Managing Chaos: Disaster Planning handbook

Mitchell (Mitch) Stripling, who works for New York City, (Executive Director, Bureau of Agency Preparedness and Response, Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene) [and, I thought I had a long title] has come up with a different approach to planning.  

The 18 page document is worth your read (I read it word for word). Mitch teases us, shall I say baits us with the following:

The Problem
Our secret fears are true: We write emergency plans that nobody reads[4].

But it’s worse than that.

The presence of plans has no correlation to improvement in disaster response. None.

But it’s worse than that.

Done wrong (and most of us do it sort of wrong), disaster planning creates complicated documents full of specific actions that make us feel prepared but really just perpetuate a fantasy world. Poor planning makes disaster response worse – hierarchical, slow, with a false sense of security and stubborn leaders that won’t innovate when we need them most.

But it’s worse than that, even.

No researcher has gleaned the insights from the disaster-based social sciences to teach planners learn how to plan. That means there is no validated process for evidence-based planning in the literature. In other words, we should probably give up.

Except that good planning is desperately important.

The Vision (or End State)
Comprehensive, multi-hazard planning based on real needs that focuses on response management will improve coordination, information flow, communication, and authority relations during a disaster every time [26].

We need to plan. But we barely know how.

The link to the webpage and the planning guide are at:

Managing Chaos: The Disaster Planner’s Handbook

There are many good points in the guide and I love some of his phrasing, like:

• "Planning is a Consensual Halluciantion."  
• The idea that the public needs to understand the plan
• The local media can play a role like managing national media
• In disasters local government is supposed to be strong, but in normal times they are designed to be fairly weak.
• Include all types of organizations and new citizen efforts
• Plan how you will coordinate and make decisions, not treat particular types of injuries [big picture thinking]
• Design your plan to increase the improvisation capacity of your response network

There are two things that didn't jive with me:

One is his using the term "Incident Commander" for who is directing the planning.  ICS may save the world, but for pre-incident planning throwing the IC term into the mix and not adopting "everything else" mixes things up too much for me.

Having spent 20 years in the military, 10 of that as an operations officer, I appreciate the Commander's Intent and relish the thought that it might exist in the civilian world. It does not.  Senior military commanders with 25-40 years of training and experience know how to have a vision and cast it as the commander's intent.  Politicians and senior appointed officials don't have the background to do that to the same standard as in the military.  I did like the "three option" courses of action that are then debated and given pros and cons.  It too is military, and easily adopted.  To be honest though, when I've done military style decision briefings to civilian leaders they look at me like I'm from another planet.  They are not used to the decision making process and "needing to make a decision and give guidance" right then and there.

Like everything else in this world.  Use what you like, toss the rest!