupid.

Sue

I had a sense of deja vue reading this thread and thought "Wasn't a large Texas city hit with a tornado some years ago? Was it Waco?"

Sure enough, a quick google and I found that in 1953 Waco was hammered by an F5, the tenth deadliest tornado in US history - over 100 fatalities, 600 structures destroyed, over 1000 damaged, along with 2000 vehicles. Total damage was 350 million in today's dollars.

Reading what was readily available online, aid was apparently effective and prompt. At least there was no discussion of emergency fumbling in what I could find. If Texans could do well in 1953, why can they not do so in the 21st century?

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I think Dallas is a disaster area, even without the assistance of a tornado. I spent many (way too many) of my teen years there and happiness was Big D in my rear view mirror. As the saying goes, "There is no there, there."

More recently was the Wichita Falls F4 in 1979. It didn't kill nearly as many, but it sure as heck remodeled the place.

From more of a higher altitude perspective, the Federal/Regional/State/County/Municipal level, much has been done since 9/11 and Katrina, going back to at least OKA City and WTC bombing #1 in 1993. The public sector is a much harder target, response and rescue much better organized. However "recovery" and "return to normal", we have come to learn, is where the problems start to multiply exponentially.

The bigger issue is the Private sector still contains 85% of Americas infrastructure- we still buy our energy from the private sector, still obtain our food from the private sector, still get our healthcare (at least for now) from the private sector. And the private sector simply is not prepared for, or organized around the task of making America "whole" again. If a house or neighborhood is severely impacted (Tornado) , we can overwhelm an area with resources, and have plenty of back up to back fill essential services. Something happens regionally (flooding, wildfire), and resources start to stretch. When things start impacting whole places (The Bay Area, LA Basin, Gulf Coast) a thousand mini emergency plans by those who are prepared need to swing into action, and another thousand "Help me! Save Me!" efforts must be activated to respond to the unprepared.

I am involved in business continuity planning, and our core message is that employees with a "culture of preparedness" at home return to work much more reliably than those who suffer from disaster denial. We are going to NEED private sector help in many key industries easy to identify- transportation, healthcare, etc. From another position, companies that have failed to prepare and are so consumed with "reacting" to disaster than "preacting" to disaster, will most assuredly suffer from loss of revenue and possibly lose their business, as 40% do after major disasters, according to the Red Cross. Loss of jobs due to businesses not reopening impacts families, communities and regions for years to come. The "new Normal" most likely won't be nearly as robust as the pre disaster condition for many many years.

David Flora
www.preaction.com