NFPA Journal - September/October 2020 - 28

AS WE ENTER THE
FINAL MONTHS of one of the most

challenging years in living memory, the emergency
management profession is focused obsessively on the
many ways 2020 could actually get much worse. And
it's not hard to imagine.
Picture a news report showing an aerial view of
once-tidy suburban yards buried beneath collapsed
homes and waterlogged debris in the aftermath of
a powerful hurricane. Cut to a shot of thousands of
people packed into a local school gymnasium, the
cots squeezed tightly together to accommodate the
stream of families and vulnerable seniors with
nowhere else to go. Cut to another shot of aid
workers attempting to screen out those infected
with coronavirus as they arrive. Cut to a final shot
of a public health official lamenting that, if the
COVID-19 virus isn't spreading through the shelter
already, it's only a matter of time before the two
crises merge into a complex new catastrophe.

Since January, countless governmental agencies and aid organizations have
been hard at work trying to prevent that
hypothetical from becoming reality, and
their efforts may be tested soon. Based
on recent wildfire trends, hurricane predictions from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, and the
general unpredictability of tornadoes,
floods, and earthquakes, the odds are
great that 2020 will not pass without at
least one major natural calamity striking while the US is still in the grips of
COVID-19. Most observers agree that it's
a matter of when, not if.
"If you ask about a worst-case scenario, I think we're pretty much getting
there," said Richard Serino, a former
deputy administrator at the Federal
Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) with experience in dozens of
major catastrophes. "Any natural or
manmade disaster that happens on top
of this pandemic is going to make the
emergency manager's job even worse
than it is already."
With so much untested and uncertain, some onlookers are prepared for
the worst. Alan Wallace, a disaster
recovery researcher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York,
has modelled what a hurricane recovery
might look like during a pandemic. The
specifics of the merging crises, he said,
will render huge portions of emergency
plans obsolete, from evacuation to sheltering to how emergency operations
centers (EOCs) function. "Many of the
typical disaster response strategies we
turn to after any of these events are
going to have to be rethought," he said.
"I am worried we are not ready and
that we are looking at a major, major
catastrophe."
The public safety officials interviewed
for this story, however, expressed optimism that, even with a short timeframe,
they have strategies in place to mitigate
whatever situation arises, even during
a pandemic. Preparing for this "incident on top of an incident" has forced
agencies to engage with partners across
a broad spectrum-including those
with whom they may have had little
or no interaction previously-to work
out questions and contingencies they'd
never had to consider. For instance:

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NFPA Journal - September/October 2020

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