Introduction
Every year, millions of people are affected by disasters worldwide. Disasters comprise both natural and manmade events such as floods, fires, draught and famine, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, industrial or transport accidents, war, or terrorist incidents among others. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, the impacts of disasters have been exacerbated by unprecedented events such as climate change, unplanned urbanization, and underdevelopment and poverty. These aggravating factors are cited to be responsible for increased frequency, complexity, and severity of disasters. In light of this understanding, Paton and Johnston (2001) examined the vulnerability, resilience, and preparedness of communities in the phase of disasters and established that traditional approaches to public education with the objective to raise awareness and risk perception are ineffective, hence the need for new frameworks to counter the evolving nature of disasters. Early institution of disaster and emergency preparedness in the community has been linked to improved public health, safety, and reduction in property loss, playing a significant role in lowering the negative impacts in the phase of disaster; thus the need to devise and implement such plans is paramount towards strengthening community resilience.
Community Preparedness
The concept of community preparedness and emergency planning encapsulates training, exercises and the written plan. Placing emphasis on one of the three paradigms is a recipe for failure. For instance, Perry and Lindell (2003) observed that following the 11 September terrorist attacks, governments worldwide invested significant resources to draw up emergency response plans. The US federal government created a new homeland security department and directed states and local governments to draw preparedness plans. However, Perry and Lindell (2003) argued that the emphasis on drawn up plans tends to obscure the need for actual process planning and the main aim of achieving community emergency preparedness. In addition it disregards the need to develop model of resilience to different hazards in different community settings (Paton & Johnston, 2001). Therefore, how can community resilience be improved to cater for all forms of disasters? The answer is derived from experiences in emergency management since World War II where preparedness was the key in anticipation of enemy attacks. Similarly, community preparedness requires identification of expertise and resource prior to the disaster and how they can be employed in the actual event. However, preparedness is only one of the four phases of emergency management namely: mitigation (prevention of future emergencies and minimizing their effects), preparedness (readiness to handle emergency), response (safe handling of the emergency), and recovery (surviving the aftermath of emergency) (see figure 1 below).
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Figure 1: Phases of emergency management.
Collaborative efforts
In the US, states require local governments to have jurisdictions providing for the position of emergency managers. The responsibility and authority of such managers and management programs at each government level are dictated by law. However, emergency management involves preparing, planning, and staying abreast of developments information wise, tasks that cannot be left to emergency managers alone. Collaborative efforts are needed at all levels of planning and implementation to develop comprehensive, inclusive, and effective programs that ensure community resilience. According to Kapucu (2008), collaborative emergency management has the capacity to yield better community organization, public awareness and response. Using the case study of Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne, the four Florida Hurricanes of 2004, Kapucu (2008) established that communication and planning for necessary precautions in the face of disaster were crucial to achieving community coordination. While such outcomes may depend immensely on individual roles, emergency management can be highly effective if all stakeholders such as individuals, local, state, and federal governments, and non-governmental participants can fulfil their management responsibilities. The consensus is that each community stakeholder has a crucial role to play strengthening community preparedness and resilience in the face of disaster and emergency.
Kapucu (2008) established that pre-planning, open communication, and use of technology had immense impact on keeping vigilant surveillance of the situation and awareness of the perceived dangers from the disaster. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), preparedness and building resilience is the responsibility of the whole community and every member must be encourage to engage in different faces of emergency management. Full involvement can be achieved through identification of emergency preparedness roles and responsibilities of each member and developing an action plan for involvement (FEMA, 2011). In figure 2, the levels where community members fall in advance preparation for disaster event include government, public and private sectors, neighborhood, and individual and households. There are roles and responsibilities at each level but they must be interlinked to ensure resilience is achieved.
Figure 2: Levels of community preparedness in anticipation of disaster and emergency management.
Approaches to Community Preparedness and Resilience
In 1856, S. Thomas famously observed that “It is better to prepare and prevent, rather than repair and repent.” Disasters that have occurred in areas where communities were less prepared have been recorded to cause severe havoc because of lack of a plan to follow. It is important to understand this situation in the context of emergency, which refers to a period of time with marked deterioration in the community’s ability to cope; or a situation where such ability can only be sustained through unusual initiatives from the community or external parties. Community preparedness is necessary in such cases to ensure the community is resilient enough to survive the event until a time when such unusual initiatives come into play (Jha, 2010). Therefore, all stakeholders should focus on achieving resilience but should not be limited to the following:
Identification of hazards and assessing the potential risk they pose to the community
Determine the capability of the community to mitigate, prepare, and respond to the emergency
Identification and implementation of frameworks to improve the community’s capacity in emergency management through resource allocation, coordination and cooperation with all stakeholders
Institution of mitigation measures such zoning ordinances, building codes, and land use
Install appropriate warning systems
Public education and training of emergency management personnel
Development and coordination of preparedness plans
Community preparedness poses a challenge because it requires maximizing awareness and facilitating activities that encourage change at the community level. Therefore, the first step towards building community resilience is anticipation of both passive and active resistance to planning and mechanisms of overcoming such obstacles. The task can be accomplished by soliciting strong support towards planning such as the jurisdiction of administrative officers, and issue champion, or emergency planning committee. Through such a collaborative approach, Kapucu (2008) argued that it is possible to address a range of hazards that the community is exposed to, facilitating integration into a comprehensive plan. Interorganizational coordination is necessary to outsource expertise that can conduct reliable hazard vulnerability and devise response mechanism necessary to strengthen community resilience. However, this can only be accomplished through the inclusion of response organizations, seeking their involvement, commitment, and establishing a defined agreement.
A number of approaches have been put forward as effective options for eliciting community and stakeholders’ involvement in building resilience and their role in facilitating pre-impact planning. However, emphasis should be placed on community awareness by ensuring members are knowledgeable of the community’s action plan in relation to aspects of community warning system, neighborhood phone directory, people with special needs, members with special skill and resources, family emergency plans, animals’ protections, and evacuation procedures among others. According to Izadkhah, and Hosseini (2005), stakeholders face the challenge of education the society on different levels of disasters due to unavailability of resources. Therefore, public education of children is identified as the most effective approach of conveying the message to the society. Children and youth under the age of 18 years constitute over half of the population of developing countries, and their knowledge, skills, and motivation can be exploited to disseminate information on awareness and emergency preparedness. The role of technology in aiding community preparedness has also been touted with Merchant, Elmer, and Lurie (2011) arguing that social media can effectively integrated into community emergency preparedness. Merchant, Elmer, and Lurie (2011) cite an example of UShahidi, an open-source web platform used after the Tahiti 2010 earthquake to crowd-source information to support emergency management; and the use of Facebook by individuals trapped under the rabbles to seek help. It is paramount that public education insists on the benefits of these and other social media platforms and how the community can effectively employ them in the face of disaster.
Conclusion
Achieving community preparedness and resilience in the event of disaster and emergency is a challenge to most stakeholders, partly owing to the unpredictability of when the disaster is likely to occur, and the different types of disasters that require varied approaches to handle. However, preplanning through collaborative efforts form the community, public and private sectors, and governments significantly advance the potential of the community to be resilient. Community resilience links a network of adaptive capacities to adaptation after a disaster. it is measured through community adaptation evident in its wellness as per the presence of high non-disparate levels of levels of behavior and mental health, functioning, and quality of life, which are associated with low levels of negative impacts. Therefore, resources such economic development, social capital, community competence, and information and communication, supplied by different stakeholders are necessary to for development of emergency readiness strategy.
References
FEMA. (2011, September). Preparedness: The whole community. US Department of Homeland Security.
Izadkhah, Y. O., & Hosseini, M. (2005). Towards resilient communities in developing countries through education of children for disaster preparedness. International journal of emergency management , 2 (3), 138-148.
Jha, A. K. (2010). Safer homes, stronger communities: a handbook for reconstructing after natural disasters . World Bank Publications.
Kapucu, N. (2008). Collaborative emergency management: better community organising, better public preparedness and response. Disasters , 32 (2), 239-262.
Merchant, R. M., Elmer, S., & Lurie, N. (2011). Integrating social media into emergency-preparedness efforts. New England Journal of Medicine , 365 (4), 289-291.
Paton, D., & Johnston, D. (2001). Disasters and communities: vulnerability, resilience and preparedness. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal , 10 (4), 270-277.
Perry, R. W., & Lindell, M. K. (2003). Preparedness for emergency response: guidelines for the emergency planning process. Disasters , 27 (4), 336-350.
