Everyone can go...somehow

As the 9-11 Anniversary has, for the most part, arrived, members of the Chasing4Life team have found themselves in Joplin, Missouri. The airwaves are literally full of images, videos, recordings, TV specials and talk shows all focusing on the events that shook this country ten years ago, and the atmosphere in Joplin is one of resolve, of remembrance, and of hope.
The country has certainly come together, at least mentally, as the media and the calendar have offered us all something to focus on together.
But there is a lot more going on in this country right now other than an anniversary.
It is this weekend that Joplin will focus on service, with volunteers in the thousands descending on the city to work and to rebuild. It is this weekend that Texas will continue to battle against hell's flames in a drought-stricken nightmare. It is this weekend that already-weary eyes along the eastern seaboard will watch tropical storms that will bring more wind, more storms and more misery. It is this weekend that states like Pennsylvania will hope no lives are lost in flood waters as residents watch their dreams and hopes wash away.
It is this weekend that we need to do more than watch the 9-11 specials on cable. It is this weekend that our efforts need to be more than hanging that flag on the porch. It is this weekend that churches need to do more than add The Star Spangled Banner to their morning worship service. It is this weekend that we need to realize the call to act, to support, to go.
Over the course of the last several years, we have seen so many disaster strike this country, and yet, as our teams watched these disasters, the reality was always present that the support was not there to always respond.
Social media has become a great revealer.
We watch as our friends, our families and even some of our partners have posted continually disaster after disaster about how they "feel horrible", how their "hearts break" and how they "wish they could help", but yet the pleas for support go ignored. Please directed at those specific people...
Now, I realize not everyone can go. I realize not everyone can give. I also realize everyone knows someone.
Two weeks ago we received a call from a woman that has, for a full year, told us repeatedly she was putting together support efforts for our response teams... she called because she was finally caught up in a natural disaster and wanted to know if we were deploying and was requesting help. How were we to get there? We had the volunteers ready to go, but due to lack of support had no ability to deploy them...
One of our teams have been inundated with requests to respond to a ravaged area, but those requesting the deployment, when asked to assist us in finding housing when we arrived, seemed almost indignant because we asked.
One of our partnering organizations has never hesitated to call us around the clock to have us assist them in monitoring severe weather for them during deployments, but yet for 6 months we have awaited simple returned calls regarding our requests for help from them.
All this is to bring up a point.
While Chasing4Life is a wonderfully successful educational organization that provides life-saving educational programming across the United States, the Chasing4Life Disaster Response Teams are made up completely of volunteers. The gear carried and used by our members is paid for out-of-pocket or from companies that believe in giving back to their communities. Most of our members have jobs, families and other responsibilities just like everyone else, but everytime a disaster occurs or looms on the horizon, they call in, make themselves available, and then they wait... for you to help them use their training and passion.
And as to that training; these volunteers have become or are becoming highly trained responders because when not deploying, they are enrolled in courses, taking classes and attending training exercises.
As we enter this 9-11 Anniversary weekend and a weekend of service in Joplin, it is time to ask yourself: "What have I done to respond? What have I done to ensure that there are teams that will deploy when it happens to me? What have I done to help others go in my stead?
It doesn't have to be C4LDRT that you choose to assist, but it has to be something, somebody, some organization. To sit and watch events unfold day after day on the television without responding SOMEHOW is not how America was formed. It is not how it grew. It is not how lives were saved during Katrina. It was not how lives were saved during the 9-11 attacks. It was not how lives were changed in the Iowa floods.
Everyone can go somehow.

Are YOU ready for the ride of your life?

C4L announces new campaign in Dorothy tradition

Hudson, IA. Chasing4Life has become a leader in disaster preparedness education across the United States over the years and nobody will contend that we owe much of this growth and popularity to “Dorothy”.
For several years, Chasing4Life’s founder, Eddy Weiss, toured the country in Dorothy, a fully outfitted storm chase vehicle visiting hundreds of libraries, schools, churches and organizations with a message about disaster preparedness.
Three years ago this month, Dorothy was donated to the Sci-Tech Children’s Museum in Aurora, Illinois where she still continues to thrill and to teach.
The popularity of Dorothy and the connection that she made was incredible. Dorothy became an icon that was recognized by families across the country and the Chasing4Life office still receives letters for her every month.
2011 has been a year of disasters like none we have ever seen in the United States and many have referred to this year as “the ride of their life”. It has been statements like this that have inspired a new preparedness campaign to follow that of Dorothy’s.
Chasing4Life is excited to announce that in January of 2012, we will launch Chasing4Life’s “8 Seconds”. This new preparedness and training campaign will feature new programs with a new theme. You will see new instructors, a broadened scope of programming, and a tremendous increase in trainings for fire departments, emergency management agencies, law enforcement agencies and disaster response organizations.
Like the original Chasing4Life “Dorothy” campaign, this campaign will have its motorized spokesperson as well; our new Mobile Command Unit “8 Seconds”.
The campaign is inspired by how quickly lives were changed in 2011 and by the drama and popularity of rodeo; particularly bull riding.
“Our family has always loved the rodeo,” explained Weiss recently. “As the year progressed and we watched these disasters unfold, interviewed the victims and aided in recovery, we were overwhelmed at how fast lives were changed by disaster. It can all be gone in less time than it takes a rodeo star to win a buckle…less than 8 seconds!”
The new campaign will be themed around the “8 second ride” in bull riding.
“A bull rider is judged on many things, but it all comes down to their actions during that 8 second ride…and of course, they have to stay on the whole 8 seconds!” said Weiss.
“Disasters are often like that bull charging out of the chute,” he explains. “It is raw power, and it is just you against him at that point. It all comes down to how hard you have trained and how determined you are.”
The new campaign will feature the release of a special edition of the “Red Book”, a disaster preparedness guide that Chasing4Life has sold for the last two years. New DVD’s will be available as well as Chasing4Life will focus more on training programs for agencies and response teams as well.
At the center of it all?
The new Mobile Command Unit will begin to go through modifications over the next two months to make it a vehicle that rivals Dorothy according to Chasing4Life staff. This vehicle will be used by the Chasing4Life Disaster Response Team (C4LDRT) in disaster response deployments, but will also make special appearances at events, festivals, fairs, shows and conferences in the tradition of Dorothy’s travels.
The command unit will feature a rodeo theme and is a converted ambulance that will be used to set up and monitor disaster response operations, severe weather situations and mobile communications.
“We’ve got our boots on and we’re ready to ride,” stated Brandi Hodgen, the Chasing4Life coordinator that will operate the unit in the field. “We cannot wait to roll this out and start this new campaign. The message is great, the theme is great and we think the people will love it”.
Plans are being made to partner with new sponsors for the new campaign and the staff at Chasing4Life is already talking about new coloring books and the possibility of a music video as the campaign progresses into the new year.

Historic Nationwide Restoration Tour of National 9/11 Flag to end this September 11, 2011 in Joplin, Missouri

When 9/11 happened, it did not only happen in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

9/11 happened in America.

It is for that reason that The New York Says Thank You Foundation announced today that it will end its historic 50-state restoration tour of The National 9/11 Flag on September 11, 2011 in Joplin, Missouri –the site of one of the nation’s deadliest tornadoes in history which took the lives of 160 people and destroyed 40% of the town this past May 22.

“By going to Joplin with The National 9/11 Flag on the 10th

Anniversary of 9/11, we will be making a powerful statement that New Yorkers will never forget what people from small towns and big cities all across America did for us in our time of need,” stated Jeff Parness, founder of New York Says Thank You Foundation. “By letting the folks in Joplin place the final stitches in The National 9/11 Flag and by letting them heal this national treasure, it will make an historic statement that ‘we are all in this together’ and that the resilience and the compassion of the American people is so much greater than any act of terror or catastrophic act of nature.”

About The National 9/11 Flag

Destroyed in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11 and stitched back together seven years later by tornado survivors in Greensburg, Kansas, The National 9/11 Flag has become recognized as the modern day version of the Star Spangled Banner.

Over 200 Million Americans have experienced The National 9/11 Flag through national and local TV coverage, public displays in small town gatherings, and major cultural and sporting events. The flag has been stitched by soldiers and schoolchildren who survived the shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas, by WorldWar II veterans on the deck of the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor, by the family of Martin Luther King Jr., by Members of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, and by thousands of everyday service heroes nationwide.

On President Lincoln’s Birthday, a piece of the flag that Abraham Lincoln was laid on when he was shot at Ford’s Theater was stitched into the fabric of The National 9/11 Flag. In May 2011, The National 9/11 Flag was presented as the official flag for The Kentucky Derby. On August 9, 2011 The National 9/11 Flag was stitched at the base of Mount Rushmore.

Currently on a journey across America through the 10th Year Anniversary of 9/11, the goal of The National 9/11 Flag Tour is to display this historic flag at leading venues nationwide, to empower local service heroes in all 50 states with the privilege of stitching the flag back to its original 13-stripe format, and to inspire 300 million Americans with the flag’s rich visual history in order to deepen our sense of citizenship and national pride and bolster the spirit of volunteerism on the 9/11 Anniversary and year-round. When complete, The National 9/11 Flag will become a part of the permanent collection of the National 9/11 Memorial Museum being built at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan.

“Our hope and our prayer is that for generations to come, The National 9/11 Flag will tell the story of not just what happened on 9/11, but was also happened on 9/12 – when Americans came together to help one another recover from disaster. It is that spirit of humanity, kindness, and volunteerism that united us on 9/12 that we hope to celebrate in Joplin, Missouri this September 11,” added Parness.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2011 DISPLAY & STITCHING CEREMONY

The National 9/11 Flag will be displayed by Joplin first responders, local residents, and by disaster survivors from across the United States in a silent tribute at 8:58AM CST through 9:28AM CST at Cunningham Park at the corner of 26th Street & Maiden Lane in Joplin, Missouri. The two times correspond to the exact moments that the South Towers and North Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. From there, The National 9/11 Flag will be processed to Leggett & Platt Auditorium on the campus of Missouri Southern State University where the flag will serve as the backdrop for a 9/11 Memorial Service beginning at 10:30AM. Following the Memorial Service the community will be invited to place the final stitches to repair The National 9/11 Flag at which point material from American flags that survived the Joplin tornado will be sewn into the fabric of The National 9/11 Flag. Stitching will be open to the public until 5:00PM.

It is with great pride that we can say Chasing4Life will be represented by some of its staff at this historic event. We will be posting pictures upon our return.

A Pandemic

The Spanish Influenza pandemic is the catastrophe against which all modern pandemics are measured. It is estimated that approximately 20 to 40 percent of the worldwide population became ill and that over 50 million people died.

When you think about the population at that time period in our history, 50 Million is an incredible amount of people. Heck, it is an incredible amount by today’s standards!

Between September 1918 and April 1919, approximately 675,000 deaths from the flu occurred in the U.S. alone.

Now, when we look at the records of this pandemic, we find that many died very quickly. These were the folks that perhaps already had an illness, were already susceptible for some reason, or just did nothing to protect themselves.

There were others, according to the records, who woke up feeling perfectly fine in the morning, became sick by nightfall and succumbed to the disease by nightfall. These were, by all rights, folks with no real strength, no real stamina. People that were not ready to fight.

Then there were the others… people who caught colds, got another form of the flu, or who had been trying to respond to the disaster and finally fell victims to the disease they were trying to stop.

Pandemics come in many forms. Throughout our history, we have had many; more than most people like to think about. There was this one, and then of course in 1957 we had the Asian Flu, then in 1968 the Hong Kong Flu, in ’76 Swine Flu came on scene, then in ’77 the Russian flu did its best. A few years ago, we started looking at chickens as if they were Al Qaeda… and it continues.

Are there other pandemics we don’t pay attention to?

I think so.

The word Pandemic is a Greek word.

“Pan” means ALL. “Demos”, where we get our word demographic, means PEOPLE. Therefore, the word PANDEMIC means ALL PEOPLE.

Let’s look at the beginning of the year.

On New Years Eve Day, tornadoes raked across Arkansas and into Illinois. Before noon, houses were destroyed, teams were deploying, and it was the last day of 2010. Nobody paid much attention. Sure, we knew it was happening, but really, it was a freak thing, right? We dismissed it like we would a light cough or slight sore throat.

As the next month began, the weather got worse. By Ground Hog’s Day we were sick of the blizzards, weary from the ice cold arctic blasts, and we had all seen the coverage of snow in the Gulf States. Now we paid a little more attention. It slowed things down, but not too much. We looked at it like the 24 hour flu…it came…it went. A bad, but short memory.

Now springtime came. We knew it was the “season”, and we even talked about it as we watched towns like Mapleton, Iowa get creamed. We started to think it was a lingering cough. Some of us thought of it like walking pneumonia… we wondered if it would get worse or if we could maybe work through it.

Then came Tuscaloosa. Then flooding. Dikes were blown. Levees failed. Then Joplin.

Joplin...

It seemed like pandemic! Every day there was more reports!

But alas, with the exception of a house here, a tree here, a flooded basement here, a county blown apart by a wind storm, the activity died down. And so did our concern and awareness.

Finally, the atmosphere was stable. The weather channel actually had regular programming for a week of days in a row! Greg Forbes went fishing. Think I am kidding? He posted it on his FaceBook.

We are relaxed. The pictures of Joplin are on Google, but at least not in our dreams and nightmares. The grass is green, but it is all that remains of the standing water. The temperatures are even okay here; I might clean out the gutters today.

But is it over?

There’s something you need to know about a pandemic…

They come in waves.

One of the notable characteristics of the pandemics we have had in this country is that they do not occur once. Like an earthquake, sometimes the aftershocks are worse than the initial quake.

The 1918 pandemic began with outbreaks of low mortality in the spring and summer, followed by a more lethal wave in the winter. This pattern has fueled speculation that the strains will undergo mutation that will create similar pandemics.

It is this mutation that leads to the emergence of more lethal versions of the original killers.

And so it might seem with this year’s weather threats.

Just as the temps began to fall. Just as we had time to clean out and organize the Chasing4Life Disaster Response trailer, the news came in…hurricane season is ramping up and everyone that is anyone is back at their desks trying to figure out just how bad it’s gonna get.

The next wave.

So much speculating occurs each day at conferences, in offices, in magazines, on television and elsewhere; is the weather changing?

Couldn’t tell you for sure, but my parents did not raise an idiot.

Did yours?

Where is your weather radio now? Did you ever get one? Was it left on this summer? Is it on now? Are you checking weather forecasts daily? Have you spent time with your family putting together a disaster plan and a home disaster kit? How’s the disaster plan for your pets coming along?

Have you invested in your own recovery? What I mean is, have you given of time or finance to response agencies or groups this year to make sure they can continue to respond to disasters?

Have you seen this year’s conditions change the way you think, live, spend, travel and plan?

Guess what folks. We have a disaster pandemic. Sure, it started out as random coughs and sneezes, but you have to admit, there are towns, cities and communities spread across the country on stretchers and cots now…

It ain’t over.

September is National Preparedness Month.

What will YOU do?

Help

As we look toward the rest of the year, the record number of disasters in the United States is a bit frightening. Our thoughts here at Chasing4Life include, “How will we respond again?” Organizations and response teams are tapped out. The year has been exhausting. Our C4LDRT is looking at re-deploying to Joplin, but fundraising is at an all time low, and after talking to a number of other response agencies, organizations and non-profits, I find this is the case all over.
America is breathing a sigh of relief right now, glad to not be seeing coverage of mass casualties on the news for a change, but you know it is only temporary…

Disasters lurk in the shadows even today…

It is time to give, to support, and to volunteer. Here’s a short list of do’s and don’ts for you. The most important are these:

DO make sure you support something
DON’T think it can’t happen in your community.

Here’s a few more…

Make sure you know what the needs are.
I remember after Katrina, we got a phone call from a woman who was so excited. She had collected blankets for hurricane victims. Now, don’t get me wrong, blankets are needed all over the world and nobody should be without one, but it was over 100 degrees outside in Louisiana the day I got the call!
Make sure you know what the needs are. The safest thing to do with your money is to give it to an organization that is on the ground in the disaster zone that KNOWS what the needs REALLY are. Do not give based on the last news story you saw.
When you watch television and see the destruction, it is hard to imagine that a city or town would NOT want assistance, but sometimes this is the case. There are many communities with plans and sometimes, there is not the help needed you are perceiving.
If you are going to collect items or goods, make sure you have a means of transporting them yourself, and that you have someone to receive them at the other end. Make sure you have a church or organization of SOMEONE that has COMMITTED to taking delivery!
Shortly after the Joplin tornado, we watched a truck loaded with goods roll into town. It was unloaded, then loaded back up, and then sent to a mission in another state because there was such a overload of goods in the town.

Look at a variety of organizations before giving
There are hundreds of organizations that respond to most disasters, take the time to evaluate a few before giving. Also, just because they have name recognition does not mean they’re best able to respond to the disaster. Look at the capability of the organization to get the work done. Many times, an organization may be formed BECAUSE of the disaster. This is not always a bad thing, but just because the organization is named “REVIVE JOPLIN” does not mean it is the organization to give to or to assist. Watch the FaceBook page, look at the website, ask questions. Are they involved or TRYING to get involved? Are they working through a recognized channel? Social media is a GREAT way to monitor an organization. Since the San Diego fires in 2007, social media has created a means by which you can watch the daily operations of an organization.

Look for organizations with experience and expertise
There is a great deal of money after well publicized disasters. The ease of raising money makes it tempting to respond even if the organization does not have prior experience in that area. This past 6 months, we have seen MANY organizations and church groups respond to disaster zones in flip-flops and and shorts ready to work, but not trained for the work. These groups were well-financed by folks back home that gave to their passion but not to their experience. Make sure you are financing a group or organization that can get the job done in the conditions that exist.

Don’t get sucked into excitement and popularity.
Many response and recovery opportunities are big news, so it makes them “popular” to give to. This is true of the recent surge in breast cancer awareness as well. Americans think nothing of giving massive amounts toward a pink ribbon campaign, but what color is the ribbon for prostate cancer? I don’t know either.
My point is this…Tuscaloosa was not the only city hit, but it will forever be referred to as the Tuscaloosa tornado. Is there a smaller community where your gift could make a bigger impact? Educate yourself as to where the needs are. While the nation’s focus was on Tuscaloosa this past Spring, the town of Mapleton, Iowa was recovering alone.

Don’t earmark funds
When we are on the ground in a disaster zone, what we thought the needs were may change. Don’t earmark funds. If you write a check that says “For tools” and we arrive in the zone to find out we have the right tools but no diesel, we’re in trouble. Don’t force organizations to spend money needlessly. We recently had a woman that brought money to a zone that was “earmarked” for food, but when we arrived, a gracious church offered to feed the team. As the deployment progressed and we struggled for other needs to be met, all I could think about was that untouchable money in that woman’s pocket…

Don’t expect the funds to be spent immediately
The initial relief phase encompasses search and rescue, immediate medical care, food, water and shelter. After that the much longer recovery and reconstruction phase begins. Organizations that feel pressure from donors to complete their work quickly may try to speed their work by cutting corners, leaving aid recipients out of the decision making process, avoiding coordinating with other organizations, or ending projects before they’re able to survive on their own. Allow the organizations adequate time to ensure they are providing help in the best way possible.
Don’t give based on news coverage.
It isn’t over because it isn’t in the news, and just because nothing has happened in the last three weeks doesn’t mean there won’t be a need tomorrow. Our biggest struggle at present is that we cannot deploy to another major disaster without continued support. If you wait to give until you see it on the news, you could be limiting an organization and preventing them to respond immediately.

Connect and Train
If you want to volunteer, connect. There are many organizations that will train you in advance to respond safely, efficiently and with the right credentials. Chasing4Life is just one of those organizations. Make your passion and energy count by deploying with a team.
Support disaster preparedness programs
Programs that help communities prepare for and respond to disasters save more lives and are more cost effective than large rescue operations after the disaster. Our slogan is “With more education, we will need less response”. With over 800 programs per year, Chasing4Life is actively trying to reduce the impact disaster can have on communities. Can your company help? Can you? Do you know a potential sponsor?

Be educated

Joplin

The Army Corps of Engineers sent out a press release this morning regarding the work that is continuing in Joplin, Missouri. I noted one phrase they used in the release especially; the release stated that Joplin recovery was "evaporating" from the new coverage. This is true, just like the coverage of Tuscaloosa did. There comes a time after a disaster that the news crews move on. Sure, like the other day, Mike Bettes visited Joplin and did a "30 days later" special, adopted a dog from ASPCA and showed the continuing work, but today, Mike isn't there. And neither is anyone else. The country is moving on.

While I remember the advice of President Bush after 9-11 to "return to normal", there is another side of it as well. We cannot forget.

With heat indexes rising, resources still in short supply, news coverage spotty at best and years of work to be done, I am not content to simply watch Joplin's tragedy slip into the archives on some television station's website. During the intial phases after an event, the help is overwhelming. We watched truckloads of goods dropped in the city. We watched youth groups and church groups show up by the bus-loads. Red Cross trucks dotted the streets, The Salvation Army stopped regularly to check on our team. The military and law enforcement where everywhere, and any church with a roof had become a distribution center.

Now it is changing.

We are hearing from youth groups and churches planning missions trips for a year from now. Caylee Anthony fills the news. The weather, for the most part in the United States has been pleasant, and the July 4th weekend is quickly approaching.

Yesterday, a woman in Bloomington, Indiana was speaking to our team at an event and made this statement: "The tornado in Joplin was tragic!".

We corrected her.

The tornado in Joplin IS tragic. It will be tragic for a long time to come and we need to remember

.

You see, long after the debris falls to the ground, long after the streets dry, long after the tents are folded up, the tornado is still in the town spinning through the streets causing problems with recovery, with infrastructure, with emotions, with families, with health, with economy, with life.

That tornado will be churning through that town for years, and we need to think about what we can do. The initial campaign to volunteer or to give is over, but each hour we receive word that there are very real needs for crews, for specialists, for volunteers.

It is now that we can step up. The initial surge is over. It is time to start making longer-term commitments. If you can't go, GIVE. The Chasing4Life DRT's are ready to go back as are hundreds of others, but the funding to go just doesn't exist. Is this something you can help with?

Joplin is a community of Americans, just like you and me. They are our family and our neighbors.

This July 4th while we fly our flags over pristine porches and emerald green lawns, there are tattered flags flying over piles that were once the homes of the citizens of Joplin.

This 4th of July, don't celebrate freedom. Celebrate A freedom. Celebrate the specific freedom to support teams willing and ready and geared to go to Joplin. Celebrate the freedom to give. Celebrate the freedom to help. You have these freedoms.

This 4th of July, while you sit on a blanket with your family and watch the brightly colored fireworks over your town, remember the bright lights of bursting transformers lighting up the Joplin sky just over one month ago. Remember the families in Southern Missouri that are sitting on a blanket with THEIR families because that blanket is one of the few things they have left.

It may not be the headline news story, but it should still be the heartline story...

How to make a dangerous world safer with a few million dollars

Do you have a few million dollars? Know someone who does? Want to leave a legacy? Are you heartsick about the pain and suffering in Tuscaloosa, Joplin, New Orleans and southern Louisiana, Port-au-Prince, Sendai, Christchurch, Sichuan province, and so many other towns and cities across the United States and around the world?

Would you like to put a stop to such catastrophes? Or at least bring the rate of disaster way down? Would you like to make communities like these (and many others) more disaster resilient?

You can do this! Here’s how.

But before we dive in…two stories.

The first is present-day. Talk to hazards experts – whether seismologists or meteorologists; or sociologists, risk-management academics or policy analysts; or engineers – and you’ll find they’re dismayed. They see the trends, and the trends are not good. Losses to natural hazards average billions of dollars each week, and are growing rapidly, decade upon decade. The vulnerability in high-risk areas – coasts, seismic fault lines, etc. – represents a huge bill now coming due. To turn this around is going to take hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars of investment. Money we don’t have. Worse yet? It’s not just the money. We have to reconfigure our land use, adjust our building codes and their enforcement, change our dependence on critical infrastructure, improve our warnings and their communication, even as the world’s peoples are beset by social injustice, lack of trust, and preoccupation with dozens more urgent concerns, from jobs to education to poverty to health care.

The second story concerns the past…a miracle that has occurred over just the past thirty years or so. All those dire projections of population explosion of a few decades back? They’re failing to verify. Population growth looks to be at the very low end of all the forecasts.

What happened? Well, it wasn’t the result of any draconian social engineering. [There’s been some of that, but it hasn’t turned out well. Take the Chinese one-child policy. It’s had unintended consequences, accelerating the aging of the Chinese demographic and producing a stunning shortage of girls and young women.] Instead, the decline in population growth rate arrived from a different direction. It came from educating women, giving them information about and access to birth control, and improving children’s health to the point where mothers can expect their children to live to adulthood. In countries where these conditions have been met, birth rates have dropped to replacement levels or a little below. Problem solved…or at least under control.

Here’s the analog for community resilience in the face of hazards.

First – and nature has served up the necessary wake-up call here – make sure that people in every community understand with clarity that no town or city or region is immune to natural hazards. The Earth does its business through extreme events: floods and drought, winter storms, hurricanes and tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and on and on. These threats are everywhere. There’s no escape.

Second – and recent experience has borne this out – when disaster hits your town, or mine, no one from outside is going to make us whole. Our families and friends can’t restore the loss. Strangers from across the country away, however well-meaning, will provide no more than the briefest bit of sympathy, or the most temporary bit of concrete help. Those folks in other countries? They’ve got problems of their own. So the problem is inherently a local one, place-based. You and I have to step up and take ownership of our local problem. It’s our responsibility; we can’t duck it.

Third – national and international agencies have resources that can help any local effort we choose to make effective. This is key. Suppose this were not the case, what then? We could only be depressed by the impossibility of our task. We’d simply have to hope we’d be lucky. Who are those agencies? In the United States, this information, these assets, tools, products and services are distributed across virtually every federal agency: the obvious ones, like NOAA and USGS, and FEMA, but also others like USDA and NSF, and EPA and DoT and the military and on down the list. Information on the likelihood of all sorts of hazards. Information on hard (engineering) and soft (social science) approaches to reducing the risk of hazards, building community resilience. Cookbooks like the recent NAS/NRC reports on private-public collaborations to build community disaster resilience.

Fourth and finally – here’s the best part. We don’t have to guess that this might work. We don’t have to hope that it might work. We know from experience that it has worked. When? Where? Project Impact, back in the 1990’s. This FEMA-based project never had a budget of more than $25M. The agency parceled the money out in small grants to a relative handful of communities. But when the money ran out, do you know what happened? Other communities stepped forward and said, “We know there’s no money left. We’re not asking for any. But if we organize ourselves in our community along these lines, will you let us call ourselves a Project Impact community?” Then- FEMA-director James Lee Witt said, “yes,” and the rest was history. Communities found the money to plan for a more resilient future, and then they found, locally, and from other sources, the wherewithal to make those plans a reality.

At the beginning, I asked if you had a few million dollars. Where does that come into the picture? It’s needed to build and maintain web-based and other tools for helping communities sort through and gain access to federal and other resources. To give the notion some visibility. To build a network of cooperating individuals and communities. To spread the word about success stories. In short, to jump-start this catalytic, viral process. The American Meteorological Society, many of its members, and especially those of us on staff of the Policy Program would be happy to help out here. But if you’d rather work through or collaborate with someone else, that’s okay too. Many other organizations stand ready to help, and/or are already moving out. And after all, it’s your few million dollars. It’s your legacy!

by Dr. William Hooke

Visit "Living On The Real World"

Sophies Choice

From Guest-Blogger, Dr. William H. Hooke, Ph.D.

The 1982 movie by this name may be unfamiliar to younger blog readers, but bears on events unfolding in Louisiana as this year’s Mississippi-River floodwaters continue to rise.

Here is the background.

First – the movie. Sophie’s Choice was a truly extraordinary film on every level. Based on a novel by William Styron, the picture won Meryl Streep an Academy Award for her performance in the title role and cemented her justly deserved reputation as one of the greatest actresses of any time.

The full story is complex and tragic; there is no way to do it justice in a few sentences. Here’s the bit that you and I need to know for today’s purposes. Sophie, living in post-World-War-II New York, is tormented by a decision she had been forced to make, on the fly, in a Nazi concentration camp, a few years earlier, during the war. A Nazi guard made her choose which of her two children would go to a children’s camp, and thereby have at least a chance to live; and which would go directly to the crematorium. The only alternative the Nazi offered? That both children could die, then and there. At the end, this memory helps drive Sophie to suicide.

Second – Louisiana today. News media have been covering this breaking story in recent weeks. Faced with record spring runoff throughout the Mississippi watershed, the US Army Corps of Engineers, other federal agencies and state and local officials, have been assessing the inundation likely under a range of scenarios. Under the first, they open the Morganza Floodway above New Orleans. Under the second, they allow the full volume of water to head south uncontrolled. Under the last, they divert excess water through the Old River Control structure. Officials are essentially making a trade: certain flooding of about 3000 square miles of small towns and countryside in rural Louisiana in order to prevent a potentially worse disaster – levee failures in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and flooding exceeding that of Katrina, wiping out whole neighborhoods as well as countless chemical facilities and oil refineries. Those responsible have made the decision – to open the Floodway. They may be implementing that choice even as I write this. Thousands of people are evacuating the areas of likely flooding, sandbagging in an effort to minimize their local loss, and grieving.

Psychologists and social scientists, most notably Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, tell us that when we hear about disasters of this magnitude, we experience numbing. We’re incapable of grasping the enormity of such events as the aggregated sum of immense, overwhelming personal tragedies. Instead, we allow them to become empty statistics. So when we learn of starving millions, when we study the Holocaust, or Stalin’s execution of millions as he cemented his power in the former Soviet Union, or the fact that a third of the population between Iceland and India died of the Black Death in the winter of 1347-1348, we quickly consign that to some compartment in our brain where we store other factoids (how many ounces in a pound? How many games in Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak? How many calories in a Big Mac? etc.).

Just this once, let’s try consciously to override this universal tendency. Let’s use this occasion to see if we can make ourselves a bit less calloused about the tragedy that is unfolding.

How to do this?

Here are a few ideas.

First, let’s put ourselves in the place of people packing up, preparing to leave the only homes they’ve ever known. Picture the decisions we’re trying to make. Which paltry few things are we going to take? Where are we going to go? What resources can we draw on, given that we’re losing our jobs as well as our homes? What do we tell the kids, who know something terrible is happening but can’t comprehend it? For that matter, how can we explain to grandma, who’s in advanced stage of Alzheimers, who’s being asked to move out of her room? What do we do about the one child who picked today to be sick? Maybe the car broke down last night. Any chance to get that fixed? How do we get our heads around the idea that this has happened after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and last year’s oil spill, have already drained our resilience and our energies?

Or…put yourself in the shoes of people in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. There’s relief…and right behind it there’s guilt. You’ve been saved from the worst – maybe. And only at the price of immense suffering – distress and misery for thousands of folks no better or worse, no less deserving, than you, all across the surrounding area. Some of them are family. How can you look them in the eye next time you see them? What can you possibly do to make them whole? To show your gratitude for the sacrifice they made? To demonstrate that you all really were in this together?

Don’t move quickly on. Dwell on these realities. Let them sink in. Expand this short list, which doesn’t begin to do justice to the state of things. Come up with your better set of thoughts. Remember…this is how it felt to be Sophie’s kids. “What’s happening to my sister? Why is she going that way?” “Why am I being separated from my brother and mother? Mommy!”

Second, let’s now put ourselves in the shoes of those who are making the decision to open the Morganza Floodway. Is there any joy here? Any self-congratulation? Of course not. None of these men and women, from Army Corps of Engineers generals and Governor Bobby Jindal on down, can find any reason for satisfaction. They didn’t sign on for this…destruction. They’re builders. Rejuvenators! Givers of hope! This is wrong! They’re today’s Sophie. They were forced to choose.

And here’s a key point. Like Sophie, they simply found themselves in this role. Few of these people played any part in creating the conditions that made this choice necessary. For that, we have to look back to their predecessors – the long line of thousands and thousands of state and local officials, and those serving in the Corps of Engineers over the past 150 years. And none of those people deliberately set out to sabotage cities and towns. Each day out of those 60,000 days, they made small decisions and infinitesimal compromises needed to get through the day. On this scale, it was impossible to see how that ratcheted up the risk, bit by bit.

And they weren’t the only ones. Land developers and business leaders made the decision to snuggle up more and more resources right behind the levees all up and down the Mississippi. And all those who are being flooded out get annual notices from the Corps to the effect that flooding would be a distinct possibility.

Third, we don’t have to put ourselves in others’ shoes. Instead, we need to honestly take stock of our own lives. No quarter of the United States is free from risk from natural hazards, industrial accidents, or willful acts of terror. And every action we take throughout our lives – where to set down roots and start a family, what jobs to accept, whether to be active in community affairs or sit on the sidelines – each decision and its sequelae set into motion a local ratcheting up of risk. Each day, we’re thoughtlessly, opportunistically, setting up a problem for either ourselves or our children.

What’s happening in Louisiana is not just happening to someone else, someone faceless. It’s our destiny unless we consciously make decisions to get off this cycle of inevitable disaster and repetitive loss. Across the nation, each of us has played a small part in what’s unfolding today. And we’re playing a bigger part in similar tragedies lining up to happen tomorrow. We can and should do better. The starting point? Building-in community resilience into every aspect of our thinking, rather than just treating it as an afterthought.

It’s not just Sophie’s choice.

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Time for you to respond...

Over the years, Chasing4Life volunteers have been there in disasters. From severe weather monitoring for hundreds of fire departments and other agencies to debris removal after a tornado, the list is long of the situations these volunteers have been there as Good Samaritans.
With the disasters that have struck the United States and abroad over the last 6 months, we have seen in influx of more volunteers; folks just wanting to be a part of the C4LDRT (Chasing4Life Disaster Response Team).
At this time, we have several new teams being formed. These are teams of at least 8 people in a geographic location that have chosen to train, learn and respond. These folks are just like you. They have full-time jobs, families, bills and responsibilities, but they have made themselves available to give of their time, skills and energy.
We have some great sponsors like FoxFury Lights and HiViz, Inc, but the needs are great and we need your help.
Almost every day we are approached by people at our events that say they want to help or be involved, and now we would like to see those people step up. We know that not everyone can take off for four days or fourteen. We know that not everyone can handle the load of post disaster recovery or response work. That’s okay. Perhaps, if you are one of those people, you could do more than you think.
Each of our volunteers are responsible to purchase a response bag. This is a backpack that allows each C4LDRT member to respond with the same basic gear and apparel. The cost of each of these bags is approximately $150.
While we have encountered many new volunteers with big hearts and a passion for helping, one thing many of them do not have is the finances to outfit themselves to do so.
If you would like to sponsor one of these volunteers, please contact us at drt @ chasing4life.org. Time is of the essence, so please consider this seriously.
Chasing4Life is also always looking for partnerships and sponsorships that will help us to sustain this side of our organization. A corporate sponsorship is just as valuable as a single donated chainsaw or gas card. Every little bit helps for a very long time.
You can assist those that have been effected by disaster from where you sit by making that connection we need, introducing us to that potential sponsor, or by sponsoring one of our volunteers.
We want to thank all of you that have aided us in making new contacts for our educational programming and want you to know that this year’s tours are better than ever.
Won’t you help us respond now too?

Thank you.
The Chasing4Life Staff.

Time to prepare, train and volunteer

At the time I write this on the morning of April 30th, the death toll has risen to almost 350 down south in the wake of this recent tornado outbreak. It is a sad day in America's history, but alongside this overwhelming sense of loss is a feeling of warmth when one looks at the outpouring of help that is now flooding the southern states.
Today is the day for you to think about your family's plans for disaster. Do you have a plan? Where is your weather radio? Have you considered what you might do if it happened where you live? What would you do in the aftermath? Would you be available to assist your neighbors?
We have several of our Chasing4Life family that are dealing with the horrendous aftermath of this outbreak. The reports are staggering. The events of the last week have caused us to encourage others to prepare for disaster more than ever before, and we want to encourage each of you to connect with an organization now that can train you, teach you, ready you for what could happen in YOUR community next.
Our C4LDRT (Chasing4Life Disaster Response Team) could use you. Right now, churches, civic groups and even schools are assembling groups to respond to communities down south to assist with everything from providing food service to debris removal.
The C4LDRT is an opportunity for those interested in helping their neighbors. In the past, our teams have deployed in both great and small numbers. You are never required to deploy to an area, never expected to operate outside of your comfort zone or beyond your skill level. There is no required skill, nor an age limit. In 2009, a C4LDRT deployed to a community of 3500 people to assist local emergency management in debris removal, boarding up of homes and operations of an EOC. That group consisted of senior citizens and young teens.The concept of recruiting team members is to find passionate people that would be interested in readying themselves to deploy by taking online courses (free courses!), to occasionally take part in a training in their area, to assist in recruiting new members, and of course, in deploying when help is needed.
Aside from C4L's DRT, you might look into your local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), another opportunity for you to not only become ready for disaster but an opportunity to become a responder.
Education is power, and preparing to respond is as important as preparing for the disaster itself. Right now, trained volunteers are needed in the south...not sure where the next ones will be needed but the numbers of trained volunteers is already quickly being drained this Spring...
For for more information about the C4LDRT, visit our site at www.chasing4life.org.