Preparing for an Emergency: What We Should (But Probably Won’t) Do

Chances are, you wouldn’t be prepared. You wouldn’t even know what to do. You would instinctively react to the best of your ability, and for the most part you’d do the right things.

You’d screw up on some things however:

• You’d probably try to find and round up your family and then flee the area, causing traffic chaos, blocking emergency vehicles, clogging communication lines and exposing yourself and loved ones to more danger than if you stayed put.
• If it was a health emergency, you might well head for a hospital, clinic or doctor’s office to get Tamiflu. Waste of time.
• You might well help overwhelm government, medical and emergency authorities with your frantic calls for information.

The problem isn’t that thousands or millions will make such mistakes, it’s that emergency workers are counting on you to wait passively for information and instruction, and to stay out of their way. You won’t, and as a result their plans will be jeopardized. And even if there’s no panic, because emergency plans depend on other departments’ and groups’ and governments’ emergency plans working as well, all it takes is one group to fail, or something to fall between the cracks of all these plans, and all of the plans will fail.

We saw this in the response to Katrina: FEMA failed utterly, and all those depending on FEMA to do its job couldn’t do theirs. And none of the local plans anticipated the unavailability of communications infrastructure, so the result was chaos and anarchy. In the aftermath, each group pointed the finger of blame elsewhere, so preparedness plans for most groups have not substantially changed. So if, as many expect, we will see another Katrina this summer, we can expect the same completely inadequate response.

We never learn. It’s not human nature to be prepared for anything that isn’t highly probable and imminent ñ the needs of the moment always take precedence over longer-term thinking. We do what we must, then we do what’s easy, and then we do what’s fun. Emergency preparedness, until itís too late, is none of these things.

There is no human answer to this problem. Just look at the trillions that have been squandered (and the rights trampled and abuses committed) in the insane attempt to prevent a repeat of 9/11, when in all likelihood the next attacks by organized desperados will use utterly different tactics. They have hundreds of obvious ones to choose from, even more if they’re imaginative, and trying to anticipate and preempt them all is ludicrous. Spending money on large standing reserves and task forces which will go into action if and when an emergency of the type they are specifically trained for comes into effect is futile. And the psychological and social damage caused by trying to prepare for a thousand unpredictable possibilities is horrific.

This is not to take anything away from the many organizations that have to cope with emergencies every year, or those who are valiantly trying to prevent them from happening and mitigate the damages they will cause. These are (mostly) intelligent, committed people. But what they are trying to do probably cannot be done. It is another attempt to find a complicated solution to a complex problem.

So what should we do? I’ll suggest some ways of coping with emergencies at the institutional and societal level in a future article (I suggested some in my earlier article on pandemic flu preparation). But at the individual level, there are probably four things that make sense, and a fifth if you’re a keener and live in a close-knit community:

1. Go about your business and your life. Worrying about things that may never happen and which you can’t do anything about is a waste of time, money and energy and will make you ill. People in struggling nations get this, I think, since many in those nations face it day-to-day for their whole lives.
2. Donít expect authorities to look after you in an emergency. They’ll do their best, if they can keep their own people from breaking ranks and looking after their loved ones instead of their duty. And if it’s a relatively minor emergency they may do just fine. Just don’t count on it. Learned helplessness is endemic in our society, and in an emergency it’s a liability.
3. Expect the majority of people to panic as peacefully as they can. Forget the Hollywood hype about massive arson and murder and rape. If you’re hungry and there’s no one in authority, you’ll steal only what you need and only get violent if thereís no other choice. The vast majority of people are like that. In fact, most people really rise to the occasion in an emergency, and some behave absolutely heroically. But expect the roads to be mayhem and ill-conceived, even stupid behaviour to be the norm.
4. Educate yourself and those in your communities on things you can and should do (and not do) when an emergency occurs. The list varies depending on the type of emergency, but hereís eight things to do for starters:
• Have a manageable list of emergency supplies on hand in your home and in your car, and keep them fresh. Include in your house kit: 6 litres of fresh water per person, 3 days’ worth of dried or canned food (and an opener), a flashlight (and batteries), a portable radio (and batteries, even if it’s a crank-type), a first aid kit, prescription medicines, baby food and needs for disabled family members if applicable, extra keys, and cash. Include in your car kit: food, water and first aid as above, plus blankets and spare clothes/shoes, candles-in-a-can (and matches), a knife, emergency light or flares, a shovel, scraper and brush, and emergency contact phone number list. Donít forget to include supplies for your pets, and keep them close! 
• In a health emergency, keep yourself and loved ones away from other people. Take them out of school, stay home from work (unless you’re an emergency worker, in which case stay at work), don’t travel anywhere you don’t have to, and avoid stores, airports, and any other places with lots of people.
• In a health emergency, wash your hands often and thoroughly with hot water and soap, don’t touch potentially contaminated surfaces, use a hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol, and, when you cough or sneeze, use a disposable tissue or your sleeve, not your hands.
• In case the emergency drags on, learn where you can get fresh food locally, from farms and gardens, and have a back-up source of heat for your home.
• Learn emergency first aid.
• Keep your cellphone (plus charger and spare batteries) and a list of emergency information numbers and URLs handy, but don’t expect these to work in an emergency.
• Get a flu shot. It won’t protect against pandemic flu, but it will improve your resistance, and you don’t want to be sick during an emergency.
• If you absolutely have to leave, tell people where you’re going.
5. If you live in a friendly, tight neighbourhood and you’re keen, put together a neighbourhood plan ñ who’ll pick up the kids, who’s best at doing what, how to share the difficult tasks you may face, what’s unique to your neighbourhood that must be dealt with, etc. Teach each other what you need to know. Practice, at least on a tabletop, what you will do, when you get everyone together.

If you’re like most people (me included) you won’t prepare an emergency kit, and even if you’re fortunate enough to live in a community like mine you probably won’t do #5 either. But most of the rest of these ideas are really just common sense and don’t require you to do anything until an emergency actually happens. These are mostly about preparing yourself mentally and psychologically, rather than physically, for an emergency. They’re about building your resilience.

In my earlier article I suggested you should think about what you will do if there’s a pandemic and you find you have a natural immunity, or if disease strikes a loved one but not you. But I’m not sure thinking about this in advance serves much purpose ñ if this happens you will do what you will do.

And that’s the overall message that a study of history, an understanding of human nature, and a reading of all the literature on emergency preparedness out there, should probably teach us: Emergencies are going to happen, and they will touch us personally or they won’t, and if they do we will probably do our best even though we won’t be prepared, so there’s no point staying awake worrying aboutit.

More about learned helplessness later this week ñ The more I think about this subject, the more important it seems to be.