Is Emergency Management enough?

“If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

This is my second article reviewing Montano and Savitt’s recent paper Revisiting emergencies, disasters, & catastrophes: Adding duration to the hazard event classification[1].

In the first article here I focused on exploring the implications of the authors’ proposal of ‘duration of response’ as a key attribute in defining the difference between emergencies, disasters and catastrophes. I then reorientated their analysis toward the consideration of time as a key element in understanding impact, and specifically, how this framing helps highway practitioners understand their crucial role in emergency management (i.e., if damage to lifeline highway assets can be stabilised/repaired quickly, then the community will experience lesser consequences).

In this second article I take a broader perspective by considering what the paper’s findings can reveal to us about UK civil protection doctrine’s representation of these hazard event types. Specifically, I am going to explore how understanding the difference between hazard-event types, might inform the more proactive management of hazard events[2].

To do this, I am going to propose a challenge statement:

If you only plan for emergencies, you risk “muddling through” larger events.

Reading the paper, I was reminded that emergency, disaster, and catastrophe represent events whose effects differ, by orders of magnitude.

The authors define emergencies “as events that are small in scope, and whose response can be managed by local responders in a routine way”, e.g., the emergency services working together at the scene of a serious road traffic collision, or with communities to minimise the effects of local flooding.

By contrast Montano and Savitt suggest disasters “are events that generate a greater number of needs and impacts and for which local response capacity is insufficient”. In a disaster, help converges from outside the community.

Finally, the paper proposes that catastrophes “are characterized by widespread impacts and needs, which not only overwhelm local and regional resources but also require national leadership and even international assistance”. Whole communities are in real trouble and need help fast!

What Montano and Savitt’s also identify is that the duration of response activity required to resolve an event can change the balance of impacts and needs, as well as the stakeholder involvement, and the management approach required.

To understand why this difference is important, please allow me a moment of pedantry as I quickly review UK emergency management doctrine.

Contrary to the stepped local > regional > inter-/national escalation of effect that is acknowledged in Montano and Savitt’s typology, UK emergency management doctrine is predicated on a legal definition of emergency that could objectively be applied to an event of any magnitude that “threatens serious damage”[3]. Accordingly, there is an implied expectation, that the UK emergency management (aka. resilience) sector’s arrangements are scalable, to meet the challenges of any hazard event up to catastrophic level.

To an extent this is factored into doctrine through the principle of subsidiarity. This principle defines the way that emergency management in the UK is conducted “where decisions are taken at the lowest appropriate level, with co-ordination at the highest necessary level”. For emergencies, this means management starts with the responder organisations collaborating within a Local Resilience Forum (LRF) area (i.e. they are what I have referred to as a key ‘community of [resilience] practice’[4] that operates across a Police area). So as an event increases in scale, so the subsidiarity-based doctrine suggests that an escalation in decision making and coordination levels should seamlessly occur. ?

Indeed, the existence of “catastrophic emergency” (Level 3) risk is described in both the UK Central Government Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and the UK Government Resilience Framework (UKGRF). The doctrine also acknowledges that these risks will be managed differently from lesser risks, including as they relate to “significant” (Level 1) and “serious” (Level 2) emergencies. For example, CONOPS states that managing Level 3 catastrophic emergencies “might include a top-down response in circumstances where the local response had been overwhelmed, or the use of emergency powers were required to direct the response or requisition assets and resources. The Prime Minister would lead the national response” (p.9).

CONOPS also states that “Planning assumptions ensure that roles and responsibilities are clear from the outset [and that] the UK central government response to a catastrophic emergency in the UK, […] will be effective, quick and certain” (p.44).

The more recently published UKGRF states “For many risks, [revised processes] will simply formalise and complement existing roles and responsibilities [of government departments] for owning risk, however for some risks we may need a bespoke model and for a small number of complex or catastrophic risks we may need a change to roles and responsibilities” (p.13). However, UKGRF does not elaborate on what those changes might comprise, so we don’t actually know who or how many people are familiar with them.

Given that the COVID pandemic meets Montano and Savitt’s criteria for global catastrophe, by implication we know that the UK’s contemporary planning structures have been tested to Level 3: with the ongoing COVID Inquiry currently reviewing that nationally coordinated level of response to ascertain its effectiveness (NB. I’m not going to venture into discussing ‘VIP Lane’ PPE in this article)

Knowing this, allows me to return to ask the question: if your processes and doctrine are structured such that you only plan for emergencies, do you risk “muddling through” larger events?

Since 2007 (actually, since 1998), the UK has responded to a series of extreme weather events, which have bordered—if not easily met—Montano & Savitt’s definition of disaster.

Focusing on impacts, the three most recent severe storm series analysed (i.e., 2007; 2013/14; 2015/16) have been calculated to have cost the economy ￡633 million in damage and disruption to the English highway sector alone [other metrics are available]

The total cost of all impacts from just the 2015-2016 winter storms across northern England is estimated at ￡1.6 billion[5]. This certainly feels disastrous.

Prior to the 2015-16 winter, we know that lessons learned had included an increased understanding of the importance of maintaining certain national capabilities. Key amongst these are the Swift-Water Rescue, and High-Volume pumping capabilities, which are coordinated on behalf of Defra as Fire and Rescue Service National Resilience Capabilities. These capabilities were used to the full in 2015-16, where they reduced impacts, and almost certainly saved lives.

These capabilities are fantastic and their availability (and the dedication of the teams that deliver them) demand respect. They illustrate how significant progress has been made in UK resilience since we saw the images of fire fighters, and others, with no specialist PPE or training using commandeered craft to rescue stranded householders during the 1998 and 2000 floods. The fact that some of these national capabilities are now nearing their end of service life with no agreed replacement arrangements, could accordingly, be seen as a matter of concern.

However, stepping back to look at a different scale of response, we have also seen the European floods of 2021, where the total losses have been estimated at between €18 billion[6] and €40 billion[7] and over 240 attributed deaths. In effect, we see…an order of magnitude difference in impact...and tragedy.

What needs to be understood about those floods, is that:

1)????? part of that loss estimate relates to the damage experienced as the system transited London on 12th July, and

2)????? the worst damage and most fatalities over the following days occurred in an area only 300 to 400 miles east of London. This was a near miss for the UK.

Thanks to research by Nick et al.[8] we can now understand more clearly the consequences for incident managers of such an event, which transitions between emergency (or series of locally managed emergencies), to disaster and catastrophe.

Exploring lessons for “lifeline” critical infrastructure managers, Nick et al., investigated the challenges faced by water and health sector organisations in responding to the floods.

They found that “an effective disaster response requires the minimization of cascading risks and the provision of targeted and need-based support through rapid needs and capacity assessments as well as timely, informed and flexible decision-making in a collaborative process” (p.3: emphasis added).

Yet, what they discovered was that contingency plans across these two sectors had all been developed in respect to managing short duration emergencies.

“At an organizational level, contingency plans were at hand, however, they were perceived as inadequate, described as “nonsense”, and “lapsed”. The same interviewee criticized that in such contingency plans “all emergency scenarios are designed to be remedied in the short term”, and that constrained disaster response, and cascading impacts during larger disasters were not considered” (p.7).

Two themes running through these research findings were:

1) The critical importance of understanding that anything other than a short-duration emergency will rapidly involve a much broader constituency of ‘responders’ than just the ‘emergency services’. This will inevitably include the private, voluntary, and community sectors and—as has been experienced in the UK—will require much more active management and “brokerage”[9] by local government (e.g., council staff, Elected Members), than will likely have been anticipated, trained for, or exercised in many plans.

2) The need for policies from the government to facilitate support and to connect stakeholders from the supply (e.g., water) and demand (e.g. health) side of the disaster response beforehand, in order to establish relationships as a driver for greater preparedness, i.e. the importance of engaging interdependent infrastructure providers with the concept of lifeline resilience in order they develop contingencies collaboratively, and “make friends before they need them”

It cannot be overstated that the ‘duration of response’ required to stabilise the impacted area placed massive pressure on management systems, and whilst the response was driven by individuals and teams (“We counted on the motivation of the staff, and also on that of the volunteers” p.10), this did come at a risk of individuals becoming emotionally overwhelmed and exhausted.

The scale of the event also meant that collaboration between first responders and other institutions such as health departments needed to be facilitated through formal coordination from the governmental crisis cell, so the absence of one federal-level cell left “many local crisis cells overwhelmed” (p.10). This clearly illustrates the importance of escalation processes being ‘effective, quick, and certain’ (i.e., resourced, trained, and exercised) so they click in as soon as an event’s impacts start to overwhelm response structures.

The efficiency and effectiveness of those crisis cells that did operate well, was found to be fundamentally rooted in collaboration, information management, communication, and time management [Note: some key cross over here with the UK JESIP interoperability principles].

Yet, counter to that, it was found that if supposedly trivial components, such as bureaucratic procedures, shift rotation and handovers of staff, were not carefully managed (or circumvented), then this could be extremely disruptive and in the worst cases, resulted in lengthy processes or even in the loss of information, causing delays to the provision of timely response and support.

?

Having thought a lot about these case studies, I want to make one point very clearly. In around 20 years of disaster research, I have found that when faced with their ‘worst day’, the vast majority of people will always endeavour to do their best[10]. What can let them down, however, are plans, procedures, and [lack of] training, that do not prepare them for the events they face, or which actively hinder their ability to be flexible and creative in the essential ways that they need to respond effectively.

In the UK we have identified some pressing lessons from a series of emergencies, which have tested our responders and broader communities (e.g. repeated floods, Grenfell Tower, the terror attacks of 2017), and despite some ingrained cynicism I like to think that we are getting better at this. In fact, over the last couple of weeks I have learned of several impressive initiatives that are focusing on exactly this.

However, in a rapidly changing world (both environmentally and geo-politically), if we are not creating, training, exercising and embedding processes through which we are able to respond, not just to short-duration local emergencies, but also long duration disasters and catastrophe, then we are not as prepared as we could be. Once the scale of event overwhelms the dedicated emergency services’ ability to respond, “in a routine way”, escalation processes really do need to work.

If the publication of the UK Government Resilience Framework is to have its desired effect “to improve response and preparation for risks and ensure that partners throughout the system are able to play their part fully” (p.2), then we need to start actively building the required ‘whole of society’ approaches to inter-sector collaboration that will likely be required [looking just at the global weather this week] sooner rather than later. ??????

[1] Montano, S. and A. Savitt (2023). "Revisiting emergencies, disasters, & catastrophes: Adding duration to the hazard event classification." International Journal of Mass Emergencies & Disasters 41(2-3): 259-278.

[2] NB. I am using the term hazard because this is the focus in the paper. It should be noted however that this discussion could be equally applied to hazards, major accident, or threats (as per the NSRA designations).

[3] The Civil Contingencies Act (2004) defines an emergency as “an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place in the UK, the environment of a place in the UK, or war or terrorism which threatens serious damage to the security of the UK.”

[4] Deeming, H. (2017). Activities of the multi-stakeholder ‘community of resilience practice’ during the response to ‘Storm Desmond’ in Cumbria, UK. (Deliverable 1.2 of EU DRMKC contract CT-EX2016D267361-101). Bentham, UK, HD Research.

[5] Environment Agency (2018). Estimating the economic costs of the 2015 to 2016 winter floods. Bristol, Environment Agency.

[6] WMO (2022) State of the Global Climate 2021 World Meteorological Organization, Geneva

[7] Manandhar, B., S. Cui, L. Wang and S. Shrestha (2023). "Post-Flood Resilience Assessment of July 2021 Flood in Western Germany and Henan, China." Land 12 (621).

[8] Nick, F. C., N. S?nger, S. van der Heijden and S. Sandholz (2023). "Collaboration is key: Exploring the 2021 flood response for critical infrastructures in Germany." International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 91: 103710.

[9] Deeming, H. (2015). Understanding Community Resilience from the Perspective of a Population Experienced in Emergencies: Some Insights from Cumbria. (Occasional Paper 14). Easingwold, UK, EPC.

[10] Rodriguez, H., J. Trainor and E. L. Quarantelli (2006). "Rising to the Challenges of a Catastrophe: The Emergent and Prosocial Behavior following Hurricane Katrina." ANNALS, AAPSS, 604: 82-101.