BWL and city of Lansing must develop community resilience

One of those recommendations has been overlooked. The BWL and city have accepted all recommendations aimed at them, and are in some stage of implementation on all of them, but the recommendation to develop community resilience has been overlooked, probably because it requires the concerted action of the entire regional community, not just one agency, municipality or discipline.

The focus of this recommendation is on community resilience, NOT on regional emergency planning. Our state and local emergency management community does a superb job in planning and preparing for disasters. But community resilience requires a broad-based effort, beginning with local neighbor associations and community groups.

The need for community resilience is plain and obvious:

(1) Disasters will occur again, whether natural or human-induced, in our community, and climate change makes us more vulnerable;

(2) Our population will continue to grow, age, and expand beyond current municipal boundaries;

(3) Public infrastructure nationwide is aging beyond acceptable design limits;

(4) Public safety, schools and public health agencies are essential to community health but face daunting budget concerns, particularly as our population ages and expands;

(5) Our critical infrastructure systems and our municipalities are interdependent and vulnerable should a key node in any of those systems be disrupted by natural or human-induced disaster;

(6) All of our systems of critical infrastructure are dependent on three key systems: electricity, water and information technology.

(7) The BWL is the steward for two of the three most important systems.

(8) The BWL has the capacity to provide all of our electrical energy, without depending on the grid.

Natural disasters inflict a heavy toll on affected communities and, collectively, on the entire nation. In 2011, economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion.

Community resilience is a measure of the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations.

Achieving resilient performance at a community level takes time and planning. It also requires informed decision-making that prioritizes investments and actions across several key dimensions, including social needs, infrastructure, buildings and critical services.

“We need to stop lurching from crisis to crisis,” said Judith Rodin, author of The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong. She cited five principles of resilient cities:

1. They are aware of their vulnerabilities and assets;

2. They have diverse and redundant systems to cope with disaster;

3. Agencies are integrated and share information;

4. They are self-regulating: if one system fails, they can cut it off without allowing it to cascade into catastrophic failure; and

5. They are adaptive and flexible.

The CRT, during its three public hearings, and in review of the transcripts of the public hearings held by the BWL, repeatedly heard instances of neighbor helping neighbor. This communal engagement and assistance needs to be harnessed, energized and organized prior to disasters. Despite the overuse of the term, there is synergy in partnering disparate public and private resources into a communal plan for response to events. The many benefits include ownership and engagement and the release of governmental resources for other emergency response tasks. Some examples of community agencies actively assisting during the ice storm include the Red Cross deploying warming facilities and shelters, coordinated through the City emergency operations center, the Capital Area United Way involvement with 211 is a valuable link with support organizations. The Tri County Office on the Aging was active as well: they identified the locations of their clients in Lansing and East Lansing, which were mapped on a CAD map which was then used by police and fire for health and welfare checks. The city of Lansing also deployed its Community Emergency Response Team on the first two days of the outage, both for damage assessment and for health and welfare checks.

Similarly, the two cities and many of the townships are endowed with well-organized neighborhood associations. For example, Lansing has the Neighborhood Watch Coordinator and the Coordinator of Lansing Neighborhood Council, each of whom have communications links to 187 and 36 leaders of organized neighborhood watches and neighborhood associations, respectively.

The city/LPD/Emergency Management and the Power of WE (which already operates both an AmeriCorps and a VISTA program) could collaborate in the organization of a regional community resilience program. These organizers could assist in pulling together residents to create block plans, e.g., helping to organize initial block meetings, creating block level parcel maps with pertinent information (household names, children, pets, resources such as generators, shut-ins, etc.,), helping blocks to identify neighbors responsible for critical functions (communications, well-checks on vulnerable neighbors, basic needs), and more.

A well-planned and coordinated response, with engagement at every level: households to blocks to municipalities to the region, will go a long way toward reducing the confusion and helplessness that characterized the December 2013 outage.

Opinion

Retired General Michael McDaniel

Michael C.H.

McDaniel,
who served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary for homeland defense
strategy, prevention and mission assurance, headed the committee that
reviewed BWLs post-ice storm performance.