Rescue is Not Resilience (Itch #3)
We are experiencing emergency as we have never experienced it before: at many scales simultaneously. Not only do we have the usual local emergencies, like car accidents and fires, larger scales of crisis now threaten us: the fire complexes that last for months, rising sea levels and rising temperatures.
Further, we humans are in a tight spot because we disagree on what constitutes an emergency. When an emergency is close in, it is easier to find agreement; a fire in a neighbour’s home, an earthquake, a flood or a car accident are easy to recognize as emergencies. In these instances, we know we need to snap into action and respond. When the scale of an emergency is larger and feels further away, such as climate change or the pandemic, we may or may not agree if there is an emergency, or if we do, on the right course of action to avoid or respond to the emergency.
The roles we play
Whatever the scale of emergency, we have choices to make about how to respond; the language we use reflects the choices we make, the roles we play, and the actions we take.
First responders and community members play different roles in how a community responds to an emergency. First responders have the technical and strategic expertise to handle emergencies while they are unfolding. For example, I don’t have the tools or skills to get someone out when trapped in a car after to a car accident, put out a building or forest fire, or help someone with a significant injury.
I have limited skills as the emergency unfolds yet, as a community member, I can choose to play three critical roles in my community’s emergency response system:
I choose to prevent emergencies
I choose to tell first responders when and where they are needed
I choose to support first responders and their work
As the scale of emergency grows, the proportion of effort from the wider community and I increases compared to first responders. Take the pandemic as an example: there are clear roles for nurses, physicians and specialists to look after our health when it fails, and there is a significant role for the wider community to play to prevent or minimize harm, tell first responders when they are needed and to provide support and resources to the first responders to do their vital work. Compared to the flu season only two years ago, the community has a more significant role in how we respond to the pandemic.
“As the scale of emergency grows, our reliance on others to rescue us becomes misplaced. We must expand our capacity to respond to our own needs, and be response-ABLE.”
To avoid or make our way through big emergencies, like the pandemic and climate change, we shift from a clear rescue, a command-and-control way of operating, to something more nebulous and vague: a self-organizing system.
As the scale of emergency grows, our reliance on others to rescue us becomes misplaced. We must expand our capacity to respond to our own needs and be response-ABLE.
Rescue and resilience
In rescue mode, we expect to be rescued or to rescue others. Being in rescue mode only makes sense when the rescuer has skills the people that need rescuing don’t have. If my neighbour’s home is on fire, my neighbours and I need people with the tools and skills to safely rescue the people trapped inside and stop the fire. The role for my neighbours and me is clear: tell first responders that they are needed, get out of the way and provide support to the family whose home is burning.
After the emergency subsides, the first responders’ sprint response is complete, and they disappear to prepare for the next crisis. In contrast, my neighbours and I will step in and support the family; our role continues.
As the scale of emergency grows, we need the familiar skills of our first responders. We also need more of those other community skills: prevention, to manage the degree of emergency; feedback, to tell first responders when and where they are required; and support, making sure they have the resources needed and moral support. There is essential work for community to do—more than we are used to doing—and it is not the same as a first responder.
Community participates in its own survival
Imagine a forest fire near a series of towns and cities. For days, the fires are nearby, and citizens are on alert, aware the wind could change and blow the fire into town. They are preparing to evacuate if needed. Governments are making sure there are enough firefighters and equipment. Governments from other areas of the country or world are sending in additional firefighters. Firefighters work long days and nights to protect the towns and cities, and citizens actively support firefighters by bringing them food and water.
In the short term, the objective for first responders is to save towns and cities from the destruction of fire. This is their singular task. In the longer term, there is a role for the community to determine necessary action to prevent the fires in the first place. Determining those answers, and discerning how to best act, is work that belongs to the wider community.
The tangible work communities and cities are undertaking worldwide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to minimize and reduce the rise in Earth’s temperature are examples.
Here’s a conundrum: The more community has a role to play in its survival, the more vague their role becomes relative to the emergency. A first responder has a tangible, easily identifiable task: put the fire out, get a person trapped in a building out to save their life, or get people isolated by a flood to safety.
In contrast, the contributions made by the wider community are more difficult to track as tangible results. For example, I don’t see the “results” of removing the grass in front of my home and replacing it with biodiverse plants to decrease run-off into the wastewater system and increase the health of the river my city relies on for drinking water and recreation. When I reduce my carbon footprint by rarely using fossil-fuel transportation, I don’t experience lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Where the first responder explicitly experiences the result of their work, a community may not. The skills we offer, and the scales at which we work, are not the same, yet both provide valuable contributions. The critical factor to those contributions being helpful is this: clarity about whether “rescue” is needed.
A “rescue” test
A foundational principle embedded in a rescue situation is this: someone is in a dangerous or life-threatening situation that they can not get out of on their own. As a rescuer, I can do something for you that you can not do on your own that will save your life. As the rescuee, I need you to do something for me that I can not do on my own that will save safe my life.
The need to rescue is evident in a traditional emergency, the neighbour’s house on fire, for example. The need to rescue is not as clear to as many of us as the scale of emergency grows, except for when the emergency is right in front of our nose. At the scale of the pandemic, is it my job to “rescue” people from perils or protection of vaccines or support people to make accurate and informed decisions for themselves? At the scale of climate change, is it my job to save the planet?
When we find ourselves in the role of rescuer, we should ask:
Is this work the rescuee can do on their own?
Is this work I need to step in and do on their behalf?
When we find ourselves being rescued, we should ask:
Is this work I can (and should) do by myself?
Is this work I need someone to do for me?
Here’s why it matters: When we step in and rescue others when rescue is not warranted or wanted, we unnecessarily harm our collective ability to be response-ABLE to emergency situations. When I rescue others when they are able to act on their own, I erode their adaptability and resilience. A rescuer erodes my adaptability and resilience when they save me when I don’t need or want to be saved.
“‘Rescue’ has a delicate relation with community resiliency.”
“Rescue” has a delicate relationship with community resiliency. When we swoop in to rescue others when we are not needed or wanted, we cause harm. Likewise, not responding when rescue is needed also causes harm. The discernment of balance, or noticing when rescue is needed or not, fuels resilience. When we feel the need to be rescued or to be the rescuer, we erode our resilience.
Being conscious of relevant rescue action is a vital civic practice for our self-organizing.
Reflection
How is my sense of identity fuelled by rescuing others—in healthy ways?
How is my sense of identity fuelled by rescuing others—in unhealthy ways?
In what ways do I expect others to step in and rescue me?
In what areas do I need to ask for assistance?
This article is the third in a series about the relationship between community and emergency.
Scales of emergency response (Itch #1)—As the scale of emergency grows, the ability of a community to be proactive, responsive and response-ABLE becomes imperative.
Choices to enable our emergency response-ability (Itch #2)—6 ideas and 8 suggestions to be response-ABLE at any scale of emergency.
Rescue is not Resilience (Itch #3)—Rescue embodies resilience only when the rescuer takes action the rescued can’t do for themselves (and wants).