Politics of Disaster Preparedness - Palo Alto CA

Note: This commentary was developed for Palo Alto CA, but many of the observations are relevant to other locales.

• Barron Park Emergency Preparedness: A personal perspective on a bit of history and a bit of philosophy by Douglas Moran.
  Originally published in the Fall 2011 issue of the Barron Park Association Newsletter, pp. 7-11. PDF of hardcopy in 3-column format.
• Office of Emergency Services (OES) reorganization: 2011-04-10
  • Comments by Douglas Moran
  • Portion of Staff Report (PDF): Toward A Resilient Future: A Review of Palo Alto's Emergency Readiness by Arrietta Chakos (Urban Resilience Policy)
  • Doug Moran's talking points for interview by Arrietta Chakos on 2010-11-15
• Comments on appropriate focus for the Disaster/Emergency Preparedness Committee of Palo Alto Neighborhoods (PAN). Delivered on 2006 June 22. Picking realistic targets.
• A different approach/perspective:
  My assessment is that efforts to achieve Every household must be prepared to survive on their own for 72 hours. has gone long past the point of diminishing returns. At the same time, preparation for community response (block, neighborhood, city) have been largely ignored.
  Problems with current approaches:
  • Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results: Repeating failure
  • Unreasonable demands on time
  • "Government" is the politicians and professional staff: Planning to fail
  • A caveat on Professional Emergency Responders
  • Ignored Resources
  • PANDAs are the answer, regardless of the question - The role of the PANDAs needs to be better defined
    PANDA (Palo Alto Neighborhood Disaster Activity) is the local name for CERT (Community Emergency Response Team)
• Enthusiasts: The biggest impediment to implementing a solution can be the people most committed to finding one: They want to do too much and wind up doing nothing.
  • "On the first day, he was a treasure. On the second, he should have been shot."
  • Social club