Volume 11, Issue 3

As the field of disaster mental health has grown dramatically over recent decades, there have been many advances in universal interventions for disaster survivors and responders, but psychologists have had little involvement in helping to prevent harm by working with emergency managers to improve warning compliance. This opinion article summarizes insights about human behavior and decision-making processes that may help managers prevent common reactions to warnings, including denial of the threat that causes people to make unproductive preliminary judgments that are then reinforced through psychological mechanisms including confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. Ways to understand this process from the citizen’s perspective are described, as are results of a survey of emergency and mental health professionals leading to four goals for warning construction: generating appropriate fear, rarity, clarity, and credibility.

U.S. climate change-related policy response is failing, despite scientific consensus on core realities, in part because of comprehensive, simultaneous, yet incommensurable doctrines and political biases. Climate disruption is a critically important agenda for homeland security and emergency management, yet as framed today, the policy communication regime frequently requires many skeptics or deniers to abandon their opinions, cultural commitments and epistemic frameworks. Public opinion consensus would be optimal, but the traditional education/information approach is flawed, and continued delays in significant mitigation and adaptation policy implementation will mean far larger future costs to protect civilian environmental security and national interests. Thus, effective response demands new messaging strategies, pursuing interim progress, leveraging overlapping consensus , enhancing risk analysis literacy, and constructing alternative, intermediary categories of multiple parallel discourse. These framings would center on security, economic interests, public health, religious stewardship, and other themes. Customized audience discourses may enable better public and opinion leader buy-in, partly transcending polarization, since such leaders have a unique ability to help translate and promote these various discourses. In addition, eventual construction of a multi-dimensional map could optimize effective messaging and supportive coalitions. Otherwise, stalemate on climate-related policy and environmental security will continue, with increasingly likely catastrophic implications.

To scientists, there is a clear consensus that human activities have a measurable effect on the climate, and that subsequently there are concerns about how a changing climate could impact global economies, trade relations, water (and other resource) access and logically therefore, also to security. Whether anthropomorphic climate change is a homeland or national security issue is a difficult distinction to make given the lack of consensus over the definition of modern homeland security. However, such distinctions may be moot given the recent and profound changes in the Arctic. On the one hand, Alaska shares a coastline with the Arctic Ocean; hence security concerns in the Arctic may be considered homeland security issues. On the other hand, given the Russian military interest/presence in the Arctic, security concerns in the Arctic may be considered matters of national security. The resulting challenge to the academic community is how to move the discussion about climate change and security forward. The authors recently held a roundtable at Penn State University that included several distinguished and accomplished policy makers, executives and scholars who collectively examined the impacts and threats posed by climate change.

In 2012, Washington state participated in ShakeOut, an annual, one-day event that encourages residents to practice “drop, cover and hold on” drills for earthquakes and evacuation for tsunamis. To better understand the role of school drills in improving individual and community resilience to disasters, this evaluation examined the effectiveness of the ShakeOut drills in improving or maintaining children’s accurate risk perceptions and adaptive response capacities for earthquakes and tsunamis. Using matched pretest and posttest questionnaires, the analysis examined both population level and individual differences in children’s knowledge and scenario-based knowledge application before and after ShakeOut. Children demonstrated high levels of correct knowledge of protective actions for earthquakes and tsunamis both before and after ShakeOut. However, the findings indicate that significant portions of children have varying levels of knowledge of the causes of injury and approximately a third of children chose an incorrect action or indicated uncertainty in scenarios not commonly practiced in school earthquake drills. Also, more than a quarter of children were not aware they practiced vertical evacuation procedures for a tsunami during ShakeOut. Children would benefit from practice for different scenarios, such as when they are outside or traveling between classes, and explicit lessons on protective actions.

Preparedness is central to improving health outcomes following disasters. Individuals with poor mental health may be at increased risk of adverse health consequences following disasters due to a lack of preparedness. We examined the relationship between preparedness and mental health. Using Louisiana and New Hampshire (2007) and Mississippi (2009) general preparedness and mental illness modules from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) we examine whether having an evacuation plan, a 3-day supply of medication, and supplies including food, water, a radio, and flashlight is influenced by psychological distress, assessed by the Kessler-6, a validated measure of probable serious mental illness. Across respondents, 47% are prepared with supplies, 29% have an evacuation plan, and 91.2% have a 3-day supply of medication. Serious psychological distress increases the odds of a lack of overall preparedness (OR=1.61, 95%CI: 1.41, 1.84), a 3-day supply of medication (OR=1.66, 95%CI: 1.39, 1.99), and an evacuation plan (OR=1.22, 95%CI: 1.05, 1.42). Individuals with poor mental health are not only more at risk for adverse consequences following disasters, they are also starting off less prepared. Mental health practitioners, primary care providers, and emergency managers should craft health promotion and risk communication messages to focus on this vulnerable population.

Many rural volunteer fire departments in the US are contending with decreasing numbers of volunteers. General social change and changes specific to firefighting have created retention and recruitment challenges for rural fire departments across the nation. The present study examines volunteer fire chiefs’ perceptions of these challenges in a state where there has been a long-term decline in the state’s rural population. The study draws on data collected from a statewide survey of volunteer fire department chiefs in North Dakota. This study found that chiefs did not see turnover as a major problem, but chiefs did report the need for many more volunteer firefighters and much more training to improve their departments. Consistent with national studies, chiefs identified age, time demands, government mandates, and personality conflicts as turnover triggers. In contrast with national studies, chiefs did not report loss of interest as a significant trigger. Finally, the study examines the sizable gap reported by chiefs between the number of active and inactive volunteers on department rosters and suggests how inactive volunteers might be utilized to recruit.

The movement of people and animals within zoos and aquariums poses a risk of zoonotic disease dissemination within human and animal populations. Flu at the Zoo is a table-top exercise designed to provide animal exhibitors and regulatory agency personnel an opportunity to evaluate their outbreak response plans. Developed for zoos and aquariums in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri, it created a realistic scenario of an avian influenza disease outbreak. A total of 82 participants attended the exercise held in June of 2012. Representatives from each of the 16 accredited zoos and aquariums in the region attended, along with representatives from the public health, agricultural animal health, wildlife, poultry industry, and emergency management sectors. Recommendations for the participants included the need for increased training opportunities for zoo and aquarium personnel on the Incident Command System and National Incident Management System. It was also recommended that communications be enhanced between zoos and aquariums and the local, state, and federal agency first responder personnel. Suggestions for improving the exercise included: providing the situation manual to players in advance of the exercise and creating discussion groups based on jurisdictional boundaries so that legal authorities and policy differences across state boundaries didn’t impede the discussion.

This article presents data from a study of SKYWARN ® storm spotters. The findings focus on their motivations for participation in storm spotting, their conceptualizations of storm spotting activity, their perceptions of risk, and how they balance personal and professional obligations with storm spotting activities.