The 5.4 temblor that hit Southern California Tuesday morning didn’t cause any major damage or injuries. But in the dozen or so seconds of wondering whether the crescendo of shaking was going to be the Big One before it became obvious that it wasn’t, I had plenty of time to remember that I hadn’t recently checked the expiration dates of the food the three people in my household have stashed in our disaster kits. That’s one kit for each car – food, bottled water, a change of clothes and shoes, a mini-flashlight, sunscreen, assorted first-aid items, some cash and batteries. My wife and stepdaughter also have small kits at their job sites.

At home, we have cached 180 gallons of purified water and enough packaged meals-ready-to-eat for two weeks, battery-powered lanterns, candles and several other just-in-case items. We also have a plan for how to get back together if we are separated when something major happens.

A few friends think we’re a little deranged. What surprises us, on the other hand, is how many people have made absolutely no preparations in case a disaster strikes. It’s almost as if they, like the people of Bali, refuse to buy vehicle insurance because this is like daring the gods to do something bad to you. When the subject came up at a party some years ago, one person excused his lack of preparation on the grounds that he refused to be ruled by fear, as if stocking up on spare water and sundries is akin to building a bunker to shield against an asteroid strike.

Being prepared depends mostly on where you live. We don’t keep any hip-waders around. For many Kossacks, however, that might be a good idea.

Three years ago, shortly after Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast, killed nearly 2000 people and left tens of thousands stranded without power or potable water for days, the Kossack AlphaGeek, a Silicon Valley technical executive with professional  experience in risk assessment and disaster-readiness planning, performed a tremendous service with a five-part series on the subject.

In his introductory piece, he wrote:

The psychology of disaster preparedness

In order to effectively prepare for disaster without becoming overwhelmed, you must be able to make realistic judgments about risks.  On one hand, it is an effort for most people to "think the unthinkable", to contemplate scenarios which are far outside the routine of their daily lives.  It is difficult for most people to imagine a world where fresh water does not flow from the taps, electricity is something you can't take for granted, and the grocery store shelves are empty... assuming the stores are even open.

On the other hand, there's a phenomenon I think of as the "armageddon fallacy".  This is the temptation, once that our Pandora's Box of fears and concerns has been opened, to imagine extremely unlikely events as real threats.  We must be cautious to exercise good judgment when considering risks, as the "armageddon fallacy" is a surprisingly easy trap to fall into.  Keep in mind that your plan, at some point, will be shared with friends and family.  This incents most people to stay clear of the Crazy Talk Express to Armageddon Town when making a plan.

Here are links to all five parts:

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 1 of 5 - Assess your risks!

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 2 of 5 - Plan to survive!

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 3 of 5 - Plan to survive!

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 4 of 5 - Gear, supplies and training

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 5 of 5 - Conclusion

+   +   +

The Overnight News Digest has been posted, including a story on Audit questions millions in Blackwater contracts.

Right now there are tornadoes and floods in the midwest, fires in the west, hurricane season is starting in the Atlantic and it is always earthquake season, so I have disaster planning on the brain.  When a disaster strikes your home or community, it can be a really costly event.  However, with a little bit of time and effort in advance, the frugal person can avoid some of the worst trouble and expense.  Putting together a disaster plan and a set of supplies can be done rather cheaply.  It doesn't need to cost an arm and a leg and the money spent now will seem like a terrific bargain if those supplies are ever needed.  Even if they aren't, you will have bought yourself some peace of mind that is priceless.  

Much of this diary will be a reprise of the one I did six months ago on building a disaster kit.  See that diary for the detailed list of supplies I have tried to assemble.  If you already have a disaster plan and set of supplies, you may want to revisit them and update them now.  If you haven't yet made your disaster preparations, now would be a good time to start.

FEMA has finally acknowledged what some of us in the blogging community have been pointing out for days:  those floodwaters in the rivers inundating Iowa and Illinois towns inevitably will make their way into the Mississippi River, increasing its flow and potentially overtopping or breaking 27 levees. But, FEMA isn't publicly sharing the specifics and there is little effort to get residents in the target areas prepared. As a result, we may see a repeat of the Iowa situation, where many residents were forced to evacuate with little more than the clothes on their backs.

My advice to those who live on the banks of the Mississippi:  don't wait. Get ready now.

NEW:  Army Corps of Engineers levees map with adequacy ratings (link provided by wanderindiana)

We are entering a period of instability and scarcity affecting our food and energy supplies. Our oil comes from a half dozen countries, and any disruption of the oil supply could lead severe food shortages. Cuba suffered near famine when the Soviets cut their oil supply in 1990, but averted disaster by converting every available space to gardens. Of course, having a fully tropical climate probably helped.

You may be considering a garden next year. You don't have much time, because lots of people will get the gardening bug next year. Even if oil doesn't go over $150, supplies will get more scarce.  Less construction means less topsoil for sale. More expensive animal feed means less manure. I already heard a NPR story last month about steep increases in the price of manure.

My advice is get digging. Dig up that future garden, test the soil, add lime as needed, and work in a bunch of manure and compost. Get it now - it's less than $2 a bag. Don't be shy about ordering more than you think you will ever need. You'll use it.  

I have previously diaried attempts by Bushco to secretly gut our public health safety net through a set of hard-to-understand rules changes. If implemented May 25 as planned, the rules will severely reduce federal subsidies to public hospitals, indigent hospital care, emergency rooms, clinics, school-based health, graduate medical education, case management, rehabilitation, and children's Medicaid enrollment, causing providers to close their doors. I even flew to DC with a few other health care activists, convincing a McClatchy editor to cover the story, and got some help from a professional I met on the web to film a YouTube documentary to alert the public! Other bloggers took up the cause, began calling their Congresscritters and voila! HR 5613, The "Protect Our Medicaid Safety Net Act" was born!

I have previously diaried our mutual efforts to prevent these rules from going into effect.  The moratorium on the evil rules goes before the full Senate this week. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Charles Grassley (R-IA), and administration officials have vowed to kill the moratorium. Find out how you can help below the break.

I watched ABC news tonight.  I know that I am not supposed to, but ABC is my only local station, and I was watching local news, and didn't change the channel as I was making dinner.  They started out by talking about how terrible the economy was and how states are going broke because of the housing crisis.  Then they got to McCain in New Orleans.  

Do you prefer the statistics about home foreclosures, or would you rather read reports about people losing their homes? Do you read the health care analysis diaries or case reports of disasters that hit the uninsured?

Both statistics and case reports tell a story, and they both impact decisions, but in very different ways. The same is true for stats about influenza and stories about children dying from influenza. Both scenarios were on display this week, both in Atlanta (CDC pandemic drill) and Hong Kong (seasonal influenza outbreak). Let's explore that a bit more.

Back in February, 2007 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was confronted with this mock scenario:

A 22-year-old Georgetown University swim team member just back from Indonesia eats dinner with his teammates but then develops a fever and doesn't accompany them to a meet in New York.

That is how a flu pandemic in the United States started.

It's a terrific thing, by the way, that these drills are taking place. Drilling and practice makes the actual response that much stronger, and while no exercise can be completely realistic, systems glitches will occur and be caught and improved on for the next time.

With outbreaks in multiple states, the exercise picked up where it left off a few months later, April 2007:

It's near the end of a 48-hour simulated flu pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's top brass are packed into a conference room glassed off from the hubbub of its Emergency Operations Center at CDC headquarters in Atlanta.

It's a chance to practice decision-making in case of a real pandemic. The gathered staff are discussing how to screen all international travelers for flu symptoms.

CDC director Julie Gerberding interrupts.

"I have a question," she says. "Just what is our containment strategy in Pea Ridge?"

She's talking about an actual place — Pea Ridge, Ark., population 2,346. But according to this fictional scenario, a dangerous new strain of Asian bird flu has found its way halfway around the world to Pea Ridge.

The scenario-writers have given Pea Ridge a small expatriate community from the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. In the pretend pandemic, a Marshall Islander gets infected with the new flu in Indonesia and brings the virus back to Pea Ridge. That's the kind of thing that can happen when air travel is so fast that people can fly from anywhere to anywhere else before they develop flu symptoms.

In this recent CDC simulation, Gerberding needs to find out what's being done to stop the virus from spreading beyond Pea Ridge.

Flash forward to March 2008, where I joined the CDC exercise for two days as a (mostly) observer. That conference room is just behind the CDC's Emergency Operations Center, pictured above during this week's continuation of the exercise. Each of the 50 monitors is manned by someone coordinating one or another of the fuctions CDC needs to fulfill in a pandemic, such as collecting state data on hospital beds, or sharing their expertise and advice to local and state offcilas on infection control,  quarantine and legal issues. There are liasons with key government partners like State and DoD (in the scenario, military personnel on an overseas ship are affected). It's now day 6 of the pandemic, according to the exercise, and the CDC Director, Julie Gerberding, is calling the Georgia State Emergency Manager to find out if Georgia schools are closing (the answer is: not yet) to assess the impact on CDC employees if their kids are sent home.

That's important information for many reasons. School closure (more properly termed student dismissal – the buildings remain open and might be used for alternate treatment centers or school lunch distribution) is a linch pin in the community mitigation strategy that CDC recommends in a severe pandemic (see this brief discussion on community mitigation from Dec 2006). However, the dependence on local decision making means that smooth execution of well-laid plans is not assured. For example, here's what happened in Atlanta this week (bolded added):

The CDC was very accomodating in allowing the observers access to senior staff and section officers on duty, including sitting in on an hour briefing/conference call with the affected states (whoever played those roles, the accents were perfect - Arkansas sounded nothing like Michigan). States had varying ability to update CDC with real time case numbers ("I'll get back to you on that" must have been the most commonly heard line of the day), and difficulty with adjusting on the fly to requests for extra personnel ("we need you to send 20 staff, varying qualitications, to support screening activities at your state's busiest airport") and rapidly changing policy requests. That was especially evident when the states were asked to consider community mitigation strategies including student dismissal. Some states pushed back on that, with an observation that it would be a) difficult b) disruptive c) expensive. In addition, in some states, there was no clarity as to whether decisions would be made at the local, county or state level (states with only a few cases were less ready to pull the trigger; Hawaii was quite worried about the effect of all this on the tourist industry).

[Remember, the above is role playing, but very realistic role playing. Some states might be more ready, some states less. If they wanted to make a point in the exercise that states were not ready to simply throw a switch and turn on non-pharmaceutical intervention, practice social distancing, close schools, etc, on a moment's notice on a call from CDC, that point was made.]

Because we live in a capitalist country we have this glaring issue with the absense of healthcare access by tens of millions of people. This is sort of the tip of an iceberg that also includes disaster preparedness.  

As people have been shorn off the insured for healthcare rolls, the country's ability to provide proper medical attention in the event on a huge disaster is severely limited.

So much so that In a Massive Disaster, Care Will Be Scarce: State Guidelines Lay Framework for Deliberately Letting Some People Die.

That's right.  Make the jump.

There's a series of posts I've done for Daily Kos about how the Feds are preparing for an influenza pandemic, including disaster preparedness, and pandemic preparedness, as well as a review of the National Response Framework that the federal government uses to approach disasters and disaster management. A recent position paper by the ACLU has brought this back into the headlines. How far the Feds can and will go to contain a pandemic and protect your health is an important topic both to discuss and to track. The ACLU report provides an opportunity to review selected aspects of this topic.

Background

Flu pandemics are different than other disasters because they are extensive (they happen everywhere), significant (a quarter of the population might be affected, with a third of the population unable to report for work because of illness or health care obligations for dependents and others) and require careful planning to help prevent spread of disease as well as to mitigate the disruption a pandemic would bring to our worldwide just-in-time economic system. One aspect of this planning includes the use, and consideration of, isolation and quarantine at the beginning of a pandemic outbreak, when containment is still theoretically feasible (although many experts doubt if containment is indeed ever feasible). From Flu Wiki:

Isolation and quarantine are two public health strategies designed to protect the public by preventing exposure to infected or potentially infected persons.

In general, isolation refers to the separation of persons who have a specific infectious illness from those who are healthy and the restriction of their movement to stop the spread of that illness. Isolation is a standard procedure used in hospitals today for patients with tuberculosis and certain other infectious diseases.

Quarantine, in contrast, is very unusual and generally refers to the separation and restriction of movement of persons who, while not yet ill, have been exposed to an infectious agent and therefore may become infectious. Quarantine of exposed persons is a public health strategy that is intended to stop the spread of infectious disease.

Both isolation and quarantine may be conducted on a voluntary basis, and this is usual, or compelled on a mandatory basis through legal authority.

Back in 2005, George Bush held a news conference in which he proposed military intervention.

The United States may need to quarantine regions of the country if localized outbreaks of a pandemic flu occur, US President George Bush said today during a press conference in Washington, DC.

Bush suggested expanding presidential power over state-run National Guard operations to implement such quarantines in the event of a pandemic.

By executive order (April 1, 2005) pandemic influenza was added to the Public Health Service Act of 2003 as a quarantine disease. However, there was considerable push-back from the public health community at that time (link is to a Boston Globe op-ed from George Annas:

WHENEVER THE world is not to his liking, President Bush has a tendency to turn to the military to make it better. The most prominent example is the country's response to 9/11, complete with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After Hurricane Katrina, Bush belatedly called on the military to assist in securing New Orleans, and has since suggested that Congress should consider empowering the military to be the ''first responders" in any national disaster.

On Tuesday, the president suggested that the United States should confront the risk of a bird flu pandemic by giving him the power to use the US military to quarantine ''part[s] of the country" experiencing an ''outbreak." So we have moved quickly in the past month, at least metaphorically, from the global war on terror to a proposed war on hurricanes, to a proposed war on the bird flu.

Of all these proposals, the use of the military to attempt to contain a flu pandemic on US soil is the most dangerous...

Planning makes sense. But planning for ''brutal" or ''extreme" quarantine of large numbers or areas of the United States would create many more problems than it could solve...

Public health in the 21st century should be federally directed, but effective public health policy must be based on trust, not fear of the public.

Since then, and until recently, the voluntary nature of quarantine and containment has been stressed by CDC, HHS and federal disaster planners.

Contemporary Concerns

On Monday of this week, the ACLU issued a strongly-worded report entitled Pandemic Preparedness: The Need for a Public Health — Not a Law Enforcement/National Security — Approach, co-authored by George Annas, the same author of the Boston Globe editorial from 2005 (more after the flip).

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  Folks we have a disaster on the horizon and we need to batten down and prepare.  No, I'm not talking about your favorite candidate losing the nomination, I'm talking about something a little closer to home.  It may be something as minor as a short term power outage or as major as Hurricane Katrina, but each and every one of us will most likely face some natural or man-made disaster in the next 5 years.  A few weeks ago, in the midst of the Southern California fires, I did a diary on how to put together a home disaster kit.  As with many of the topics I write about, I picked that one in hopes of inspiring me to actually assemble a disaster kit for myself.  It turns out that putting such a thing together takes a lot more time and thought than I had realized.  (Or maybe I had realized, which is why I hadn't done it!)  I hope that by sharing some of the lessons I have learned below, I can boost you up a bit on your own learning curve.

Tongue-in-cheek? Not entirely.

De Nile, that river in Egypt, is part of the human condition. In fact, some of the response to bad news can be characterized as an adjustment reaction. As the American Psychological Association notes, the best way to cope with stress and disaster is to encourage resilience.

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress -- such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.

Research has shown that resilience is ordinary, not extraordinary. People commonly demonstrate resilience. One example is the response of many Americans to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and individuals' efforts to rebuild their lives.

The best way to be resilient, of course, is to recognize threats and plan for them.

As with global warming, or other natural disasters (pandemic being just one), peak oil is something that many people have heard of but try not to think about, except when gas prices get depressing (or it's 75 degrees in Toronto in January). The folks at Peak Oil Blues are anticipating the adjustment to a post-oil world and planning for an oil-less future. Is that going too far? Or is the rest of the world just suffering from Panglossian Disorder?

I have spoken elsewhere about the label "Doomer," and I’ve come to believe that this frame is outdated. Instead, I would like to suggest that we must stop asking ourselves, given the lateness of the hour, why there are those pessimistic about the future, and begin asking, instead, why there are those still blindly and enthusiastically optimistic about it. Could this be a disorder, in itself? Here’s my proposal:

Panglossian Disorder: "The neurotic tendency toward extreme optimism in the face of likely cultural and planetary collapse."

Here's a reprint in the Energy Bulletin (for easy reading), with some of my favorite subtypes:

Temporal Subtypes:
Scarlet O’Hara-ism- "I’ll just have to think about that tomorrow." A strategy of denial that allows the person to temporally compartmentalize the feared event(s).

Futurism: "Sure, that will happen, but it will occur after all of us are long dead." A belief that something that might happen in the distant future is no concern in the present.

Y2K features : "They said everything would collapse with 2000, and it didn’t." A belief that any prior concern about societal problems that didn’t occur demonstrates the impossibility of any others happening in the future.

And a few more:

Subtypes with Delusional or Magical Thinking:
Meglomatic Features:"This simply won’t happen to me." A belief in one’s specialness, which will save them from the consequences affecting those around them.

...

Doubting Thomas Features : "Peak Oil is a scam by the Oil Companies to raise prices!" Minimizing the possibility of the crisis by the belief that some one or some group has ultimate control over its happening.

...

The Flintstonian : "The stone-age didn’t end because they ran out of stones." A belief that modern innovation is eternal.

Frank Zappa-ism : "As soon as things get really bad, they’ll come up with something." A belief that necessity is the mother of invention.

Magical Thinking : "Don’t worry, we can build a car that can run on air!" Proposes solutions that are clearly outside the realm of physics.

McGiveristic Features - A belief that massive planetary problems can be solved with ordinary/common items found readily at hand. Eg.: "Pig dung will be the next fossil fuel." Or "Coke Cans can be turned into solar panels."

Trouble is, there's a grain of truth in all of this. How you react to potential natural disasters and whether you apply the precautionary principle (action to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty). Canada suggests doing so for infectious diseases:

We must remember SARS because it holds lessons we must learn to protect ourselves against future outbreaks, including a global influenza pandemic predicted by so many scientists. If we do not learn from SARS and we do not make the government fix the problems that remain, we will pay a terrible price in the next pandemic. (bolded mine).

So, thinking about disaster becomes a prudent exercise in rational awareness rather than a disorder of  logical thought.

Voters were ready to hand control of the government to Australia's opposition Labor party, headed by former diplomat Kevin Rudd, who has promised to boost relations with China, pull some troops from Iraq, and re-make Australia as a leader in the global effort to stop global warming. The defeat appears so complete that the 68-year-old Mr. Howard, Australia's second-longest-serving prime minister, appeared likely to lose his own parliamentary seat, which he has held for 33 years.

If anything (think global warming), the recent elections in Australia suggest that when it comes to natural disaster, a lot more people "get it" than you think.

Click the links for previous Sunday Kos Essays on pandemic preparedness and the National Response Framework.

One of the great things about the SCHIP discussion (wherein the Bush Administration and Republicans are on the wrong side of the will of the American people) is that it has brought out the canards and straw men of "socialized medicine" as the reason to vote against (the real reason is to try and shore up an unpopular President politically; even many Republicans voting to sustain Bush's veto hate being in that position, and know they're getting hammered over this at home). The trouble with that position is that this isn't 1965, where reactionary forces could rail against Medicare as "socialized medicine" with impunity. In fact, polling repeatedly has brought up the response Who cares if SCHIP is socialized medicine?

But do Republicans really want to argue on the basis of what's "socialized" and what's not? Will we return to turnpikes run by private companies or will we continue to drive on socialized interstates (pushed by that Commie pinko President Dwight Eisenhower)? Do we send our kids to socialized public schools or do we support vouchers for private education (that's a hot one)? Or do we take a third way and educate our kids at home (lots of folks do for various reasons)?

Hey, how about fire departments? Does anyone have a problem with a socialized fire department? Well, apparently, some do. Did you know that with enough money, you can buy special treatment?

A private fire crew dispatched by a national insurance company that caters to wealthy clients is guarding 22 high-end homes threatened by the Castle Rock Fire, a blaze that has forced the evacuation of hundreds of million-dollar homes west of Ketchum.

The crew will protect only homes insured by AIG Private Client Group, an insurance company that offers "loss-prevention services" to its wealthiest customers. A truck and two-man crew sent by AIG from Montana arrived in Ketchum about 2 p.m. Wednesday to start dousing properties with Phos-Chek, the same fire retardant dropped from U.S. Forest Service aircraft...

The private crew has been granted access to areas closed to residents, but not all officials with public fire agencies were thrilled by the sight of the truck scooting through a smoky web of government fire crews.

"That sounds ridiculous to me," said Kim Rogers, a Ketchum Police Department spokesman, "especially since we haven't lost any structures. I mean, this is a Forest Service fire, not a private fire."

Nevertheless, the crew has Forest Service blessing.

More...  

AIG this year expanded its Wildfire Protection Unit to 150 ZIP codes in California and Colorado, up from 14 when it was formed in 2005. The unit has had the busiest week since its inception as fires burned at least 719 square miles (1,861 square kilometers) from Santa Barbara to San Diego, destroying 1,342 homes and 34 businesses and causing at least seven deaths.

But why bother hiring AIG when you can hire Blackwater? Naomi Klein, writing in The Nation:

I used to worry that the United States was in the grip of extremists who sincerely believed that the Apocalypse was coming and that they and their friends would be airlifted to heavenly safety. I have since reconsidered. The country is indeed in the grip of extremists who are determined to act out the biblical climax--the saving of the chosen and the burning of the masses--but without any divine intervention. Heaven can wait. Thanks to the booming business of privatized disaster services, we're getting the Rapture right here on earth.

Just look at what is happening in Southern California. Even as wildfires devoured whole swaths of the region, some homes in the heart of the inferno were left intact, as if saved by a higher power. But it wasn't the hand of God; in several cases it was the handiwork of Firebreak Spray Systems. Firebreak is a special service offered to customers of insurance giant American International Group (AIG)--but only if they happen to live in the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. Members of the company's Private Client Group pay an average of $19,000 to have their homes sprayed with fire retardant. During the wildfires, the "mobile units"--racing around in red firetrucks--even extinguished fires for their clients.

One customer described a scene of modern-day Revelation. "Just picture it. Here you are in that raging wildfire. Smoke everywhere. Flames everywhere. Plumes of smoke coming up over the hills," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Here's a couple guys showing up in what looks like a firetruck who are experts trained in fighting wildfire and they're there specifically to protect your home."

And your home alone. "There were a few instances," one of the private firefighters told Bloomberg News, "where we were spraying and the neighbor's house went up like a candle." With public fire departments cut to the bone, gone are the days of Rapid Response, when everyone was entitled to equal protection. Now, increasingly intense natural disasters will be met with the new model: Rapture Response.

And were we kidding about Blackwater? Nah.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  Current events have got me thinking about disaster preparedness this week.  Everyone should have a disaster preparedness kit and plan.  In California, we call them "Earthquake Kits" but, as you may have noticed, earthquakes are not the only disasters we may face.  While it's true that everyone should have a kit, buying one pre-made can be much more expensive that assembling your own.  So today's topic is how to frugally prepare for a disaster.  Please use the comments to add your own suggestions for what should be included and sources for cheap supplies.

Before you follow me below the fold, please take a moment and go recommend the California Wildfires Liveblogging Mothership diary to keep it up on the recommended list.  This is an amazing effort that has been going strong for almost 100 hours.  Unfortunately, since the fires show little sign of slacking, the liveblogging needs to continue as well.

Yesterday I posted an article about the 'Lies, Stupidity and Unnecessary Destruction' in OC County, CA at TheDemDaily and used that as a micro-view of the problem. To understand today's diary please read yesterday's first.

The Orange County Fire Authority Chief said:

From WAPO:"But the fire chief in Orange County, <> complained vociferously that the pool of available assets was too small, especially in the week’s frantic first 36 hours.<> "Yadda yadda yadda," said Fire Chief Chip Prather, dismissing the state’s assurances. "All I know is, I had 12 firefighters deploy their [lifesaving]shelters yesterday, and they shouldn’t have had to do that."

With the fires raging across Southern California, we get the usual disaster reactions: sympathy, help, admonitions that we shouldn't live there then, and handwringing about preparations.

California does do a lot of preparations at the state and local level that are invisible during the height of the crisis, especially to the non-local news media. And, of course, there is much that can be and is done by individual homeowners. Not everyone prepares as they should, but every bit of effort makes a difference when the winds rage full of sparks.

In this diary, I'm going to write about some of the preparation steps that I've learned about in my years in California. Not every location has the same rules or the same issues, but knowing the issues and regulations we work with may be helpful even to people elsewhere.

Tropical storm Krosa lashed China's heavily populated southeastern coast on Sunday. More than 1.4 million people were evacuated in the two provinces ahead of the storm, and authorities have shut airports in the region and ordered schools to close Monday as a precaution. Comparatively few death reported.

Southeastern China is regularly pummelled during the summer-to-autumn typhoon season. Last month, more than two million people were evacuated in Zhejiang and Fujian ahead of powerful Typhoon Wipha, which eventually killed two in China.

Note: This is a Sunday Kos short series exploring the Federal disaster response plan, now known as the National Response Framework, released this month in draft form for comment. We will explore a bit of the complex framework, primarily designed for public officials, and in a later post explore the role that families and individuals have in disaster preparation. Much of the background work for this was done by my colleague SusanC at Flu Wiki Forum.

From the overview document, About the National Response Framework:

The purpose of the National Response Framework is to establish a comprehensive, national, all-hazards approach to domestic incident response. The Framework presents an overview of key response principles, roles and structures that guide the national response. It describes how communities, States, the Federal Government and private-sector and nongovernmental partners apply these principles for a coordinated, effective national response.

Let's say we have a major hurricane in Florida, or a flood in the Midwest, or even an earthquake in CA that causes widespread damage and causes the vacationing Governor to ski into a tree. For these events, local and state officials are supposed to deal with things as best they can. If they can't, then and only then are they supposed to turn to the Feds for help. But who asks for help? Who is in charge? How does the federal government envision itself responding to an emergency bigger than locals can deal with? What if there are varying degrees of local competence or the local command structure has been severely disrupted? And how would it work, at least theoretically, for something as widespread as a pandemic?

After Katrina and before the next disaster, wouldn't you want to know what to expect both from your state and from the Feds? Here's a bit of a simplified look at a complex question. From Flu Wiki Forum:

As we have noted previously on this forum, preparing for and responding to disasters have always been not just the responsibility but the domain of State and local government, the Feds having no right to intervene even to assist a State except at the request of the governor.  Over the course of the 20th century, the federal government became increasingly involved in disaster responses as requested by states, so much so that it has become more-or-less the expectation that in any large scale disaster, some federal assistance will be forthcoming.  Nevertheless, the principle that State and local resources need to be utilized first before federal assistance can be requested was reiterated firmly by various administrations, notably Truman in 1952 and Nixon in [19]73.

The main legislation providing for federal disaster response is the Stafford Act, which establishes a mechanism for state governors to request assistance from the Feds when they are overwhelmed. It authorizes the President to declare disasters/emergencies and to appoint a Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO) who is responsible for coordinating the delivery of resources from other agencies and entities and generally to administer disaster relief, as requested by the State.

The important points to note here are that:

• the states have to identify what they need and make specific requests
• the FCO (and FEMA, after it was formed in 1978) is not the operational provider of federal support. Rather FEMA coordinates the response and resources provided by other federal agencies.
• such aid is delivered to the State who is then responsible for distributing it locally to those in need. There is no mechanism for FEMA to directly administer aid on the ground.

This 'pull' system, ie States drawing resources from the feds as needed, works for most situations when state and local governments are sufficiently functional, but broke down completely in the case of Katrina, when there was basically no functioning government on the ground for this mechanism to work.

Here, from the draft revision of fed-to-state plans within the government's mother of all disaster plans, the National Response Framework, is how the Stafford Act support to states might work (click for bigger pic):

Note in the Stafford Act chart that it's the Governor, who asks FEMA, who asks the President to declare a Federal disaster or emergency so as to free up funds and relief that through the National Response Framework can be delivered to the states. If the Governor does not or cannot ask (i.e in a catastrophic situation), things may slow down, but FEMA, through the FCO, can help smooth over that process if a FCO has been appointed. If not, other catastrophic mechanisms outside the Stafford Act may need to apply. That's a post-Katrina lesson that is clearly in need of implementation. This implies that FEMA is running the show, though, and under DHS' complex hierarchy, that is far from clear.

Since trying to dissect any Federal document requires a glossary, let me provide one. If you look under P, you'll find this very important designation: the Principle Federal Official.

Principal Federal Official (PFO):  For major incidents that require an extraordinary level of coordination across multiple disciplines and functions and overlapping Federal and State authorities, the Secretary of Homeland Security may appoint a PFO to assist the Secretary in executing his or her responsibilities as the overall domestic incident manager. Acting on the Secretary’s behalf, the PFO will coordinate the activities of other Federal officials, acting under their own authorities, to ensure consistency of Federal support as well as the overall effectiveness of the Federal incident management. The PFO will serve as a member of the Unified Coordination Group and provide a primary point of contact and situational awareness locally for the Secretary of Homeland Security.

The PFO answers to the Secretary of DHS (Mike Chertoff) and is a major coordinator for big events that cross sector and jurisdictional lines. In fact, according to the framework, the PFO is the overall domestic incident manager in place of the Secretary (usually this will be the Vice-Admiral of the Coast Guard or some such experienced official) for complex events.

But wait... wasn't the FEMA FCO in charge? Look in our glossary under F:

Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO): For Stafford Act events, upon the recommendation of the FEMA Administrator and the Secretary of Homeland Security, the President appoints an FCO. The FCO is a senior FEMA official trained, certified and well experienced in emergency management, and specifically appointed to coordinate Federal support in the response and recovery to emergencies and major disasters. The FCO executes Stafford Act authorities, including commitment of FEMA resources [that's an important responsibility, because that's where the money is!] and the mission assignment of other Federal departments or agencies.

So, the FEMA FCO who is a "senior FEMA official trained, certified and well experienced in emergency management" is appointed by the President, but the Secretary is the overall domestic incident manager and the PFO assists the Secretary. They appear to have similar roles, but there are differences (one major one is that FEMA's FCO disburses the money; the Secretary's PFO can't do that). Does the presidential FEMA appointee outrank the Secretary's designee (i.e, is it Michael Brown or Michael Chertoff running the show)? Are the roles clear? In a major catastrophe like Katrina, the FCO might be in NOLA running the Fed show and disbursing resources while the PFO coordinates in DC. For smaller-scale disasters, the roles are not so clear-cut (and whether they might step on each other remains to be seen). In fact, this is one of the murkiest parts of the draft plan.

The Framework (again, still in draft form) is trying to work these kinks out. If you're a state or regional disaster or emergency manager, it'd really help to establish who is in charge and who you will deal with. That's especially important in a large scale disaster like a pandemic, where the PFO is likely to play an important role. Critics of the plan, including congressional oversight committees, have noted this, as has the GAO (more about this in Part II, next week):

...the Secretary of DHS has designated a national Principal Federal Official (PFO) to facilitate pandemic coordination as well as five regional PFOs and five regional Federal Coordinating Officers. Most of these leadership roles and responsibilities have not been tested under pandemic scenarios, leaving it unclear how they will work.

Part of the solution is practicing and drilling the potential disasters so as to better get used to working with each other (and that's just DHS. Adding HHS into the mix, the lead agency on pandemics, makes it even more imperative to drill, drill and drill some more. Think of how naturally and easily your doctor and fire chief would work together – or not – had they never met. HHS and DHS have very different mindsets).

Next week, we'll also talk about Emergency Support Functions, and how the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza fits into this (and what HHS is doing), as well as the role of individuals and families (you won't find enough mention of that on the mess maps). In the meantime, take a look at this from the CDC Pan Flu Operational Plan and see if you can find the following terms on the chart: PFO, FCO, and the CDC Senior Medical Officer (SMO) (hint: look for a familiar marker) and see if it's obvious in a pandemic who reports to whom.

And if it isn't crystal clear yet, there's a reason you should do your own preparations independent of whatever the feds are up to.

As we mark the second anniversary of one of the saddest episodes in our countries history, reflect on the appaling lack of leadership at the federal and local level in helping restore not only the most unique city in the United States but on the planet, and shake our heads at the continued ineptitude and political grandstanding that surround post-Katrina rebuilding efforts, let's take a look at one little item of hope in this island of disaster, our pets.