What Could Be The Future

Since this is my last day as guest blog master, I thought I would share my vision of the future and invite you to participate in this blog with your thoughts and ideas.

Building on the work done by Eric Frost and the people at Cal State University San Diego in disaster data collecting using the band width of the university system to collect information sent in by the technology that is in place today (cell phones, text messaging, camera phones, blackberries, etc.), and the technology that will be available in the future, we could develop a system in this country for collect and disseminating disaster information.

Combine that with the interest shown by Cal State University East Bay and their Multimedia program folks in developing a game-based format, disaster preparedness and response training model based on CERT skills.

Add to that the fact that, with the Citizens Corp initiative and the funding attached, most communities in the past few years have developed some type of CERT training program.

We create a new delivery system for our disaster preparedness initiative by: training young people in disaster preparedness and response with the game-based program that appeals to the rhythm of the youth; feeding them into the existing system of CERT programs in the communities so that they are part of the system and can practice the hands-on skills that they have been taught; linking them into the university system for disaster reporting so that they have a critical role to play in a disaster and thus giving them ownership for their efforts.

Inexpensive, non-labor intensive and fun for the participants.

Food for thought….


Frank Lucier

Let's Focus On New Delivery Systems

The need for community preparedness was never clearer than the night of the Loma Prieta earthquake. We were working in the Marina district of San Francisco, surrounded by dozens of collapse, leaning and burning buildings. People wanted to help, and they were a great help to us that night. But they had no skills and, in most cases, didn’t know what to do without some direction from us.

Shortly after the Loma Prieta earthquake, we started a CERT type program in the city. I could see in the eyes of the first class that graduated from our program that they love the class and felt empowered by the skills they had learned.

This look and feeling that I got from the graduates fueled my passion for wanting to expand the program. But it was not about making me feel good, it was about the people. When I left the fire department 7 years ago, we had trained 8,000 people in the city, we were training about 500 people every 5 weeks, and people had to wait about 6 months to get into a class.

Hind sight is always 20-20, but what did these numbers really mean?

Training 8,000 people seems like a lot, but it was less than 2½% of the population, not a real culture changer there. Training 500 people every 5 weeks is not such a grand number when you consider there were 750,000 people in the city. At that rate we could cover the whole city in about 200 years.

And what about the waiting list? Would you wait 6 months for some product?

I think we had the wrong delivery system. I think that the CERT program has the wrong delivery system. The present delivery system is costly and labor intensive. Because of this it is never going to change disaster culture, the delivery system is just too slow and cumbersome.

I think we should start focusing on new delivery systems, something that will have more of an impact on our communities.

Frank Lucier

Maybe We Should Change The Rhythms

I was raised in the fire service in San Francisco. I won’t say “grew up” because I always hope to keep some part of the child within me. Our training was rules, tools, evolutions and repetition. But they didn’t teach us what we really needed to know, and when we went out the door it was all different.

Out the door we faced a different rhythm, the pulsing rhythm of the heat, the crescendo of the noise and the dance of the fire. Nothing I had been taught prepared me for this dance. At first I did not understand it, but the more I was exposed to it the more my body and mind moved in time with it and the more I loved this dance…the pulsing, the rhythm, the music.

As I look back I realize that our training was incomplete. We had missed a huge portion of what was the real job…the rhythms.

As I look out at the state of community preparedness in this country, I think that we are missing a large portion of what is the real job….changing the culture. The only was to change culture is to start with the youth, and to do this we have to understand the rhythms that move them. This is an MTV, Play Station generation, skilled at the use of technology, which the rest of us struggle to make work.

If we are going to change culture and attempt to educate young people about emergency preparedness and response, we can not use the traditional delivery system of class room education. I just doesn’t work…just look at the test scores across the nation. We are happy if our youth can read at a fifth grade level, when we should be striving to teach them deductive and inductive reasoning.

We have to be aware of their rhythms and start thinking about using the technology that so intrigues them. If the DOD can use video games to train boots on the ground, shouldn’t we be using it to train our young people in emergency response?

Maybe, just maybe, we are playing the wrong song and they don’t understand the rhythm.

Frank Lucier

Citizens Engagement in Emergency Response

For some reason, some Biblical principles come to mind that might help to understand why citizens are generally unengaged in emergency response, and what approaches might be effective in changing that culture. There are two parables (stories) in Matthew 13 about sowing seed. In the first parable the seed represents a message. In the second parable the seed represents people. It is as if those who respond to the message in the first parable then become the message; people are scattered in the midst of culture so that through them the message becomes visible in a way that more people are reached and receptive.

Informed and Receptive Citizens

I advocate interagency partnerships that could exist at the federal, state and local levels for educating “the masses.”

Once people graduate from high school, they are busy, focused largely on what’s actually happening, and have powerful interests and concerns that dominate what they focus and act on.

We can sow information to adults. But like the seed the farmer sows in the first parable, some will fall along the path and birds will eat it. Some will fall on rocky places, where it won’t have much soil; it will spring up quickly, but when the sun comes up, the plants will scorch and wither because they had no root. Other seed will fall among thorns, which grow up and choked the plants. Still other seed may fall on good soil, where it will produce a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

We need to get the right message into the hearts and minds of good soil. The most impressionable and receptive people in the world are 10-13 years old and people who have immediate needs in their lives--even terrorists know this. Students are thinking about and planning their future, but most adults are consumed living it rather than preparing for it.
Government needs the right message, attractively packaged and delivered by methods that are effective with youth and adults today. It needs to be sown wherever good soil can be found, rather than where apathy and regular life interests and struggles choke it out. Authorities responsible for emergency preparedness (the farmers) at all levels should partner with authorities responsible for education to ensure that every child and young person knows, understands, and can apply information that can make them responders rather than victims. No child should be allowed to escape untrained.

More than Responsive

Bare spots must be re-seeded, and seed needs to become mature and naturally reproduce itself, so that dependence on farmers is decreased. Adults who were informed and receptive when in school must not only be able and willing to implement what they learned, but must also help teach their children and others. They must, in large numbers, become more than responders, helping to produce other responders…applying the principle of multiplication rather than addition.

We need sound and mandatory basic training built in every middle and high school, and then we’ll need to plant seeds with adults periodically and at teachable moments in their lives. Many “graduates” will be responders rather than victims if the school training is well implemented, but they’ll still need some support. Authorities responsible for national and local emergency preparedness can do a lot to help adults, especially by working through partnership opportunities.

We can support the involvement 300 million U.S. citizens in making our nation safer and more secure in many ways, such as: ensure that everyone in or leaving the military is trained to handle personal and neighborhood emergencies; include interesting printed and video materials with annual mailings of tax forms that families can review in preparation for possible safety or security threats; fund police and fire authorities and auxiliaries to personally deliver to every household every 3-4 years a simple emergency kit with goodies like a shake-to-charge LED flashlight, and spend 3 or 4 minutes face-to-face encouraging household residents to go over the included information together; work with the media to do short public service announcements and to use relevant daily news opportunities to plug a lesson learned from a citizen perspective; etc.

The goal is a citizenry that is informed, receptive, responsive, and purveyors of the message.

Dan Lemon

Cell Phones At Risk!

Bill Medigovich has provided us with a notification from the Defense Security Service (part of DoD) about three vulnerabilities within our cell phones. You'll find a link to the announcement, here, and Lois has provided us with information from one of her sources on how to combat these vulnerabilities.
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Most cell phones today have a talk secure mode as well. Check your phone, usually takes only a moment to set it. Make sure your provider supports this mode, and your voice call is encrypted. The down side is a few less channels of communication and a higher chance of fast busy. For example on a Motorola phone the feature is under settings and is called Talk Secure. Unfortunately there is no standard naming for these menus, but usually they can be found under more settings if you want to play with it.

There are also the next step of devices where there is more encryption such as: http://www.safetalks.net/ so there are a range of solutions depending on your security level.

Finally, no one is immune from tracking (Not saying this is accurate but, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/24/world/main703982.shtml, and in a better example http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/07/30/international/i141807D12.DTL

Kevin McCoy

Eating the Elephant

How do we make our community-based programs more self-sufficient?

This question has loomed over many communities. We all know that our world operates on a finite budget, but requirements growth always finds a way to creep into the equation.

Although there are many great ideas floating around such as garnering discounts from local retailers for active participants, we should peel the layers back and start understanding the root causes for things such as individual non-participation, inability to maintain adequate equipment and supplies, resistance and continuous assaults on EPMG and other grant programs.

If someone were to ask you why you aren’t actively participating in a CERT or similar program, what would be your first response (no pun intended)?

If you were to ask a retailer why they arent donating equipment such as flashlights and hardhats to CERT, what do you think there answer would be?

Should we pursue some form of strategic national campaign with a well-known retailer like K-Mart, Best Buy or others to implement a discount program similar to Food Lion's and Walgreen’s?

Of course, we can’t eat the whole elephant at once. But we could eat it all if we were to take it one bite at a time.

Citizen Centric Mitigation

In his book “Stronger in the Broken Places: Nine Lessons for Turning Crisis into Triumph”, James Lee Witt (former Director of FEMA) states that “Groups don't think; they react. More than that, they fantasize, imagine, fear, fabricate, compete, compensate, placate, and supplicate. With their many arms and legs flailing wildly, they wrestle with illusions.”

Each of us has experienced this "reactive" sensation in our daily lives either on the job, or at home. Thus, we can relate to the plethora of situations that create a death spiral into an abyss of uncertainty. We often become so overcome by the events taking place around us that we tend to let things "slip to the right". I would like to take this opportunity to welcome each of you to the NIUSR Blog and encourage you to submit your thoughts and opinions on ways that we as a “group of the willing” can work together to become more proactive and less reactive to all-hazards situations. Only through this free flowing exchange of ideas can we identify effective measures and work toward implementing ways to overcome adversity and promote “citizen-centricity”.

TAURUS Report - Predictions of the London Underground Bombings

What did you think about the TAURUS Report that was provided by NIUSR member, Geoff Williams of Scotland, UK? This is our chance to continue the conversation from the Friday morning conference call.

Geoff Williams & The TAURUS Report

NIUSR Blog

As of 9:31am, NIUSR has launched their first blog. Your senior editor, as always, is Lois Clark McCoy, and this week's guest editor is Bryan Morgan.

We are asking all NIUSR members to sign up to be a guest editor for at least one week per year. This would involve posting articles, responding to comments and providing other editorial comments for that particluar week.

This blog is easy to use, and should require much time, as you will be notified of comments during your editorial week.

Please sign up here.