“When you see incredible strength, know that it rests on unspeakable fragility. Recognize both.” - Robyna May
Fragility and the Gifts of Chaos
Late in the evening on May 4, 2007, a series of 22 tornadoes formed in Kansas. One of these storms created an EF5 tornado which killed eleven people and completely destroyed the declining farm town of Greensburg, Kansas. After the initial shock of the event passed, the community members saw the destruction as an opportunity to re-create their community, strengthening it against future storms in the process. Within three years, Greensburg had been transformed into a “green” community, using renewable energy options for rebuilding efforts. It is now a model community not only for renewable energy, but also for community recovery after disaster.
Sadly, many other communities do not share the same fate. In 1993, nearby Chesterfield, Missouri, was inundated by flood waters in a multi-state flood event affecting the entire 32.5 mile town and a population of 50,000 people. Unlike Greensburg, however, Chesterfield did not recover fully. One study reported that Chesterfield lost 200 businesses in the flood and over two-thirds of those businesses never recovered.
What makes one community falter after disaster while another thrives, growing stronger in the process? More importantly, is there a way to determine the point at which a community’s ability to withstand shocks and disturbances from disasters ends and system failures begin to occur?
Over the last decade, the United States alone has averaged at least one mega-crisis per year. A mega-crisis is a distinguishing factor between the disaster that remains within the community’s capacity to respond and recover, and that which exceeds that capacity.
“Mega-crises are not just ‘more of the same’; they present a new class of adversity with many ‘unknowns’. They defy boundaries, limits, neat demarcations, patterned connections and linear consequences”. — Ira Helsloot
These types of events challenge all of our basic assumptions about response and recovery from large-scale events. They also challenge our assumptions about the methods used by political leaders, emergency responders and community members. With these challenges come solutions that often diverge or conflict as complex problems do not have simple answers.
This increase in mega-disasters or mega-crises is partially responsible for a new degree of complexity we are seeing in emergency management. We have more people living in areas susceptible to wildfires, flooding, tornadoes and coastal disasters than ever before in our history. And though the causes of climate change are yet to be fully explained, our nation has experienced dramatic weather and climate changes over the last decade, compounding the dangers people face from large-scale disasters.
“Wildfires in such regions as Indonesia, the western U.S. and even inland Alaska have been increasing as timberlands and forest floors grow more parched. The blazes create a feedback loop of their own, pouring more carbon into the atmosphere and reducing the number of trees, which inhale CO2 and release oxygen”. — Jeffrey Kluger, TIME Magazine
With climate change, the destruction from extreme events such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires is more pronounced, leading to increased overall costs of recovery. And when you look at terrorism, our threats seem to be compounding in this area as well. Complexity within the homeland security enterprise can be seen in the number of agencies involved in intelligence activities, and the increase in threats to the homeland despite all of the efforts to stop them. Routine crises and emergency situations can be managed with normal structures in place, but once the event passes into the realm of the mega-crisis or extreme event, many of those tried and tested structures cease to support the community.
“Managing complex, chaotic, and high level crises requires different sets of knowledge, skills, and preparation that involve decision making, central and yet flexible organizational structures, and a leadership capacity to stay on top of the crisis that is unfolding with dynamic changes”. — Gustav Koehler, Guenther Kress and Randi Miller, California State University
This understanding led me down a rabbit hole into Chaos Theory, Complexity Theory and, specifically, the study of fragility in emergency management. I really wanted to understand why some communities handle crisis with ease while others face years of devastation. What is it that makes one community more fragile than another?
From all that I learned, one of the most important concepts was the idea that during times of instability, it is essential to recognize that stability can only be regained by introducing a bit of instability into these environments, with communities and networks that are dynamic and fluid. By looking at these events differently, it may be possible to better understand and anticipate how and when systems fail, as these events progress from the routine into the complex.
“Almost all people answer that the opposite of ‘fragile’ is ‘robust’, ‘resilient’, ‘solid’, or something of the sort. But the resilient, robust (and company) are items that neither break nor improve”. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In this environment of mega-crises and complex disasters, we see differences in how communities respond and recover. In some of these disasters, the community rises together and recovers faster, and stronger than before, such as Greensburg, Kansas. In other cases, the disaster cripples the community, leaving it in ruins for years to come, socially, politically, and economically.
While concentrating on quick and full recovery from disasters, it is important to determine ways in which we can strengthen the system for the next disaster. No longer should the focus remain on being resilient, or “bouncing back” to normal after a disaster, but instead on building systems and structures that allow a community to gain strength and decrease their fragility before the next disaster. The concept of fragility makes communities not only look at resiliency and sustainability, but it also leads to a forward-looking philosophy of decreasing the things that made them vulnerable in the first place.
