On February 11th, the CARRI-Memphis Urban Area (CARRI-MUA) team jointly hosted a Community Resiliency and Earthquake Preparedness Summit, as the kickoff event of West Tennessee Earthquake Awareness Week activities. Co-hosting the event was the West Tennessee Seismic Safety Commission and the University of Memphis’ Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI). The event drew over 80 attendees with a broad range of perspectives on emergency preparedness, public safety, and resiliency. The event was sponsored by CERI’s Partners in Disaster Preparedness.
The summit idea grew from the observation made by several members of the CARRI-MUA Advisory Group they attended many meetings on a variety of topics relating in some way to community and regional resilience, at which they encountered the same group of people from the same organizations. One Advisory Group member suggested that it might be valuable to bring all of these individuals together, not to discuss a particular topic, but instead to learn about the objectives and missions of the organizations each of them represented. To them, the Summit offered an excellent opportunity to begin this process of organizational information exchange. To the CARRI-MUA team, the Summit would provide an opportunity to learn more about the network and purposes of the organizations in the MUA, both public and private. Members of the Advisory accepted an invitation to participate in the West Tennessee Earthquake Awareness Week activities – to leverage the annual event and the attention it brings to preparedness and resilience. The CARRI-MUA team worked with the Advisory Group to develop the agenda, and to identify and invite participants and speakers.
Some of the many service organizations in the MUA were invited to describe the mission and objectives of their organization, some of their accomplishments, who they served, what they defined as resilience, relevant indicators of resilience, and the role their organization played in fostering resilience. Through this information exchange, it was hoped that presenters and Summit attendees could network, learn about where their organizational missions overlap and differ; and begin to lay the foundation for inter-organizational coordination.
Mr. Gary Patterson, Director of Information at CERI and Earthquake Awareness Week organizer opened the Summit and discussed Earthquake Awareness Week and the importance of resilience in planning and preparing for catastrophic events like a New Madrid Seismic Zone earthquake. Following Mr. Patterson’s opening remarks, Dr. Arleen Hill, the University of Memphis member of the CARRI-MUA team, and Mr. Richard Bowker, Memphis Light Gas and Water, President of the Mid-South Association of Contingency Planners, and a member of the CARRI-MUA Advisory Group, set the stage for the speakers and introduced them.
Throughout the briefings and discussions, several recurring themes became apparent and are discussed in the following paragraphs.
Theme 1: The resilient organization and resident participates actively in a wide variety of training courses that prepares them to react, respond, and recover during a disruption; they volunteer their time and resources to assist others to also participate in training courses.
The most frequently raised topic at the Summit was the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-sponsored Community Emergency Response Training (CERT) program (https://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/); fourteen of the sixteen speakers mentioned the program. CERT educates people about disaster preparedness for hazards that may impact their area and trains them in basic disaster response skills, such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations. Using experience gained through both classroom training and exercises, CERT members can assist others in their neighborhood or workplace following an event when professional responders are not immediately available. CERT members also are encouraged to support emergency response agencies by taking a more active role in emergency preparedness projects in their community—in effect, become personally resilient. All of the speakers that mentioned CERT felt that it was highly successful and encouraged other organizations and agencies to undergo CERT training. The CARRI-MUA research element will explore the spatial distribution of CERT participation across the six county study region and compare that distribution to the location of vulnerable populations in an effort to describe and enhance the community resilience landscape of the MUA.
Theme 2: The resilient organization regularly conducts realistic planning, that is coordinated with all parts of the organization; and educates and exercises the plan with the organization’s members so that they are cognizant of the plan and able to execute it during a disruption.
Planning was another recurring theme with deliberate, inclusive planning vitally important. Organizations that conduct deliberate, organization-wide planning and exercise their plan regularly are better positioned to react and recover to a disruption. To highlight the importance of this theme, several speakers mentioned instances of organizations that failed to plan, failed to plan adequately, failed to train and exercise their plans, or failed to follow their plans in a disruption. Importantly, speakers and Summit participants offered to share experiences, plans and exercises to help other groups, organizations, or individuals. Commitment to inclusive, realistic planning and testing of plans is an indicator of the human and leadership elements of resilience that CARRI seeks to capture.
Theme 3: The resilient resident knows how to access information about disruptions from multiple sources of information; they are able to use this information to react, respond and recover from the disruption.
Several speakers mentioned the importance of individual awareness and the corresponding ability to manage community expectations. The need to provide accurate, timely, and appropriate information to individuals in times of crisis or disruption was highlighted repeatedly. As diverse as the six county MUA is, this means that the information needs to reach the affected residents in a variety of languages, in ways that are accessible to special needs residents, and via methods of communication that to accommodate residents that have little or no access to radio, television, or the Internet. Equally important, is the message: the information needs to be relevant to the intended audience, providing precise direction and guidance so that individuals can help themselves as best they are able. In parallel, some speakers said that it was important to inform the community about the services and resources that the residents could expect in a disruption. During the emergency response, relief, and recovery periods, resources and services that would normally be available (i.e. utilities, drinking water, trash and debris removal) would probably be not available or be severely constrained. A community that can define and communicate realistic expectations enables its residents to take preparedness actions that enhance their individual and household resilience. This community is then positioned to manage the expectations of residents during all phases of an emergency.
Theme 4: The resilient resident/individual/household is aware of the hazards around them and has an individual and household plan to react, respond, and recover from a dangerous or disruptive event.
Finally, the belief that community members needed a firm awareness of hazards (both seen and unseen) and the impact that hazard might have upon them was noted. For instance, day-to-day, residents should have an understanding of the location of potentially hazardous industrial sites, chemically or otherwise contaminated areas, and flood zones that are in proximity to their homes, their work locations, their children’s schools, and other family member/loved ones locations. Once equipped with this information, they are able to develop household and individual response plans for a variety of scenarios. In conjunction with this day-to-day awareness, some speakers noted the need for the community to be able to react to rapidly evolving information, such as tornado warnings. Although there are various information campaigns that seek to educate the community, such as the West Tennessee Earthquake Awareness Week, several speakers noted the need to increase community hazard awareness through school programs and CERT training for children.
The CARRI-MUA team learned a great deal about the network of service organizations, both public and private, from this unique gathering. Briefings and discussions were invaluable in focusing CARRI research and have been reported by participants to have met their needs as well. As the CARRI Team moves forward with its research, it will start to focus its efforts in these and other related areas.
As a start, some questions that will be asked of the community are:
The CARRI Team is learning with and from its local partners in the MUA that resiliency already has roots in the community. They are looking forward to the continued exploration of the characteristics of resilience in the MUA and watching resilience strengthen as dialogues are initiated with CARRI and sustained.
For general questions regarding CARRI, please click the following link: info@resilientUS.org