This is the Thursday post, so it will focus on Emergency Planning. Since it is planning, that means there is an underlying process and it will build on the ‘homework’ from last week. If you haven’t read that one, you may want to take a look at the previous post, It’s Not a Movie, Folks.
In that post you were asked to identify those things you rely upon the most. You may have had trouble coming up with multiple items or you may have been able to fill a notebook. You don’t have to do them all at once. It is definitely an iterative process and you can come back to this exercise as you become aware of new items. It does, however, work best if you have at least three items.
Just as a quick note, I have been studying and working in and around this field for decades. I have gone through a lot of material including books, training, videos, white papers and blog posts. If you go through similar materials you will probably find what I did – most is overly complex and it is quite boring to read. I’m trying to condense these materials to something more friendly to use and convey it in a manner that is easier to use. For those reasons I will be violating a lot of the ‘rules’. So, if you are looking to get a certification in emergency planning (as I have) this may not be the place to start. However, if you are looking to actually be proficient in emergency planning for small groups (such as families, small business, or similar groups) then this should serve you well.
Beginning the Work
- Break threats down into manageable pieces (decomposition)
- Understand the threats you may face
- The basic response techniques
- Understanding the cascading impacts of threats
- How to gather the information necessary to make good planning decisions
Now we’re about to get into the real nuts and bolts of moving forward into a more prepared state. Before we can do this, we need to make sure that when we use certain words, we have a common understanding of the meaning. It is especially important for me to know that you understand what I mean. Even more important, however, will be when you have discussions within your group. If you have a common understanding of the terms, you’ll save a lot of time in backtracking, misunderstanding and clarifying.
Future discussions hinge on what we discuss next. It is a very simple concept, but I want to call special attention it so that you really take the time to let it soak in. Reread it if necessary, even post a comment if you need more information to understand it and I’ll reply for the benefit of all.
Moving forward, our discussion is going to be framed by a strategy called ‘decomposition’. It’s a fancy word that means ‘to break things down’. That is exactly what we’re going to do.
Decomposition
For major events, there may be too many factors to consider initially and that may lead to confusion, delay or discouragement with the preparedness process. For instance, trying to prepare for a hurricane is too much to ask. You can’t ‘prepare for a hurricane’. However, with a hurricane there are winds, flood waters, electrical service disruptions, fuel supply disruptions, food supply disruptions, etc. These you can start to understand and the task of taking action begins to come into focus.
That’s a capsule of decomposition. Rather than considering a major event as one item and trying to determine what you’d need in that event, try decomposing it – breaking it down to its component pieces. This will have additional advantages when we start building our plan as well.
So let’s look at that hurricane and some of the decomposed threats we may face.
Event: Hurricane
- Wind
- Roads blocked
- Electrical Outage
- Food spoilage
- Municipal water unavailable (pumps are out)
- No lighting
- No access to news updates
- Structural damage
- Roof damage
- Siding damage
- Flooding
- Roads blocked
- Water contaminated
- Structural damage
- Moved on foundation
- Flooded lower floors / basement
- Supply chain interruption
- Fuel inaccessible
- Automotive
- Fuel oil
- Food limited
- Fuel inaccessible
You can see how this process of decomposition sheds a little more light on exactly the problems you may face for each major threat. This better illuminates what you’re going to need in order to deal with that threat. It also allows you to look at the threat in ‘bite-sized’ pieces so that they don’t appear as overwhelming. Remember the old joke:
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
I said it was a joke, not that it was funny. It does illustrate the concept though. You have to break big issues down into things that you can wrap your head around. Until you do that, the whole idea of preparedness can be daunting and it would be all too easy to revert back to the apocalyptic view and say that there is just nothing that we can do.
Decomposing Decomposition
Be cautious in your decomposition. In project management we talk about a work breakdown structure (WBS) whereby we take the project and decompose it into individual ‘work packages’. This level is where time and cost can most accurately be determined without being overly burdensome. Though the time to complete each of these work packages may vary, it is something you can think about as a distinct ‘piece of work’. Generally, this means a work process that takes at least an hour, but less than a week.
Once you can break it down to this level, it is best to resist breaking it down further. I mean, where would you stop if you just kept breaking it down more and more? Eventually you’d be talking about preparing for hurricane wind speeds of 115 miles per hour versus 120 miles per hour. They’re both Category 3 hurricanes, so the preparations would be the same. Once you’re down to a manageable level, stop.
Let’s use this opportunity to develop some of that common vocabulary I was mentioning. This will help make sure that we’re using the same words to discuss the same concept and dispel some possible confusion. For our purposes, I propose a four-tier structure. The top tier is what I’ll call an Event – such as a hurricane, a wildfire, civil unrest, or flood. The event is a category heading, not much else – just a stepping off point for our mental work.
We’re about to get into one of those situations where professional emergency planners are going to have their heads explode. I’m changing some definitions from the standard texts and this will make it difficult for them to support. Being accepted by the professional emergency planning community doesn’t matter as much to me as helping you meet your individual needs. It just happens that there really are a limited number of words in the English language and so I will use the ones that work for us. Just know that if you speak with an Emergency Planner, they may use the words a little differently.
Threats
The next step down from an Event is a Threat. Threats are the various adverse conditions that may arise from a particular Event. The reason people are worried about threats is because of the risks they present. Each threat has at least one risk.
To help in communicating with professionals in the field, please understand that the FEMA framework breaks this concept out into two components: Threats and Hazards. In the FEMA model, a Threat is human-caused (i.e., hacking or arson) and a Hazard is naturally occurring (i.e., tornadoes or wild fires). Since this distinction is pretty much of no use for our purposes, we will use the term Threat more generically to apply to both. For most emergency planning there is no corollary for an Event. For me, however, it helps to group things together in this manner for organizational purposes.
Risks
Finally, a Risk is the unfavorable outcome of a threat. When people talk about something happening, risks are the true points of concern. People might say they are worried about a flood (the Event), or the water rising (the Threat). They really aren’t. They are worried about their house being damaged or being washed downstream (the Risk). When you strip away everything else, this is what we’re really trying to deal with. If not for the risk, we wouldn’t worry about this whole idea of preparedness at all. There wouldn’t be a need. Superman doesn’t practice emergency preparedness because there is nothing from earth that poses a risk to him (don’t get me started on Kryponite).
With these definitions, we end up with this structure:
Event:
- Threat
- Risk
Of course, you may be ahead of the game and already have all kinds of individual risks figured out. That’s great, don’t lose sight of them. Instead of working from the top down, you can work from the bottom up. Determine which risks are due to which threat and then which event could cause that threat. You may be tempted to just write down the risks and move forward. This leads to a very fragmented approach – especially in a group setting.
Sticking to this structure helps everyone involved understand how the response is going to work and why you’re doing exactly what you’re doing. This structure is as much about communication as it is about preparedness. It even helps to serve as a reminder for you after you’ve stepped away from this process and are looking back at the results. So stick with the structure; it’s to everyone’s benefit.
Let me wrap up this introduction to decomposition by saying that it does not matter if my decomposition and your group’s decomposition matches exactly. We live in different areas, have different life experiences and different tolerances. That’s fine too. What matters is that your group understands the logic and the breakdown.
Since similar threats can develop from different events, the event itself is almost a non-issue for us. Events are a mental placeholder – a stepping off point for the process. For this reason, it doesn’t really matter what event causes the threat. For that reason, the real work begins at the threat level, so that’s where we’ll start our work.
Now your homework for this week is to take the ideas you generated (and any new ones) and apply them to the structure. Are they events, threats, or risks? List them out in the three-tiered structure. I bet you’ll find that you’ll begin to see new risks for your threats and new threats for your events. You’ll also identify new threats for your risks. That’s fine; document it. Even better, work with someone in your group to come up with even more ideas. You’re very likely to inspire and take inspiration from your partner and that will just help develop the final plan.