Emergency planning is easy and inexpensive, at least compared to emergency management. History provides valuable support to researchers tasked with developing emergency plans. Add some creative thinkers and there you have it.
But emergency management based on such plans can depend on a much more substantial investment. Since all governments perpetually stretch to cut corners, it’s not a surprise to learn that, while emergency plans may exist, the resources to execute them may not. Even more disconcerting, governments may, anticipating costs, attempt to avoid them completely.
And so we have recurring disasters such as the two killer public housing fires in the United States at the start of 2022, where emergency management plans were readily available, but the management structure was lacking or dysfunctional.
By contrast, it is difficult to fault the Ukraine for neither planning nor currently able to manage a newly-reported crisis. Read more in The Guardian: Alone under siege: how older women are being left behind in Ukraine.
The Ukraine did not expect to suddenly be invaded. Neither does Canada expect to be invaded by its enormously-more-powerful neighbour. Like the Ukraine, it might be excused for not having in place humanitarian evacuation plans, as well as stockpiling management resources as appropriate.
However, when it comes to climate change, the escalation of life-threatening emergencies would seem to put every government, large and small, on notice that emergency planning must be required, regardless of other everyday events which must be managed.
In this regard, however, steps taken recently by the government of the Netherlands are a wake-up call. With much of its land mass below sea level and protected by vulnerable dykes, it might be expected that weather-related emergencies would be the subject of world-class planning and backed the strong emergency management support.
It comes as something of a surprise then, that emergency planning and support in aid of the country’s most vulnerable citizens has been lacking. The national government has recently had to step in and make planning and support compulsory. Read more in NL Times: Municipalities forced to make housing plans for homeless, ex-patients
With climate change seemingly inevitable, this surely is a wakeup call for government and government critics everywhere to evaluate whether local support for the most vulnerable is both planned and supported.
