In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

In the recent issue of Emergency Management magazine, Elaine Pittman has an interesting article, “Emergency Managers Warm To The Idea Of Climate Change”. It focuses on how state and local government officials are increasingly taking climate change and its impact on potential disasters into account in their disaster planning.

I wanted to post the article, because it has been a regular theme of this blog that trying to convince and activating the public on emergency readiness, the disaster preparedness community could learn from the climate change movement. I made this point in a post last year:

The global warming campaign can and should be a model for citizen emergency preparedness in a variety of ways, including getting kids to lead the way and more extensively involving the media and entertainment industries. But preparedness will also require the same kind of governmental and corporate commitment, high profile public spokespeople and incentives that has boosted the climate change effort. Yes, global warming has some skeptics, but so does emergency preparedness — ironically they are usually not the same people which may conveniently add to its complementary synergy.

In an interview last year, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff expressed to me his frustration that disaster preparedness had not received the same public attention as climate change:

“I’ll tell you what’s fascinating. If you look at like this whole global warming thing. At some point, it captured the imagination of somebody and it became a big media thing. And then all of a sudden, every kid was coming home with information about global warming. And I wish we could get that media attentiveness in the area of preparedness, so that kids come – because this – actually, this is an area where it could make a difference if everybody had the plans and the kit and everything. You could actually see every individual could make a difference.”

Hopefully, the increased connection that emergency managers are viewing between the two issues which Pittman writes about in her article will be useful in making some new inroads with the public on preparedness.

The global warming campaign can and should be a model for civilian emergency preparedness in a variety of ways, including as Chertoff noted somewhat enviously, getting kids to lead the way and involving the media. But preparedness will also require the same kind of governmental and corporate commitment, high profile public spokespeople and some governmental incentives that has boosted the climate change effort.

The two campaigns are complementary and should be more linked closer together in the public’s mind — and actions. In both, society is being asked to mobilize in order to avert or mitigate potential disasters, and both are part of strengthening the nation’s general national resilience. Yes, global warming has some skeptics, but so does emergency preparedness — ironically they are often not the same people which may conveniently add to its complementary synergy.