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Lessons Learned Or Lessons Forgotten the Canadian Disaster

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Lessons Learned Or Lessons Forgotten the Canadian Disaster Paper #1 Lessons Learned or Lessons Forgotten The Canadian Disaster Experience by Joe Scanlon, Director Emergency Preparedness Unit Carleton University The classic Canadian study of hazards is Hewitt and Burton’s book The Hazardousness of a Place, describing the hazard history around London, Ontario.i London is occasionally hit by floods and other emergencies.ii But, in retrospect, the most striking hazard that London had experienced is ice storms. Until January, 1998, when ice on trees, power and telephone lines left scores of communities in a state of emergencyiii, Canadians – including those in government and emergency agencies -- did not accept how serious a hazard ice storms can present. They had not learned – in fact probably have still not learned – the lessons from history. As Hewitt and Burton imply, the first key lesson about Canadian mass emergencies is that they are often predictable. Earthquakes occur over faults, floods along rivers. Tsunamis affect coastal areas: in 1929, one struck Newfoundland; in 1964, one hit British Columbia after the Alaska earthquake. Sometimes small areas face particular threats. Hail storms frequently strike around Calgary and Medicine Hat: on September 7, 1991, hail smashed in windows and dented car roofs and led to 116,000 insurance claims.iv It is not possible to predict precisely when or where something will happen. The Miramichi earthquakes centered near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick occurred at a previously unknown fault.v Yet though Hurricane Hazel caught Toronto by surprise, there was a forecast and though the 1998 ice storm was far more devastating than anticipated, Environment Canada did provide accurate weather data.* In short, as the natural hazard’s map published by Natural Resources Canada shows, it is possible to identify where there have been and most likely to be hazardous events.vi One reason prediction is easy is because many hazardous events repeat themselves. The Red and St. John and Peace rivers flood continually. This leads to a flood subculture that makes it difficult to alert persons about an abnormal flood threat. In a study in Ste-Agathe and St.-Adolph, Manitoba hit by the 1997 Red River flood, Enarson and Scanlon found: Most were born and reared in or near these two towns; flood stories were part of their family history. “Elders” consulted by newcomers normalized flooding and discouraged what they considered excessive preparation (e.g. moving possessions up from the basement, putting furniture in storage, evacuating on demand).vii Rod Kueneman had a similar finding in 1973: * The concern showed up clearly in one forecast issued just as the storm began to have a major impact: the forecaster advised persons to pray for ordinary rain: A series of disturbances approaching from the south will bring us episodes of freezing rain one after the other. By Thursday morning, 15 to 20 millimetres of freezing rain is expected to have fallen. Thursday night into Friday remains to be seen. Pray for plain rain. As forecast, freezing rain started early Wednesday morning and continued, with occasional breaks, for the next 40 hours. The last little bit from that second storm fell just before Thursday midnight. The request for a prayer indicated that the forecasters knew – though they weren’t absolutely certain – that there was likely to be more freezing rain on Friday, January 9th. The forecaster said that was a, “tough call”. The following day – the day the state of emergency was declared – Environment Canada forecast more freezing rain in parts of the Region then changed that to a forecast of freezing rain. In fact there were six more hours of freezing rain on Friday, January 9th. Over a six-day period, there had been 63 hours and 42 minutes of freezing rain. Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction Page 1 As often happens, when the people…were warned of extensive flooding, they refused to evacuate themselves and they did not move their animals to higher ground. Relying on previous experience, they did not think they would be in any greater difficulty than they normally were…. As a result…evacuation was generally carried out on a last minute basis. The effects of this were quite serious in the area of cattle evacuation.viii Both studies build on research as early as 1965ix. A detailed discussion of disaster subculture appears in Disasters Theory and Research.x In the past decade, something else has emerged – that environmental hazards often lead to toxic problems. After Showalter and Myers showed that environmental incidents in the United States cause toxic spills,xi an informal review suggested the same is true for Canada. There were 14 spills caused by the Edmonton tornado. There were agricultural chemicals swept up by the flood in the Pemberton Valley in British Columbia. The 1985 Gander air crash led to aviation gasoline flowing into Gander Lake, source of the town’s water supply, leading to a response by public works, the Canadian Coast Guard and the Atlantic Petroleum Agency.xii Solis and Hightower raise the issue in relation to debris: The amount of debris generated by some disasters was equivalent in volume to years, if not decades of normal solid waste production… Thus, landfill capacities were overwhelmed; roads were damaged by trucks hauling debris; dust produced by clearance operations annoyed the population for several months; tons of waste were burned; and some disposal sites were established without adequate environmental consideration (including the disposal of hazardous wastes). The financial and environmental costs were devastating.xiii This was in fact one of the problems faced in the wake of the 1998 ice storm but, once again, because of the lack of attention to research, it came as a surprise. Research on Canadian Disasters But it’s not only the type of disaster and probable location that can be predicted. It’s possible to predict how individuals, groups and organizations will behave during untoward events. That’s because there is significant Canadian literature about disaster, ranging from Prince’s pioneer study of the 1917 Halifax explosion to scores studies produced by the Emergency Communications Research Unit (ECRU) at Carleton University. This includes studies of floods, snow emergenciesxiv, forest firesxv, tornadoesxvi, a mudslide, an ocean stormxvii. It examines everything from panic to the role of mediaxviii. There are studies of gender and of convergence, or over response. There is a look at how volunteers from Massachusetts influenced emergency response in Canadaxix at evacuations and warnings. There is a review of fire departments in a disasterxx, of the police role in evacuationsxxi of a hospital fire.xxii There is a history of Canadian emergency planning.xxiii We know a great deal about what happens when disaster strikes. Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction Page 2 However, Canada’s population is small and scattered across one of the world’s largest countries. In addition, Canada is not normally subjected to events that cause enormous destruction and loss of life. Therefore, Canadians believe wrongly – “It can’t happen here!” That makes it tempting for Canadian governments to ignore planning and be caught short when events occur.xxiv Therefore, though there is sufficient Canadian experience and research to show how individuals, groups and organizations deal with disaster – and to predict future behaviour – and though these lessons are well documented and clear, they are often not applied. Even though the future threatens to bring more serious incidents, the evidence is that we will not be better prepared. While the focus is on environmental emergencies lessons are often transferable from one type of disaster or another. After the 1917 explosion, Halifax had nearly 2,000 bodies.* It handled these quickly and efficiently because of experience with bodies from Titanic. The morgue for Titanic was used again, the man who managed the morgue in 1917 was the son of the man who did that job in 1912. Dealing with bodies at this level is very different from dealing even a few hundred bodies, especially if those are in one location, as after an air crash. But that lesson from Halifax was not documented until 1998 and is still not generally acceptedxxv though it applies directly to mass death in environmental emergencies such as Kobe. Similarly, the parallels between the Halifax explosion [caused by a shipping collision], the 1974 Darwin Cyclone [Cyclone Tracy] and the 1995 Kobe earthquake led the author to examine response to seaport disasters. The finding was that while seaports are exposed to disasters, they could benefit from an ocean-based response because while roadways and rail lines must be repaired the sea repairs itself.xxvi The lessons had been there for a century but had been ignored. Defining a Mass Emergency The term “mass emergency” is used because a first lesson from research is that there is a vast difference among accidents, disasters and catastrophes. These differing events create different problems and call for different response.xxvii The ice storm showed most planning ignores this: instead planning is based on the idea that disasters and catastrophes are simply large accidents.xxviii Accidents are usually at a specific, small geographic area. They are rarely the result of environmental hazards. The plane crashes at Gander, Dryden and Fredericton were accidents as was the train wreck at Hinton, Alberta. While all caused injury and loss of life, none threatened a community and all were handled, for the most part, by established
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