Emergency Preparedness: Plan to Empower

Ontario government reports on whether organizations worked well together during the storm and the delivery of supplies and services was effective were delayed by the election.  A report from Toronto's ice-storm review panel said Toronto by-laws allow insufficient space between trees and power lines and that Toronto Hydro did not have the capacity to handle the nearly 400,000 calls if fielded after the storm.

Toronto is all set for emergencies that last for 72 hours.  They can handle a couple of these a year.  The problem, as last year demonstrated, is that we're not so ready for multiple seven-plus day emergencies a year.  

It's not that anyone has been asleep at the switch; we simply didn't have the need to be that ready.  Now, as sever weather events become more common, we no longer have that luxury.

Where do people turn?  What's the chain of engagement?  How does distribution, responsibility hand-offs, etc work for long-haul emergencies, especially when duration means that public resources aren't going to be free to circulate as rapidly as once they did?

None of this is clear, although the discussion continues.  The public sector doesn't want to give people cause to panic; they want the world to feel they are ready.  They also want to keep doing things the way they know how - from the top down.

This will no longer suffice.  What's required now is for communities themselves to become the first line of defense during large-scale severe weather events of prolonged duration.

So, how might we empower communities of engagement that have internalized plans and capacity, the ability to effectively coordinate with public services and all the fun stuff that goes with it?

That's a question we can only answer together.