Complex Problems Surpass Local Solutions
Why do we hear the same story after every major natural disaster? Citizens say “we need help and don’t have it”. Local officials say “we don’t have the resources to respond to something this big”. State officials say “we are waiting for FEMA to provide funding”. FEMA says “we can only provide what is dictated by federal laws and policy”. The press writes stories like “ the federal recovery effort is so heavily bureaucratic that it feels painfully slow-footed or all together absent”.
What if there is a fundamental issue that results in this set of problems occurring over and over?
The National Incident Management System and the National Response Framework provide the guidance for how emergency responders at the federal, state, and local levels understand their roles and responsibilities in disaster response. The fundamental principle is that disasters are local issues until they get too big for the jurisdiction to handle.
A basic premise of NIMS is that all incidents begin and end locally. The Federal Government supports State and local authorities when their resources are overwhelmed. (What is NIMS?)
Most incidents begin and end locally and are managed at the local level. National response protocols are structured to provide tiered levels of support when additional resources or capabilities are needed. (National Response Framework)
What if disasters are not local issues and thinking of them in this manner results in the same failures repeating over and over?
This hypothetical story about a fictitious company illustrates the challenges of the local management concept:
The Fictitious Brewing Company opened 20 years ago as a neighborhood brewery in New England and quickly grew into a major regional distributor with products in more than 10,000 bars, restaurants, and stores. The company decides that it is time to expand into a new geographic area and has recently opened a microbrewery in downtown Atlanta, GA with the intent of slowly expanding across the Southeast. To support independence and entrepreneurship, the CEO has given the manager of the new Atlanta location one overarching rule to follow…only contact corporate headquarters for support when the resources of the Atlanta brewery are completely exceeded.
The week before the NFL season starts, a salesperson meets with the Atlanta Falcons and finds out they are eager to add products from the Fictitious Brewing Company to the concessions area of their new 71,000 seat stadium. The plan is to serve FBC’s craft beer at 10 concession stands. The salesperson returns to the brewery, speaks to the manager, and they agree that this new contract with the Falcons will be an important step forward in growing the brand. Two days later (5 days before the first game), the concessions manager calls the salesperson with exciting news: the Falcon’s owner is a huge fan of FBC’s craft beer and wants to have the products available in all 400 concession stands. The salesman tentatively agrees and rushes to talk to the brewery manager. After working the numbers, they figure out that if they cancel smaller orders and every employee works overtime for the remainder of the week, they have just enough capacity to meet the demand.
FBC’s Atlanta brewery ramps up to full capacity and begins to fill the order. Friday afternoon (2 days before the game), the Falcons call back with a new request. There is a free outdoor concert at the stadium Saturday night to kick off the season and they want FBC to provide 20 refrigerated trucks with enough staff to serve craft beer for 30,000 fans. This is another huge opportunity for expanding the brand and the Atlanta manager doesn’t want to miss out. At the same time, all of the available staff and brewery capacity are tapped out. The manager decides that it is time to contact corporate and request assistance.
It is now less than 24 hours before the season kickoff concert and FBC’s primary brewery in New England is 1000 miles away. The corporate team is already behind the ball because they were unaware of the growing requirements in Atlanta. New England staff start scrambling resources but bringing in staff on Friday night to drive 20 trucks to Atlanta is going to be a major expense and the best case scenario will barely get the products to the stadium before the concert. The CEO decides that this is a critical marketing opportunity and the risk is worth the reward.
The stadium staff are making final preparations for the concert on Saturday afternoon and the beer hasn’t arrived. FBC’s staff in Atlanta struggle to meet the demands and start pulling products from other customers to divert to the stadium. The convoy of trucks arrive after the concert as started and there is no way to get them setup to start serving. The weekend has become a disaster for FBC, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent in overtime to deliver products that aren’t being served, the workforce is exhausted, and existing customers who had their orders cancelled are angry.
The point of this story is that waiting for local resources to be exceeded is a horrible way to run a business. A great opportunity to FBC to expand into a new market and impress high-profile customers turned into a nightmare because the full capacity of the company was not available until it was too late.
Federal Disaster Assistance
How is this hypothetical story related to disaster response? The Stafford Act governs how FEMA and the federal government can provide disaster assistance to state and local governments. The Act states:
Once the Preliminary Damage Assessment is complete and the State or Indian tribal government determines that the damage exceeds their resources, the Governor or Tribal Chief Executive may submit a declaration request to the President through their FEMA Regional Office.
Just like the Atlanta brewery manager was told to only contact corporate when local production capacity was exceeded, state and local officials must meet this same threshold before they can request federal assistance. If that happens after the hurricane has already made landfall (e.g., when thousands of survivors are huddled in the New Orleans Superdome), federal resources will always be delayed reaching survivors who need them.
Steps have been taken to help speed up the disaster declaration process -including increasing the flexibility for FEMA to pre-deploy resources - but the inherent inefficiency with the concept of escalating assistance based on exceeding resources still causes the system to breakdown. This was a problem highlighted by Hurricane Katrina, and despite investing billions of dollars since the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act was passed 12 years ago, there weren’t enough shelters for Hurricane Harvey survivors in Houston, citizens evacuating southern Florida couldn’t get gas to escape Hurricane Irma (luckily it missed Miami), and it took 6 weeks for basic supplies to reach Puerto Rico. It is obvious that things aren’t working when the same problems that occurred during Katrina are still happening today.
All Federal Agencies Don’t Have These Issues
These challenges with providing federal assistance directly to local public safety agencies are not a universal issue. The FBI immediately offers assistance to local police departments for investigations involving violent crime, organized crime, and terrorism (foreign and domestic). The NTSB immediately responds to aircraft, train, and now autonomous vehicle crashes providing technical investigate services that local agencies cannot provide. The CDC responds to local disease outbreaks. The EPA responds to oil and hazardous materials spills. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission dispatches personnel to an abnormal occurrence at a power plant. FEMA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, sends counter-terrorism, immigration, border, customs, intelligence, and other law enforcement agents across the country on a daily basis.
All of these agencies provide services that surpass the capabilities of local governments to help mitigate an emergency. Due to the sudden nature of these emergencies, the agencies respond immediately when the incident occurs rather than waiting for a written request from the state government. Why is a hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, or other natural disaster that requires federal assistance addressed with a totally different methodology?
Solution for the Problem
It is time to stop thinking about disasters as local issues. Disasters require the federal government’s management, leadership, and resources from start to end in the same manner that local jurisdictions need immediate assistance with serial killers, plane crashes, oil spills, and disease outbreaks. Placing the burden on state and local officials to decide when their disaster response capabilities are exceeded — and then hold the responsibility as the primary decisions makers throughout the response and recovery process is an unrealistic expectation.
Just like the example from the Fictitious Brewing Company, a small regional office would never be expected to lead the delivery of a major contract that will require the full resources of the entire company. The regional manager would never be expected to shoulder the “make or break” decisions that should rest with the CEO. Waiting for the local brewery to buckle before requesting corporate assistance is going to result in a crisis that could otherwise be averted. If it doesn’t make sense for a company to operate in this manner, why would different levels of government involved in disaster response be expected to function like this?
If the same failures that occurred during Hurricane Katrina repeating themselves despite investing billions of dollars over the past decade to bolster FEMA’s capabilities, we need to avoid insanity by doing something differently. Instead of basing our federal policy on the flawed concept that disasters start and end locally, it is time to change the paradigm.
David Riedman is an expert in critical infrastructure protection, homeland security policy, and emergency management. He is a co-founder of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Advanced Thinking and Experimentation (HSx) Program at the Naval Postgraduate School.
