Responding to Urban Disasters, Post Three (Post 7 of 14)

Russell W. Glenn

The seventh of a series of blog posts on Urban Disasters: Readiness, Response, and Recovery by Russ Glenn.

Field Communications Unit; Hurricane Katrina/Hurricane Rita. Baton Rouge, LA, 24 May 2006. Public Domain, NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive.

This third of four posts regarding responses to urban disasters will extend our look at the role of command, leadership, and management. As with those previous, we begin with a list of key points so far noted.

Key Point #1: Preparation for any urban disaster helps to prepare an urban area for catastrophes regardless of cause or type.

Key Point #2:  Urban disasters are more alike than different.

Key Point #3: Rehearsing/exercising plans—even in so simple a form as talking through challenges—is essential.

Key Point #4: Plans must be executable.

Key Point #5: No plan will survive contact with the disaster.

Key Point #6: Information is the currency of success

Key Point #7: Urban residents are key to successful disaster response. It follows that they are key to successful disaster preparation.

Key Point #8: The plagues of bureaucracy, poor delineation of responsibilities, and criminality are remoras on any disaster…except the relationship isn’t symbiotic.

Key Point #9: Look backward to look forward.

Key Point #10: Maintaining or improving post-disaster social infrastructure will often be harder than doing so for an urban area’s physical infrastructure.

Key Point #11: Plan for the end, then the now.

Key Point #12: What happens in urban areas doesn’t stay in urban areas…Las Vegas included.Key Point #13: Not all is what it seems in a city.

Supporting Key Point #13A: Don’t trust appearances.

Key Point #14: Expect the unexpected.

Key Point #15: Common sense sometimes isn’t common.

Key Point #16: Command, leadership, and management are fundamental to disaster response success.

Key Point #17: Getting the response structure right is vital.

Key Point #18: Leadership is important, but who should lead when?

Armed forces can be bulls in the proverbial china shop when it comes to their participation in urban disaster response. This take-charge attitude sometimes has its place. Military forces, designed and trained to deploy quickly, are frequently able to arrive quickly with a similarly responsive logistical system. Military personnel are trained to be flexible, able to adapt to a variety of situations even when those situations are highly dynamic. It is not unusual for their men and women to stay for extended durations after deploying, meaning they can possess a superior understanding of the disaster environment than other outsiders who stay for more limited stints (but, perhaps, not as deep an understanding as some nongovernmental or intergovernmental organization representatives with even more time in the locale). And the presumption that the military’s is inevitably an overly heavy hand doesn’t withstand objective scrutiny. Then Major General Darryl Williams leadership in West Africa during the 2014 Ebola crisis was commended for its cooperative and supportive character (though following US military leadership at times was more in keeping with the overly intrusive stereotype). Such willingness to be part of a larger team and not necessarily in charge can be necessary to the establishment of trust. That trust, in turn, underlies successful implementation of a mission command approach (whether called “mission command” or some other term is used to describe the oversight system in which clear guidance is given without dictating the details of how subordinates are to accomplish assigned tasks. See the third post in this series for a fuller description of mission command.). Mission command properly employed can be effective even when the organization in question is rigidly hierarchical. Its potential is even greater when the organization in question is a coalition or alliance of largely voluntary participants willing to work toward a common goal but less enthusiastic about being told how to do so.

Who should lead? Ideally it will be the organization most qualified. Ideally that will be the in-place government (be it local, state/provincial, or national). Hopefully an able one remains in the aftermath of the disaster. If not, the lead organization might vary over time as requirements evolve not unlike the transition of authority and responsibility during military amphibious operations. As with other aspects of disaster relief, so critical a matter should be planned for and subsequently red-teamed during rehearsals.

Key Point #19: Effective communications are essential to effective leadership.

Effective communications allow disaster response managers to orchestrate their resources much as a conductor leads an orchestra to create music instead of cacophony. Communications are complex, a complexity sometimes overlooked by those not intimately involved in a response. Yes, organizations’ leaders need to communicate with the subordinates and vice versa. But inter-organization communications are also vital, as is their nature. Communications between members of different organizations might be possible via direct contact regardless of the echelon if language and systems (e.g., phones, radios, or computers) are compatible. Often that is not the case. One of the tragedies associated with 9/11 in NYC was that New York City Police Department (NYPD)-New York City Fire Department (FDNY) communications were not nearly as effective as they could have been had equipment, procedures, and other factors been addressed before the event. The result: many fire personnel did not receive situation reports and evacuation warnings broadcast via NYPD channels. The result was many deaths that might have been avoided. Shortcomings were clear before 9/11. Fire and police department radios were found wanting during the response to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC). FDNY radios had not worked well within WTC towers. As was to prove the case again eight years later, police and fire cooperation had been less than desirable.[1]

Communications redundancy is hyper-important during urban crisis response. Communications systems may fail due to destruction of physical infrastructure, electromagnetic pulse, overburdening, or for other reasons. Having second, third, or even additional means of exchanging information can be vital. Preliminary planning and practice can help. Some emergency responders may be unable to reach their primary places of work due to disrupted public transportation, destroyed personal vehicles, flooding, debris, fires, or due to other causes. Primary report locations (where a responder should move to as designated in initial response plans, for example) will sometimes less need their services than do others elsewhere. Designating second and third alternate reporting locations before an event constitutes good planning. Being able to adjust those designations during a response because conditions render plans no longer applicable reflects the flexibility any good plan has built into it. But how to get word out that someone or some organization should report to their alternate or supplementary location? Establishing a sequence of communications means before a disaster is a great leap toward solution. As standing plans designate where individuals or organizations should report, no communication is generally necessary if responders are to proceed as designated. Communication is only needed when changes are called for. Plans can specify cell phones, landlines, radios, email, or other means as backups while also noting which type is to be employed in what sequence. Given that bandwidth or other limitations might make communication difficult, plans and rehearsals can also dictate ways to minimize the duration of messages. For example, a message might simply signal “2” to intended recipients, informing them that they are to report to their alternate location. Acknowledgment of message receipt could be “Ack” (for “Acknowledge”) or “2ack” to confirm the designated location as well.

Key Point #20: Data counts

The same databases that provided input during planning and rehearsals can be fine-tuned to address specific needs once calamity strikes. Census information, tax records, marketing survey results, those important property records: some, all, or others can feed the voracious appetite for information depending on the nature of the crisis, location, demographics, gaps in local capabilities, and aid provider resources. (The reason property records are so critical—and a reason insurgents or criminals deliberately target them for destruction—is that land ownership or lack of it proves a boon to any who can convince a government they own a plot or want to undermine a government by causing it to appear as the power stealing from rightful owners.) If patients have waived release of relevant medical information or local policies permit access regardless, medical data can tell aid providers who needs what treatment, medications, where someone lives, and what challenges exist (mobility limitations, deafness, asthma, need for insulin, reliance on home respirators, or psychiatric problems, for example). Pharmacy information provides less comprehensive but potentially still valuable insights. The potential to save lives begs the question of whether policies are in place to make such information available during a catastrophe; granting individual or collective permission to access the information before a crisis speeds response, especially if damage to an information infrastructure is such that attempting to collect it post-calamity denies access. Pre-disaster rehearsals and other exercises should point to additional information that health care providers could include as release-in-times-of-emergency data. Does the home respirator for a given patient have battery backup? If so, how long will the charge last? If not, does the residence have a backup generator? If so, how much fuel is stored at the location? What other type of battery or backup power source is on site? (Crankable? Rechargeable? None?)

We shouldn’t forget that disease can either be the primary cause of an urban disaster (plague in 17^th-century Europe for example or, to a far lesser extent, COVID in 2020) or derivative thereof. During World War II, London’s Islington saw a 35 percent increase in pulmonary tuberculosis in 1943 as compared to the value five years before. The spike was 40 percent for non-pulmonary tuberculosis.[2]

The above are only some of the data that can help responders’ effectiveness thanks to their knowing what needs at-risk individuals have and where they live. If cellular systems are still operating (as well as the power infrastructure needed to recharge phones), cell phone data can be notably helpful given its real-time character. Emergency responders have used call time and cell tower locations data to track malaria outbreaks in Africa. They could similarly help trace the flow of commuters found to have been exposed to biological, radiological, or chemical contamination during a terrorist attack, accidental exposure, or chemical leak. Testing public sewage has already provided early warning of disease, another means of giving responders a headstart in detection and, potentially, interdicting spread.

Endnotes

[1] Louis Menand, “Disgraced: What happened to Rudy Giuliani?” The New Yorker, September 26, 2022: p. 75.

[2] Philip Ziegler, London at War: 1939-1945, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, p. 260.

The previous installation of this series “Responding to Urban Disasters, Post Two (Post 6 of 14),” appeared on 24 January 2023.

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Responding to Urban Disasters, Post Two (Post 6 of 14)

Russell W. Glenn

The sixth of a series of blog posts on Urban Disasters: Readiness, Response, and Recovery by Russ Glenn.

FDNY Deputy Chief Exercising Field Command at World Trade Center,

“Ground Zero” After 9/11 Attacks. Public Domain, US National Archives 9/11 Collection

Key Point #1: Preparation for any urban disaster helps to prepare an urban area for catastrophes regardless of cause or type.

Key Point #2:  Urban disasters are more alike than different.

Key Point #3: Rehearsing/exercising plans—even in so simple a form as talking through challenges—is essential.

Key Point #4: Plans must be executable.

Key Point #5: No plan will survive contact with the disaster.

Key Point #6: Information is the currency of success

Key Point #7: Urban residents are key to successful disaster response. It follows that they are key to successful disaster preparation.

Key Point #8: The plagues of bureaucracy, poor delineation of responsibilities, and criminality are remoras on any disaster…except the relationship isn’t symbiotic.

Key Point #9: Look backward to look forward.

Key Point #10: Maintaining or improving post-disaster social infrastructure will often be harder than doing so for an urban area’s physical infrastructure.

Key Point #11: Plan for the end, then the now.

Key Point #12: What happens in urban areas doesn’t stay in urban areas…Las Vegas included.

Key Point #13: Not all is what it seems in a city.

Supporting Key Point #13A: Don’t trust appearances.

Key Point #14: Expect the unexpected.

Key Point #15: Common sense sometimes isn’t common.

Introduction

Building on our previous post, we should note that instances in which individuals demonstrate a lack of common sense during urban disasters are regrettably not limited to members of the public or politicians. Too many public figures, medical personnel, and members of first responder organizations demonstrated similarly inexplicable behavior at the height of the COVID pandemic. In contrast, over seventy years before, members of the public and authorities alike stepped-up during New York City’s 1947 struggle with smallpox:

The public was treated as an ally. [Medical historian Judith Levitt recalls,] “in two weeks, five million New Yorkers were vaccinated.” Coercion was used elsewhere: “The drug companies were a little less cooperative until Mayor O’Dwyer locked them into City Hall and said you are going to produce more vaccine, and you’re going to do it very quickly, or you’re not leaving this building, and they surprisingly agreed…. It was a voluntary vaccinations program…. Public compliance was incredibly high. Now I don't have to remind you that this is immediately post-World war II, and that did have something to do…with the level of organization in the city and the cooperative effort.”[1]

Why highlight on this point? Though we like to think ourselves and fellow citizens savvier today than those generations ago, such an assumption is ill advised as we plan for and respond to urban disasters today. Why the seeming backward slippage in common sense?[2] The examples below will show that the type of urban disaster has an influence. Timing can as well. As noted in the quotation, America’s citizens in 1947 were used to sacrificing for the public good whether as military personnel or civilians on the home front. Part of it was also the quality of the nation’s command, leadership, and management at the time.

Key Point #16: Command, leadership, and management are fundamental to disaster response success.

There is pretty good support for an argument that most urban disaster failures have their roots in command, leadership, and management shortfalls. Bureaucracy plays a vital role. Qualified, capable, well-intentioned, and effective organizations and individuals are essential. Put differently, good government and good governors are a good—a very good—thing.

Preparations for and response to the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States provide a relevant example, unfortunately in the sense of demonstrating the costs when one or more of the above is lacking. The horror of the day is evident to any who was there, watched from a distance, or followed subsequent events, but the extent of the destruction in the vicinity of Ground Zero is worthy of note because it in microcosm reflects what urban victims of the 1666 London fire, 1923 Tokyo earthquake, 1945 bombings of Hamburg and Dresden, and many other disasters throughout history have experienced on much grander scales. The title of Jay D. Aronson’s Who Owns the Dead? The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero hints at some of the troubles confronted during the response to and recovery from that dreadful day. He also notes just how disorienting urban disasters can be—have repeatedly been—since fires, tremors, raids, volcanos, or other forms of devastation have visited since humankind first created urban areas. “People who were on the scene just after the towers collapsed,” Aronson observes, “report being awestruck by the devastation with which they were confronted. Life-long New Yorkers found themselves completely disoriented on streets that they had walked innumerable times before.”[3] And this regarding what was at most a postage stamp-sized area on the envelope of America’s most populous urban area. Imagine the disorientation when a metropolis suffers widespread devastation akin to our previously noted cases.

Disorientation gave way to disorganization and inter-organizational competition around Ground Zero. Like our earlier-noted shortfalls in vetting NGOs in 2016-17 Mosul, Aronson reported lack of a credentialing process until five days after the attack, meaning “large numbers of unnecessary personnel became involved in the search and rescue effort, making it difficult to work efficiently and potentially putting peoples’ lives at risk”[4] as well as expanding the number of those exposed to later respiratory or other ailments. One (seemingly obvious) lesson for urban authorities planning for large-scale disasters: identify needs, allocate responsibilities, train personnel, and put procedures in place that will be necessary once catastrophe comes to call before it does so. The New York Police Department’s lack of in-house expertise when it came to gathering biological samples and related information led to confusion as forms pertaining to the identification of remains failed to request all needed data. Multiple forms were at times filled out for the same person, making identification and notification further problematic, this in addition to other (perhaps less avoidable) errors such as wrong reporting of birthdates or spelling of names.[5] FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and US Army Corps of Engineers assisted local authorities, but the federal government never nationalized the site. Oversight of rescue, recovery, and other operations consequently devolved to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), a supremely dedicated but interested party given the high number of firefighters lost in the Twin Towers collapse. This lack of an official, overarching manager left no one to address inter-organizational tensions that arose as response and recovery work progressed.[6]

Also telling: Rivalry between the NYPD and FDNY had been allowed to influence the degree of cooperation and compatibility of the two organizations in the years prior to 9/11. The two organizations competed for funding and other resources, a situation that reflects on management by city authorities at higher echelons and in-place policies.[7] Among those leaders whose pre-event decisions raise questions was New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Advisors resisted his efforts to move the emergency operations center (EOC) located at a well-equipped and secure facility across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan to 7 World Trade Center. He nonetheless pushed for the relocation, emphasizing his desire that the EOC be within easy walking distance of City Hall. Convenient perhaps, but unwise given a result that put multiple crisis-crucial sites within a too-short distance of each other.[8] It’s not as if the mayor did not have the opportunity to learn from urban disasters elsewhere. The 1985 earthquake that struck Mexico City knocked out many facilities that were vital to an effective response given their over-concentration in the central part of the megacity. Among those were twenty-seven hospitals destroyed or damaged and a resulting 40 percent of the city’s medical capacity disrupted. Damage to a single downtown building also interrupted local, national, and international telephone service.[9]

Anyone familiar with bureaucracies knows that critical decisions by select individuals are often key to overcoming flawed bureaucratic policies, procedures, and personalities during a crisis. Personal relationships are as crucial during response as they are to effective preparations and recovery. Such individuals and such relationships blow through or manage workarounds to obstacles stolid officialdoms put in place.[10]

A parting observation: the larger the urban area and greater the disaster, the more likely assistance will come from individuals and external organizations less familiar or unfamiliar with the city’s governing structure and its key decision-makers. Plans and crisis response procedures should acknowledge this eventuality. Hosting authorities need to ensure high-quality liaison personnel and coordinating organizations assist those lending a hand.[11]

Key Point #17: Getting the response structure right is vital.

As command, leadership, and management are fundamental to success, it is essential to have a functional and supportive organizational structure for orchestrating an effective disaster response. One benefit in most post-disaster cases: local and higher-level governments will still be in charge. Even governments less than desirable in terms of capability and commitment can help given their understanding of local conditions, expectations, location of important records, and the identity of community and influence leaders both formal and informal. It is an advantage in many but unfortunately not all cases.

While it is in most cases desirable to work within the structure of an existing (or previous) government, those responding in disaster’s aftermath need not slavishly adhere to in-place configurations. “It may have sounded great in theory to follow the Iraqi system,” Andrew Alderson observed when writing of Basra, Iraq early in the 21^st century, “but one of the reasons why the centralized Iraqi government hadn’t worked well was precisely because they had nineteen different groups reporting into the centre to be told what to do.”[12] Flawed government structures can be inherently inefficient if not ineffective. Those deliberately bloated or otherwise hindered by unneeded hierarchical layers also burden responding organizations with excessive liaison responsibilities. Both immediate response efforts and long-term urban health may be helped by working with urban authorities to modify pre-disaster structures when alternative approaches look to prove inadequate. The timing and extent of changes should be carefully considered, however. Overly ambitious alterations in the days immediately following an urban disaster can exacerbate rather than mollify crisis conditions.

Even a government as sophisticated as Japan’s found itself struggling to orchestrate the response and recovery to its 2011 earthquake-tsunami-reactor calamity.  The national government established the Ministry of Recovery to collaborate with local and prefectural governments. Yet overlapping responsibilities between the Ministries of Industry; Agriculture, Forest, and Fishery; and that of Land and Transportation hindered urban and rural responses alike. Similar to the funding shortfalls that plagued London in 1666 and Tokyo in 1923, Ministry of Recovery funding never equaled its leaders’ ambitious response plans.[13] Bureaucratic structures suitable for day-to-day operations in times of routine can crack and break when disasters visit. Effective responses may demand changes difficult to make under the best of circumstances and virtually impossible to accomplish if not considered in pre-response planning and exercises.

Endnotes

[1] Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, New York: Penguin, 2010, p. 128.

[2] While there has certainly been slippage in some aspects of urban disaster decision-making, medical and political personalities’ absurd responses to the post-WWI flu pandemic in the United States and responses during other historical calamities provide close company to dubious 21^st-century choices. For example, see John M. Barry, “How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/.

[3] Jay D. Aronson, Who Owns the Dead? The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2016, p. 28.

[4] Aronson, Who Owns the Dead?, pp. 28-29.

[5] Aronson, Who Owns the Dead?, p. 31.

[6] Aronson, Who Owns the Dead?, pp. 32, 37, and 38. Aronson reports, for example, “Firefighters offered differential treatment to their own victims compared to other uniformed service victims and civilians. Each time that remains of a firefighter or firefighting gear was located, the entire Ground Zero recovery effort ceased. All workers at the site, whether uniformed service personnel or civilian construction workers, paused and saluted the fallen firefighter. If remains were recovered, they were wrapped in an American flag and paraded through a lineup of Ground Zero workers. These remains were immediately sent to the OCME [Office of the Chief Medical Examiner] via ambulance rather than being placed in a refrigerated trailer on site for later transport to the OCME.” He goes on to write, “people familiar with the recovery effort say that FDNY could have benefited from more professional anthropological and archaeological expertise on site,” to include anthropologists who volunteered their services.

[7] Jay D. Aronson, Who Owns the Dead?, 33. Aronson is but one of several sources bemoaning lack of greater cooperation between the two organizations. It has reportedly improved in subsequent years.

[8] Louis Menand, “Disgraced: What happened to Rudy Giuliani?” The New Yorker, September 26, 2022), p. 75; and Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell, p. 213.

[9] Diane E. Davis, “Reverberations: Mexico City’s 1985 Earthquake and the Transformation of the Capital,” in Lawrence J. Vale and Thomas J. Campanella, ed., The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 261-62 (uncorrected advance reading copy).

[10] Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell, p. 125.

[11] Hilary Synnott, Bad Days in Basra, New York: I.B Tauris, 2008 provides an excellent and at times entertaining example in this regard. Synnott writes of having to deal with the Coalition Provisional Authority during international efforts in early twenty-first-century Iraq.

[12] Andrew Alderson, Bankrolling Basra: the incredible story of a part-time soldier, $1 billion and the collapse of Iraq, London: Robinson, 2007, p. 64.

[13] Izumi Kuroishi, “Social Resilience in Disaster Recovery Planning for Fishing Port Cities: A Comparative Study of Prewar and Twenty-First-Century Tsunami Recovery Planning in the Northern Part of Japan,” Journal of Urban History 47, 2021: p. 345.

The previous installation of this series “Responding to Urban Disasters, Post One (Post 5 of 14),” appeared on 22 January 2023.

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The Kim regime’s greatest vulnerability is from within, from the alienation of its own people who suffer under totalitarian repression. While insisting on complete and verifiable denuclearization, the foundation of U.S. strategy should be a human rights upfront approach, a comprehensive information and influence campaign, and the advancement of the strategic aim of a free and unified Korea. 

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Responding to Urban Disasters, Post One (Post 5 of 14)

Russell W. Glenn

The fifth of a series of blog posts on Urban Disasters: Readiness, Response, and Recovery by Russ Glenn.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Special Operations Group (SOG); 

Mexico Beach; SOG, Urban Search and Rescue 046, Hurricane Michael, 17 October 2018,

 FWC Photo by Tim Donovan (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

This is a second set of four posts regarding disasters in urban areas. The first—addressing efforts to ready for urban disasters—provided the key points listed below. The second, focusing on responding to such disasters, takes a similar approach, identifying additional key points with historical examples often in support.

The key points from the four “readying for disaster” posts:

Key Point #1: Preparation for any urban disaster helps to prepare an urban area for catastrophes regardless of cause or type.

Key Point #2:  Urban disasters are more alike than different.

Key Point #3: Rehearsing/exercising plans—even in so simple a form as talking through challenges—is essential.

Key Point #4: Plans must be executable.

Key Point #5: No plan will survive contact with the disaster.

Key Point #6: Information is the currency of success

Key Point #7: Urban residents are key to successful disaster response. It follows that they are key to successful disaster preparation.

Key Point #8: The plagues of bureaucracy, poor delineation of responsibilities, and criminality are remoras on any disaster…except the relationship isn’t symbiotic.

Key Point #9: Look backward to look forward.

Key Point #10: Maintaining or improving post-disaster social infrastructure will often be harder than doing so for an urban area’s physical infrastructure.

Key Point #11: Plan for the end, then the now.

Key Point #12: What happens in urban areas doesn’t stay in urban areas…Las Vegas included.

Introduction

Author Josef W. Konvitz, writing in his The Urban Millennium: The City-Building Process from the Early Middle Ages to the Present, provides an insight at once both disturbing and reassuring: “It would seem that society has made more progress in limiting the risks associated with natural disasters than with man-made catastrophes, of which war remains the supreme example.”[1] That mankind is so adept at destruction is surely disturbing. Yet we can once again return to key points 1 and 2 to give ourselves some reassurance that though mankind seems intent on showing up Mother Nature in its willingness to wreak havoc, there are men and women whose efforts to prepare cities for natural catastrophes have also done much to aid us when it is mankind itself that is to blame. Our first four posts set the foundation for this and others to follow. Now is the time to consider the challenges inherent in executing those executable plans hopefully developed prior to disaster’s visitation.

Key Point #13: Not all is what it seems in a city:

For example, a bridge is a bridge but can be so much more. Those with responsibilities for urban citizens’ security need to prepare for two futures when it comes to bridges even if they themselves have no intention of dropping a span—one with the bridge intact, a second with it lying submerged beneath the river’s flowing waters or scattered at the bottom of a gorge. Nature and the enemy always have a vote. A bridge’s survival is not dependent on one side’s interests alone. Are there other sources of water and power if a span falls, one that previously provided both to a community via pipes and cables on its underside? If not, how will residents (and one’s own fighting forces) be provisioned?

Supporting Key Point #13A: Don’t trust appearances:

“Appearances can be deceiving” is a common saw. It is one that can take on special meaning as an urban area responds to disaster. Mosul faced the horrors of war in 2016–17 as Iraqi military forces sought to free the city’s residents of the plague that was ISIS. Were the misfortunes of combat not enough, thrill-seekers posing as nongovernmental organization (NGO) members insinuated themselves into relief efforts. Some had little if any medical training though they professed to be so qualified. Slapping a Red Cross armband on their arms, they inserted chest tubes into wounded residents. One reportedly tore off the bandage from a sucking chest wound for the benefit of a camera crew. Whether the ambition is thrills or money, urban disasters provide both as aid funds flow into organizations legitimate and otherwise. There remains a need to better vet providers and develop policies such that parties capable of conducting the vetting can be readily called on when the host nation cannot or will not.

Key Point #14: Expect the unexpected:

[Basra] was an awful place to drive in. Drivers leaving the palace had to negotiate what was affectionally known among the soldiers as “RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] alley.” … The common belief was that if you drove fast your vehicle was harder to hit…. Yet going at high speed presented its own dangers. The thick metal manhole covers that punctuated the streets had become prized spoils of war among local people and many had been stolen. And when not dodging holes in the ground—a particular hazard at night when there were no streetlights—the speeding motorist had to avoid slow-moving donkeys.[2]

Common sense would seem to dictate getting out of town when danger approaches. Thousands upon thousands left London during the Blitz. Populations in Hiroshima and Tokyo were among those in Japan moving from city to countryside during WWII, the latter declining an estimated four million in population due to displacement (from 6.8M to 2.8M).[3] The same type of movement was true of Germany’s Hamburg.[4] Yet what seems common sense to the distant observer may not be so to the man or woman on the ground. Thousands of those many thousands returned to London before the Blitz ended, the cost of family separations or other factors felt to be higher than the risk in the capital. Recall any warning of a major storm approaching a metropolitan area and television images of bumper-to-bumper traffic fleeing the urban area come to mind. Images of those fleeing storms are often accompanied by tales of residents who refuse to depart. American soldiers engaging enemy in Iraqi cities sometimes found, to their amazement, that civilians would walk unconcernedly into the line of fire, apparently sure that the sophisticated weapons employed would not endanger them or, perhaps, blissfully unaware given that the opposing sides might be separated by several hundred meters. Other behaviors are not so easily dismissed. Crouched down and silent among many hiding in a restaurant during the siege of The Taj Hotel in 2008 Mumbai, one individual suddenly raised a camera and took a flash picture as a terrorist walked by in an adjacent hallway. A high-ranking public figure elsewhere in the hotel spoke on his phone, apparently giving an interview to a television reporter. “We are in a special part of the hotel on the first floor called the Chambers,” he said. “There are more than 200 important people: business leaders and foreigners.”[5] All of which leads us to another key point, one going hand-in-hand with #14:

Key Point #15: Sometimes common sense isn’t common.

You might smile at the above, but I’m guessing few of you are surprised after reading—if not experiencing firsthand—the bizarre discounting of science and refusal to get COVID vaccines during the recent (or ongoing, your pick) pandemic. The dismissal of science—of common sense—was a ratcheting-up of the similar rejection seen in 1995 Chicago during its heat wave as described in a previous post. Politics or willful ignorance sometimes explains the seeming illogic. Cultural mores can at other times play a role. Despite pleas from health authorities, families in 2014 West Africa insisted on sharing a last meal with highly contagious corpses of recently departed Ebola victims. Seemingly inexplicable behavior? Yes, until one realizes such meals are normal practice for some groups in the region. What comprises common sense is not constant across all cultures.

Endnotes

[1] Josef W. Konvitz, The Urban Millennium: The City-Building Process from the Early Middle Ages to the Present, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985, p. 168.

[2] Andrew Alderson, Bankrolling Basra: The incredible story of a part-time soldier, $1 Billion and the collapse of Iraq,” London: Robinson, 2007, p. 14.

[3] Dylan J. Plung, “The Impact of Urban Evacuation in Japan during World War II,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 19 (October 1, 2021), https://apjjf.org/2021/19/Plung.html (accessed September 28, 2022).

[4] Keith Lowe, Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943, New York: Scribner, 2007, p. 228.

[5] Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel, New York: Penguin, 2013.

The previous installation of this series “Readying for Urban Disaster, Post Four,” appeared on 20 January 2023.

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