For all concerned with disaster resiliency, economic sustainability and public safety, the first half of 2011 was momentous. The Christchurch quake, Japan’s triple disasters and shattered supply chain, the record spring floods and tornadoes U.S., and even the May 1 death of Osama bin Laden and the promised retaliation by terrorists.
Each of the above has brought all of us and especially our elected officials wave after wave of “teachable moments.” Nonetheless most of our elected officials remained distracted by the latest budgetary crisis, election campaign or political scandal.
Too few of them have been reached with the hard lessons from these events; even fewer of them understand the impacts on our people, infrastructure and economy if we don’t rapidly apply these lessons.
They’re asking themselves what happens to our economic recovery if we take a hit equivalent to the size of the Japan disasters? They are not seeing that Japan once again (as after the Osaka quake) is having large segments of its industry captured by other nations. How many have read Eric Holdeman’s column on Black Swan events in the May/June issue of Emergency Management, understanding that “it will only be the resiliency of people, organizations and systems that will change the course of history and the impact of such catastrophic disasters?”
We need our emergency management, economic development and sustainability communities to reach out to each other to form a common understanding and action agenda that gets our elected officials to see that resiliency and sustainability are not separate issues. They cannot be effectively addressed by stovepipe bureaucracies and programs. They are a part of a whole — a part of the fabric of the human condition. Sustainability means resiliency and resiliency means sustainability, life and growth.
On March 2-3 in Washington, D.C., Engineering News-Record, McGraw-Hill and the National Building Museum brought together more than 150 experts from the emergency management, construction, insurance, and building and land use regulatory communities to consider effective actions for mitigating disaster through design and construction. Presenters and participants repeatedly expressed concern that without a holistic approach that marries disaster resiliency and economic sustainability, powerful interest groups will continue to eviscerate every campaign for adequate funding of critical disaster resiliency programs.
In mid-June, McGraw-Hill issued a final report from the March conference called Recommendations to Congress, the Administration and the Private Sector to Mitigate Impacts of Disasters by Planning and Building for Resiliency. The report includes recommendations to all parties calling for a more holistic approach to prioritize and take actions to make the nation both more disaster resilient and sustainable.
As we arrive at the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and reflect on the teachable moments of the first half of this year, representatives from the emergency management, construction, banking, insurance and the economic sustainability communities need to come together in a national forum to address many of the recommendations in this report, including:
- The need for a cohesive multi-disciplinary approach to the content and updates to building codes and land use regulations to strengthen both disaster resiliency and economic sustainability.
- The need to identify and take actions to streamline the regulatory system to reduce and/or strengthen statutes, rules, regulations, processes and procedures that will speed disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
There will be more from Mother Nature and from revenge-minded terrorists. If we have learned nothing else from the first half of this year, it is what Holdeman said: “Most of the time we can’t change what happens to us, but we do control how we respond and recover.” It is only through coordinated, prioritized national action that we can effectively mitigate the deaths and damage that will be done to our people and economy. Those of us who participated in the March 2-3 McGraw-Hill conference invite you to review our report and join in this endeavor to get our elected officials and our nation to holistically address the lessons that so urgently need to be learned.
Robert Wible is the principal of Robert Wible & Associates and also serves as streamlining project manager for FIATECH.
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