Scales of Emergency Response (Itch #1)
I had an “allergic reaction” this summer to some language people around me are using to compel climate action: “be a first responder.” And so, I sit and write as a means to scratch the itch.
Let’s start with a definition:
Emergency (Cambridge Dictionary):
noun
Something dangerous or serious, such as an accident, that happens suddenly or unexpectedly and needs fast action in order to avoid harmful results. (How would a disabled person escape in an emergency? Is the emergency exit suitable for wheelchairs? The pilot of the aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing on Lake Geneva.)
A dangerous or serious situation, such as an accident, that happens suddenly or unexpectedly and needs immediate action. (In an emergency, dial 911 for an ambulance.)
A dangerous or serious situation that happens unexpectedly and needs fast action in order to avoid harmful results. (Aim to build up risk-free savings in case of emergency. The governor declared a state of emergency as flooding forced more than 1,400 residents from their homes.)
The words that stand out in these definitions: “Fast action to avoid harmful results.”
Scales of emergency
We are living with multiple scales of emergency—all of which merit fast action. Different time horizons of emergency require us to think and act differently. For example, a house on fire requires a quick and nimble response, a one-day sprint, and a small forest fire may need more attention, a two- to six-day middle distance event. A more significant forest fire requires a sustained response of 1-4 weeks and feels more like a 42 km marathon. A fire complex, two or more wildfires in the same general area, requires a more sustained response and may last a season; a fire complex feels more like a 100 km ultra-marathon.
Climate change, whether fires, flooding or hot temperatures, is yet another time horizon of effort: years, and a far more significant “distance” of effort, say 100,000 km.
A sprint emergency is not the same as a marathon emergency or an ultramarathon emergency. Our responses to these scales of emergency require specific technical expertise in the present while we experience the emergency. The bigger emergency — climate change that manifests as higher temperatures, rising sea levels and an increase in wildfires — is not so clear and present for most people. Unlike a fire in our home, increasing planetary temperatures do not feel like an emergency to many people.
These scales of emergency demand that we be both responsive to short-term emergencies in the present and be proactive to mitigate the coming increase in emergencies on the ground. These are not the same kind of work. The training is different. The experience is different. The results are different.
“These scales of emergency demand that we be both responsive to short-term emergencies in the present and be proactive to mitigate the coming increase in emergencies on the ground. These are not the same kind of work. The training is different. The experience is different. The results are different.”
Scratching the itch brings clarity: We need to differentiate between immediate emergency response with the urgency to change our behaviour now.
Emergency response work
An emergency is front and center, clear and undeniable. In the summer of 2021, it was the town of Lytton, Canada on fire during record-breaking hot temperatures. Emergencies happen without climate change: the people of Haiti grappling with a devastating earthquake, a traffic accident, the emerging humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Each of these emergencies requires specific skills that range from fighting fires, medical services, and the physical rescue of people when trapped in cars and buildings. These are the people who first respond to us when we need them. Others organize evacuation and organize humanitarian aid as the scale of emergency grows.
The people who perform this specialized work in our communities have years of training and experience. They learn these skills on behalf of a whole community, and when an emergency arises, we call on them to exercise their specific abilities and knowledge that the rest of us don’t have.
We each exchange our work with the world. Illustration: Amanda Schutz.
First responders make a specific contribution in our communities; this is their contribution to the city-making exchange. They rescue us, and the rest of us grow their food, teach their children, make their emergency gear, make great movies for their entertainment, etc. They do work we do not do. We do work they do not do.
Community participation in emergencies
The emergency expertise in our communities does not work in isolation. There are three kinds of community participation in emergencies: prevent emergencies, tell emergency responders when they are needed, and support emergency responders.
1. Prevent emergencies
The first responders who rescue us when there is an emergency — a fire, car accident, flood — regularly request us to be proactive to prevent the need for rescue.
In North America, firefighters promote Fire Prevention Month in October, an annual campaign to raise fire safety awareness and help us protect our homes and families from fire. They are very clear about the role we have to play in our safety: 3 of 5 home fire deaths result from fires in homes with no working smoke alarms. Our community firefighters ask us to have a feedback system built into our homes: a smoke alarm.
While firefighters are there to rescue us, they can’t do it all. It’s up to us to have a smoke alarm, test it, change the batteries as needed, know how to use a fire extinguisher and have an escape route planned in the event of an emergency.
Community has a significant role to play in minimizing emergencies or the harm of emergencies. It’s up to us to choose to listen to the alarm and leave the building, to hear the call for urgency response. When it comes to climate change, we could leave our planet on fire, but that’s not an option for the world’s population. We have to stop the occurrence of the emergency. And that’s not the work of emergency responders; they have their own work to do.
Scientists, analysts and experts are a feedback loop for community, telling us when we should change our behaviour to avoid emergencies. The choice to change our behaviour rests with us as individuals and through corporate and government policy.
2. Tell emergency responders when they are needed
When we don’t ask for help, emergency responders may not know that their help is needed. Community is a feedback loop for our emergency personnel. We tell them when they are required by calling 911, for example.
We also have networks of communications systems set up to spot forest fires. This is a community commitment to spot fires when small and prevent big emergencies. (You might like to read about Wendy and the Timber Mountain Lookout in Northern California. Her work contributes to the extensive emergency response network: spot, locate and report the “smokes.”)
The view from the Timber Mountain Lookout in Northern California. Photo: Beth Sanders.
3. Support emergency responders
Community supports emergency responders when we give them what they need when we help them help us. Supporting our emergency response personnel includes taxes and the funding choices our governments make.
As the scale of emergency increases, it includes more direct community participation. The local people send water and sandwiches to firefighters on the front line when they are in a marathon or ultramarathon event.
Support also means getting out of the way. As a bystander at a car accident, I may be helpful for a moment to describe what happened, but I am soon not needed. I do not need to linger and distract them from their work. I often think of the entire city of 80,000 people who evacuated the city I used to work for, Fort McMurray, when threatened by forest fires. The imperative was two-fold: remove people from immediate danger and remove people so responders could best pay attention to the ultimate threat without distraction: the approaching fire.
As scale grows
As the scale of emergency shifts, the role of community shifts from being rescued (or a bystander) to participating in the emergency response. In a sprint situation, community has a limited role in the emergency response itself; citizens are not experts and defer to those with the physical and technical expertise. As emergency events become larger in scale, community has a substantial role to play.
As I write, BC Wildfire Services is reporting 258 active wildfires in British Columbia, Canada’s west coast province. This Guardian article is a stunning photo essay of the Lytton experience: the fire, the destruction, the efforts of neighbouring communities to support evacuees. When a town burns, it is the surrounding communities that look after their neighbours. This work will continue for years.
At every scale, community has a unique role to play in both reactive and proactive ways. When reactive, we are IN the emergency, on the ground and reacting to a bad situation. When proactive, we are AHEAD of the emergency, focusing on the long-term health, making the choices clear, and choosing the healthier options.
When the bigness of emergency is now, or coming, we fall into a reactive stress response; will we fight, flee or freeze? A proactive response, when the crisis is coming, has different energy because it is about the long-term health of a community. It’s the smoke alarm that you test every October. It’s the feedback in the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued in August 2021.
“When the bigness of emergency is now, or coming, we fall into a reactive stress response; will we fight, flee or freeze? A proactive response, when the emergency is coming, has a different energy because it is about long-term health of a community.”
With the pandemic and climate change, we are looking at emergency response at a whole new scale for humans. Yes, we must react to feedback about the health of our planet—and we must do so in a proactive way that does not conflate the work of emergency personnel. We are creating a new realm of community work that is a vital and specific contribution to our communities and cities. It is about being proactive, response-ive and response-ABLE.
This is the first in a series of articles about the relationship between community and emergency.
Reflection
What are three examples of emergencies that you or your city experienced over the last three months where life was in immediate danger?
What urgent calls to action do you hear in your community, asking people to change their behaviour to avoid emergencies?
How can you grow your capacity to: 1) hear that you need to behave differently to avoid emergencies, and 2) choose to behave differently?
What is one thing you can do to enable your response-ability?