Community Disaster Resilience A Summary of the March 20, 2006 Workshop of the Disasters Roundtable (2006) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Summary
Summary
Pages 1-10
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 1... ...
Session I: Local Perspectives Community Disaster Resilience: The Berkeley Experience The City of Berkeley, California, which spans 10.5 square miles, is situated between the San Andreas and Hayward Fault lines and is at risk from hazards such as urban and wildland fires, flooding, earthquakes, and landslides. The devastation caused by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the 1991 firestorm in the East Bay Hills of San Francisco Bay signaled a need to address community disaster resiliency issues in Berkeley.
|
From page 2... ...
The City of Berkeley has also participated in state and federal programs to advance its resiliency goals. In 2000, Berkeley became a member of Project Impact, a community disaster resiliency program formally sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
|
From page 3... ...
Moreover, much of disaster preparedness in public health is based on untested assumptions on public response, highlighting the importance of conveying accurate and timely information via the media. In the discussions that followed the panel, participants noted that the experience of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 raised the issue of continuity of government during a disaster and stressed the need to promote individual preparedness of the public as an important component of community preparedness and resiliency.1 Session II: Citizens and Demographic Groups Encouraging Citizen Disaster Preparedness Michael Barnett, a physician and adviser in the office of U.S.
|
From page 4... ...
Enarson stated that national trends such as increased immigration and an aging population are changing the demographic makeup of communities and presenting challenges to community disaster resilience. Increased mobility throughout the United States has resulted in growing numbers of "newcomers" and transients that are not connected to the networks of people around them.
|
From page 5... ...
He noted that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has received substantial public attention and scrutiny, but cautioned that disaster mitigation is of equal importance. Bruneau stated that focusing solely on response will reduce some losses, but will not produce the results that mitigation offers in enhancing the robustness and resilience of critical infrastructure systems.
|
From page 6... ...
of the National Institute of Building Sciences to perform an independent assessment of FEMA's mitigation activities. MMC assembled a team of experts to review and evaluate the activities of FEMA's major mitigation programs (the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Flood Mitigation Assistance Program, and Project Impact)
|
From page 7... ...
According to Ganderton, benefits are losses avoided in a mitigation context, and one should be able to expect the cost of administering mitigation programs to be offset by reduced postdisaster costs. In evaluating FEMA's mitigation activities on a national scale, MMC relied on costbenefit analysis methodologies to measure direct property damages, direct and indirect business interruptions, environmental damage, societal losses in terms of casualties and displaced persons, and emergency response needed.
|
From page 8... ...
Businesses that become viable in a postdisaster context do so in part because of a community's predisaster mitigation efforts and in part because they responded appropriately to the changed needs of the community. Alesch stated that customer priorities change after a disaster to meet their new, more pressing needs.
|
From page 9... ...
Ultimately, the ability of businesses to recover hinges on a community's predisaster mitigation efforts. According to Alesch, businesses are much more likely to survive a disaster if the community suffers little damage and displacement as a result of its mitigation activities.
|
From page 10... ...
Closing Remarks William Hooke, director of the Atmospheric Policy Program at the American Meteorological Society and chair of the Disasters Roundtable, challenged workshop participants to apply the lessons learned from the Berkeley experience to communities across the nation. He remarked that there are future disaster scenarios awaiting other cities and that simply pointing out systematic weaknesses after disaster strikes, as is the case with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, is rarely satisfying.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.