drawing on perelman‘s (2005) critique of individualism, we

Miller, Lee M. and Karen Manges Douglas. 2010. Collective Thinking Keeps Us Safe: Lessons from Hurricanes

Katrina, Rita and Ike. American Sociological Association 2009 Annual Conference Proceedings. San Francisco, CA.

Collective Thinking Keeps Us Safe: Lessons from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike

Lee M. Miller*

Department of Sociology

Sam Houston State University

Huntsville, TX 77341-2446

Tel: (936) 294-1517 Fax: (936) 294-3573

[email protected]

Karen Manges Douglas

Department of Sociology

Sam Houston State University

Huntsville, TX 77341-2446

Tel: (936) 294-15 Fax: (936) 294-3573

[email protected]

Abstract: Modifications to emergency management plans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita reveal an

important lesson: in order to effectively respond to emergencies, resources must be thought of in broader,

more collective, terms rather than in the highly individualistic ones that characterize our day-to-day lives.

Drawing on Perelman‘s (2005) critique of individualism, we highlight the risks of applying an individualistic

approach to disaster mitigation and management. The effects to southeastern Texas of Hurricanes Katrina,

Rita and Ike provide evidence for our argument. Disastrous consequences of events that have been too

narrowly defined may be mitigated if safety is thought of as a public good and more collectively managed

through governance networks. The main conclusion is that collective thinking helps keep us safer from

environmental threats as well as natural and man-made disasters.

*Corresponding author.



Introduction

When the 2005 hurricane season began it was assumed that the disaster plan in place for Walker

County, Texas was a well-thought out, wholly adequate plan. Drawing on the extensive hurricane preparation

experience of the county‘s emergency management coordinator and the decades of law-enforcement and

emergency response work of the plan‘s authors, the document was considered one of the most comprehensive

plans in inland southeast Texas. Then on August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina struck, followed in rapid

succession by Hurricane Rita on September 24, 2005. Both events resulted in noticeable consequences for the

local area. What went wrong is not difficult to deduce. Indeed, the federal government summarizes what

happened in one sentence: ―Individual local and state plans as well as relatively new plans created by the

Federal Government…failed to adequately account for widespread or simultaneous catastrophes‖ (Townsend

2006: 1). In short, we were not prepared. The federal government also candidly admits that major shifts in the

present status quo – policy, structure and mindset – are needed if we are to have a real and lasting vision of

preparedness (Walker 2006).

How one region has adjusted is the focus of this paper. The considerations presented here are based

on comparisons of the hurricane plan in place prior to the remarkable 2005 hurricane season, its impact on the

local area and the subsequent revisions to the emergency response plan. Modifications to the plan reveal an

important lesson from Katrina and Rita: in order to effectively respond to emergencies, resources must be

thought of in broader and more collective terms, rather than in the highly individualistic ones that commonly

characterize our day-to-day lives. In our view, this lesson applies not only to emergency scenarios but to the

field of



environmental management more generally. To verify these conclusions, we then review the

experiences of the same areas of the Texas Gulf Coast during Hurricane Ike in September 2008.

The Dangers of Individualism

Private ownership, the free market and individualism are cherished values in U.S. society. The market

is seen as the most efficient mechanism for providing consumers with a vast array of products and services

from which to purchase. In times of relative political, economic and social stability, many would hold that the

system works. Those that have money will purchase what they need and want. Those that don‘t are viewed

fairly unsympathetically and held responsible for having created their own circumstances (see Why

Americans Hate Welfare). Intentionally meager, very little social welfare is available to assist the poor.

Despite the cries of social scientists and activists whose careers are spent pointing to the injustices derived

from trends like income disparity and occupational discrimination, the rhetoric of private ownership, market

transactions and individual responsibility prevail as the guiding principles of all economic transactions (some

might argue all transactions). Inequality and income stratification are rationalized and accepted as the

consequences associated with normal day-to-day operations and the individual decisions of U.S. citizens.

Disasters, however, expose inequality not just in terms of vast differences in the ability to recover

after a disaster, but in all phases leading up to an event and months, sometimes years, later (for example:

Bolin 2006; Enarson et al 2006; Peacock, et. al., 2000; Barnshaw and Trainor 2007). The poor are less able to

prepare for a storm; and face more obstacles in and during the evacuation. Spaces inhabited by the poor are

often among the hardest hit during a disaster but have the fewest resources (as well as the fewest resources

allocated to them) with which to



rebuild or relocate. Increased inequality and increased proportions of our population living at, or

near, poverty level translates into a greater safety risk. Radical individualism and neo-liberal economic

policies contribute to this myopic reliance on self-regulating market forces. Next, we explore what these

economic policies (and the politics that support them) mean for U.S. disaster management.

The lens of individualism when applied to disasters encourages people to think of events as

extraordinary and rare and generally without the benefit of either a historical perspective or a sense of how

structural factors shape vulnerability to disasters. This is perilous thinking. Relegating decisions about

preparedness, evacuation, response and recovery exclusively to individuals almost guarantees a repeat of

scenarios like those witnessed post-Katrina.1

Drawing on Perelman‘s (2005) critique of individualism, we agree that much as corporations push for

risk to be spread across a population and eased by government protection (for example, recent bank bailouts),

we see the government adopting a similar strategy of ‗socialization of risk‘ with regard to emergency

management. The direct consequences of this trend are less accountability of governmental agencies and

greater reliance on private contractors to deliver services historically provided by government and/or

non-profit entities. Disaster-related risk for the rich, and for corporations, is ‗socialized‘ largely through

insurance policies and government support for private enterprise. For individuals with limited resources,

‗individualism‘ is still the rule. Moreover, as the costs of risks go up, increased abdication of governmental

responsibility is recorded (Perelman 2005: 141). What is needed is a reversal of this trend by reformulating of

our concept of risk and safety as a common, public good. Although somewhat abstract, we need a safety

‗commons‘ so that safety is a right that all residents help



build, maintain and, when needed, benefit from. The challenge is to think more collectively and

more safely in an individualistic, market-driven society.

When a disaster strikes there are temporary suspensions of individualistic and free market principles.

For example, profiteering in times of need offends our notion of fairness. Indeed, the indiscriminate nature of

most disasters, rendering both rich and poor vulnerable, has led most states to pass laws that guard against

predatory behavior like price gouging. Generally defined, gouging involves raising prices excessively to

exploit customer‘s urgent needs during a state of emergency. According to Burr (2006), at least 28 states have

some form of price gouging law on their books. The state of Texas particularly frowns on price gougers,

authorizing fines of up to $20,000 per violation and up to $250,000 if a senior citizen is involved (Burr 2006).

Indeed, ample empirical evidence documents that Americans are not always motivated by narrow self-interest

and indeed can be very generous with their time and money when confronted with large-scale disaster

situations. The outpouring of help following 9-11, the tsunami that struck Indonesia, and Hurricanes Katrina,

Rita and Ike all convincingly illustrate this point.

However, even when disaster is imminent, we are reluctant to suspend any of our property rights or

personal freedoms. It is our argument that collective oriented policies adopted during emergency situations

however should become part of the American day-to-day lexicon of resource management (including

non-disaster times) rather than remain exceptional. We are influenced by the seminal work of Gideon Sjoberg

(2006) who draws upon the works of Ulrich Beck and Eleanor Ostrom to make the case for the need to

assume a much broader perspective for resource management. Beck argues that modern-day risks have

assumed fundamentally different characteristics than the societal risks of the past. Unconstrained by the

boundaries of both time and space, manufactured risks are more pervasive while at the same time the abilities



of traditional entities to limit, control or manage these dangers are less so. Beck rightly points out

that a broader frame of reference is necessary if these new types of risks are to be addressed. Indeed, this

became abundantly clear in the aftermaths of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike. Further, for Beck, the future

takes center stage with the urgent need to realign the present with an anticipated future that specifically takes

these broader risks into consideration.

Sjoberg also references the works of Eleanor Ostrom and her colleagues. One of the central features

of Ostrom‘s theorizing explicitly concerns the ―commons‖ or common property. She targets Garrett Hardin‘s

analysis of the commons in advancing her own innovative theoretical perspective. Written in l968, Hardin‘s

―Tragedy of the Commons‖ became highly influential, lending support to the advocates of a free-market

model. In his essay, Hardin championed the notion of common property as subject to the ―free rider‖

problem wherein members of a community will exploit (e.g., overgraze) rather than conserve their common

property.

Following Ostrom, effective resource management does not seem attainable without some underlying

conception of a commons—the idea that people share a resource in common. For example, part of the

difficulties of grappling with the issues of global warming is the failure to conceive of the larger natural

environment as a common pool resource. The recognition that safety is a common pool resource and not

simply an intangible individual good prompts us to think about how to prepare for, and respond to, disaster in

more collective ways. Indeed, in analyzing the emergency contingency plans in place prior to Hurricanes

Katrina, Rita and Ike, we see that they failed in large part because they were overly narrow in scope.



What Went Wrong in South-East Texas: Lessons in Resource Management

The numbers of people evacuating due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were unprecedented.

According to a report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of these

catastrophic events upwards of 1.2 million people evacuated New Orleans (90% of the population) in the days

and hours prior to Katrina‘s landfall. However, in the 8county coastal region of south-east Texas, a far

different story emerged. As the alarm bells were being sounded for the approaching Hurricane Rita, coming

as it did three weeks on the heels of the massive death and destruction left in Katrina‘s wake, some 2.8

million coastal residents took to the highways attempting to evacuate the region. What resulted were traffic

gridlock, supply shortages, and countless hours spent by motorists trapped on freeways in cars going nowhere

either because they had run out of gas, or because the traffic was limping along at a snail‘s pace. During the

height of the evacuation, depending upon one‘s starting location in the Houston area, average travel time to

Dallas along IH-45 (normally a 3-4 hour trip) was 24 to 36 hours; to Austin along Highway 290 (normally a

2.5 to 3 hour journey), 12-18 hours; and IH 10 to San Antonio (normally a 3 hour trip) averaged 10-16 hours

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita).

Part of the reason for this bottleneck is that neither the state, region nor local plans prior to Hurricane

Rita thought much about where evacuees were to go beyond north of Interstate 10 (which bisects Houston in

the center running east to west). The state plan designated no contraflow lanes (opening both sides of a

freeway to one-way traffic during an evacuation) and by the time a contraflow plan had been worked out,

gridlock had already set in.

Further, local officials, including the mayor of Houston, jumped the evacuation gun, reminding

residents of the events of New Orleans and urging them to evacuate. Birkland (>>>>)



terms this a ‗primed response‖ due to the ‗focusing event‘ of Katrina causing increased fear and

more people to flee. ―Now is not a time for warnings; it is a time for evacuation,‖ urged the mayor of Houston

(Harden and Morena 2005). Consequently, Houston residents began leaving the city before coastal

evacuations had been completed, adding significantly to the traffic on the roads. Thus, people evacuated

early, and in an uncoordinated fashion. In short, evacuation routes were totally inadequate to withstand the

unforeseen and unprecedented size of the exodus.

As traffic slowed to a standstill, vehicles began to run out of fuel. ―This is an evacuation route. It is

not evacuating,‖ explained Lilly Teng. ―We are ready to go, but we can‘t go. None of the roads will go. We

are taking responsibility to go and stay with family and we can‘t get there‖ (Harden and Moreno 2005). Many

motorists were stranded because the exits from the highways were blocked. Those able to search for fuel

found gas stations closed as employees joined those fleeing Hurricane Rita, or if open, out of gas. The few

stations with gasoline had long, tense lines of people waiting to fill up.

Having anticipated and prepared for only a few hours‘ drive, once ensnarled in the traffic people

found themselves ‗parked‘ on the freeways with no restroom facilities; with little or no food and water; with

no access to extra medications or diapers; and, in temperatures approaching the century mark. Insufficient

fuel supplies and highway congestion resulted in many hundreds of vehicles being abandoned alongside the

roads with evacuees taking to foot in search of fuel, food, water, supplies and relief from the near 100 degree

heat. Problems associated with the evacuation were not just minor inconveniences; in some cases they were

deadly. Estimates of deaths associated with the evacuation itself range from 60 (Eskovitz 2006) to 130

(Tucker 2006).

Eventually fuel tankers were ordered by the governor to assist the many stranded motorists but, here

too, problems were encountered. The Texas National Guard was mobilized to



deliver hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel to stranded motorists. However, the dispatched

fuel tankers had nozzles that were fitted for jet tanks, not gas tanks that they were refueling (Eskovitz 2006).

With some innovation and spare parts, a refueling mechanic was able to fashion improvised nozzles to allow

fuel to flow to those in need (Hammad 2005).

Part of the traffic gridlock can be attributed to the city of Houston‘s decision not to open public

shelters in the city until just hours before Rita‘s landfall, and then space was limited to those designated as

most vulnerable. With the images of masses of people crowded into the heavily damaged Superdome still

fresh, city officials had no desire to replicate this scenario in Houston. ―We learned from the Katrina

experience that in no way should we create the illusion of a safe place when we were vulnerable if a Category

5 storm hit us,‖ explained Mayor Bill White (Berger 2006). Thus, with city officials urging residents to

evacuate but providing no local shelters, evacuees had little choice but to hit the highway (or airways) for

designated shelters in San Antonio, Austin, College Station, Huntsville, Lufkin and Dallas. Those opting to

evacuate by air were also greeted with long delays at both of the Houston‘s major airports. Over 150

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security screeners failed to report to work, presumably

evacuating with their own families. Replacements were eventually brought in but security lines still took

hours to clear (Blumenthal 2005).

Hurricane Rita brought to light still other transportation-related problems. Images of the deaths of

New Orleans‘ elderly population abandoned in nursing homes served to motivate local officials to make plans

for evacuating the Houston-area special-needs populations including the vulnerable elderly. The National

Disaster Medical System (NDMS) provides federal assistance for patient evacuations. However, NDMS only

has agreements with hospitals for evacuations, which, as we saw, had deadly consequences for many of New

Orleans‘ nursing home residents.



In advance of Hurricane Rita, Texas state officials set up a registration system for those

residents in assisted-living facilities needing to be evacuated. As in New Orleans, though, nursing home

officials remained solely responsible for arranging evacuations for their patients. Many facilities had

contracts with transportation companies for moving patients. However, transportation companies had

insufficient means for transporting all of the patients who needed to be evacuated as they had multiple

contracts with different facilities never having anticipated that all facilities would need simultaneous

evacuations.

Thus, despite a plan, evacuees with special needs were still not well provided for during the

evacuation. The most tragic example of this is the bus fire due to improperly stowed oxygen canisters that

killed 24 evacuees on Interstate 45 as they were being evacuated. Numerous other people were evacuated

with few or no medical supplies and without trained caregivers. Upon arrival to designated shelters, the

shelters themselves were not prepared to provide for the special needs populations and were forced to make

do as best they could. Further, emergency room and hospital facilities along the evacuation routes were

overwhelmed.

Pets also posed a problem in the evacuation. Not wanting to stall evacuations due to pet-related

matters as was the case in Hurricane Katrina, Texas authorities encouraged people to leave with pets in tow.

However, for health and safety reasons pets are not permitted in shelters. Places set up to receive people were

suddenly faced with the unanticipated need to shelter animals as well. Additional spaces and resources had to

be found to shelter pets and in some cases, livestock. It is estimated that over 200,000 animals were sheltered

during Hurricane Rita (Task Force 2006: 11) thanks to mostly improvised solutions.

Shelters encountered other unanticipated problems. Although there is a well-established literature

on what disaster scholars call ―convergence,‖ (Kendra and Wachtendorf, other



Citations) this was not foreseen in emergency plans before Katrina. Local shelters were literally

overflowing with donations from area residents and people lined up to offer time and help. Many donations

went unutilized and volunteers turned away because of the inability of shelters to dedicate resources to

managing, sorting and distributing the unforeseen influx of additional resources. Money, supplies and

people‘s willingness to work were wasted. This scene played out at the national level as well. A report on the

lessons learned from Katrina and Rita acknowledged that volunteers and donations were not well integrated

into the hurricane response and recovery plans. This report further notes the inability of federal agencies to

receive, coordinate, and distribute foreign assistance (Townsend 2006).

This section has recorded weaknesses in the 2005 emergency plans and their implementation.

Emergency management experts also clearly recognized that changes needed to be made after the 2005

hurricane season. We examine some of these modifications and how they played out during Hurricane Ike in

a later section.

An Individualistic Approach to Hazard: Inverted Quarantine

The previous section illustrates some of the problems that individualistic hazard mitigation and

emergency preparedness create. Even when people do prepare and take action to protect themselves and their

properties in what might seem to be ‗rational‘ behavior concordant to official recommendations, they often

find that it is not sufficient or is even counterproductive. Again we hear from resident Lilly Teng. ―We are

taking responsibility to go and stay with family and we can‘t get there‖ (Harden and Moreno 2005).

Successful preparation, evacuation and recovery is not always simply a matter of individual decisions or

behavior. This is because the



risks are not only individual. In a disaster, huge numbers of people are affected. Infrastructure

may be damaged. Supplies may run out. There are factors and situations that an individual or even a

family unit cannot control. These not only cause frustration as the woman trying to evacuate before

Hurricane Rita voiced. They can contribute to injury or even loss of life. Thinking in purely individual

terms about preparedness initiatives, evacuation procedures and recovery will doom us to ever increasing

costs of disasters.

Szasz (2007) warns against thinking individually about hazards. According to Szasz (2007) ‗inverted

quarantine‘ is the opposite of ‗quarantine.‘ Quarantine suggests separating unwanted, somehow tainted (ill,

toxic, deviant), elements from the rest of the healthy population/environment to minimize the risk of

contagion. The unhealthy portion is sequestered away from the healthy environment. In inverted quarantine it

is the environment that is perceived as unhealthy and individuals voluntarily act to reduce the harm it can do

to them. They do this by purchasing special products and behaving in certain ways: drinking only bottled

water to avoid impurities in tap water, for example. This is problematic in several ways. Szasz points to

research showing that even exclusive reliance on bottled water for drinking and cooking may not ensure

against toxins (2007:187). Further, the plastic bottles remaining after a bottle of water is consumed pollute the

environment. In this bottled water example we see that individual solutions do not guarantee protection and

can degrade the environment further with unintended consequences. When compared to our evacuation

example, we can see that a family may decide to leave at an appropriate time since they have money,

transportation, job flexibility and a place to host them during a storm. This decision is possible because of the

resources they command and their economic situation. However, its success is not guaranteed. In fact if many

others do behave in similar ways, they may not be able to evacuate at all.



There is another consequence of the exclusive reliance on individual solutions. In his

bottled water example, Szasz notes that if people feel safe from water pollution by purchasing and drinking

bottled water, they may decide that advocating for cleaner tap water for everyone is not worth the time and

hassle. So we see that this emphasis on consumer ‗solutions‘ to environmental problems not only does not

offer guarantees that anyone is really cleaner and safer, but also reduces motivation to work for collective

solutions and change. Indeed, if we are convinced that we are all safe if we make the right individual

decisions, there is less impetus to work for policies that will help protect everyone.

Therefore, Szasz argues, inverted quarantine strategies produce two kinds of damage (2007). First,

they do not sufficiently protect us from hazard. Second, if we subscribe to them we are duped into thinking

that by purchasing products to protect ourselves, no further, more collective, action is needed . The result is a

diminished possibility for collective action toward change (Szasz 2007: 194-202).

Using Szasz‘s framework we can see that hurricane survival kits and family evacuation plans are

examples of the logic of inverted quarantine applied to disaster preparedness. Does it help for people to stock

up on batteries, food and water? Yes. Is it wise to have a plan for your family if you are faced with a disaster?

Most definitely. But, the emphasis on individual responsibility before, during and after a disaster should not

divert our efforts at insisting that local, state and national agencies be prepared to help all residents quickly

and effectively. As one person noted after Hurricane Rita, ―We did everything we were supposed to do.

Secure our house, left early, checked routes, checked on our neighbors. But when we got out there, we were

totally on our own,‖ explained Mr. Adcock, after spending fifteen hours on the highway north of Houston

(Blumenthal 2005). No one family‘s disaster plan will solve problems like botched



regional evacuation plans, failure to implement contraflow plans, lack of timely public

transportation, missing emergency personnel or limited infrastructure. These are just some of the areas that

require collective, structural attention and have little or nothing to do with individual preparedness initiatives.

We caution, therefore, that media attention to individual survival kits or household emergency plans might

potentially lull us into the reassuring belief that, like bottled water, we can somehow adequately protect

ourselves by buying the right things or by simply asking individuals to plan for themselves.

Toward A More Collective Approach: Governance Networks

By all accounts, Walker County, Texas did a remarkable job of hosting evacuees from Katrina and,

three weeks later, managing unfathomable numbers of people fleeing Rita. Evacuation was less of an issue

before Hurricane Ike perhaps due to the time elapsed since Hurricane Katrina and Rita and because it was

categorized as a much weaker storm. What resulted however was widespread destruction leading to a

reevaluation of the hurricane classification system. However, Katrina and Rita revealed the inadequacies of

the plan. More specifically, the modifications and recommendations to the plan can be grouped into four

types of activities: gathering data by monitoring and registering residents, simulation/training and awareness,

increased coordination among regions, private/public sector partnering. Of note is that the first two groups of

activities, when not connected to emergency planning, could (and likely would) be contested as infringing on

individual rights in our current system. The second two groups of activities point toward the necessity for

increased capacity for inter-organizational collaboration and a loosely coupled network form of management.



Data gathering: registering and monitoring of needs

Particularly in response to the wide array of special needs the evacuees presented, updated emergency

plans call for increased data gathering on residents. Information must be accurate and up-to-date if people are

to get the assistance they need in a crisis situation. There is now a special phone number dedicated to

receiving information about people who will need help during an evacuation. Individuals are asked to contact

local officials to register themselves as someone with special needs. These efforts at collecting information

and registering people are clearly anathema to the preservation of individual privacy. Further, modifications

to state law now require nursing homes to have evacuation plans hinting at increased regulation of private

industry.

As described earlier, transportation failures of a variety of sorts were especially problematic during

Katrina and Rita. One solution is to sort evacuees into groups by the nature of their transportation. Special

needs evacuees arriving at shelters in private vehicles and in the care of family or primary caregiver reduce

the need for special care provisions on the part of shelter. However, those arriving via public transportation

often need both supplies and special assistance.

Length-of-stay factors compound these difficulties. Traditionally, shelters were organized to run for

48 to 72 hours during an emergency. Another lesson learned from Katrina is that it is possible for the level of

devastation to be so complete that people may not be able to return to their homes even after a considerable

period of time, if ever. Further, if people evacuated by bus or other forms of public transportation, they then

face additional transportation issues when



attempting to leave shelters be it to return home or to go elsewhere. And these difficulties are

exacerbated for people with special needs.

Simulations, training and awareness programs

Greater emphasis is slowly being placed on disaster training programs, often employing simulations.

Although these demand voluntary suspension of typical activities in order to participate, these drills are seen

to help things go smoothly in an event. Each disaster presents a unique constellation of issues, but simulations

are effective ways to practice spontaneity (Kendra citation). These drills can be viewed much like other civic

responsibilities like jury duty as nuisances, unwanted interruptions to our busy schedules. In this view, again

we see the cultural tendency to think exclusively in individualistic terms. My schedule, my time, is my

property and should not be infringed upon. The effectiveness of emergency training programs and simulations

involving a broad array of institutional actors has been well documented and can also be seen as a small step

toward a more collective approach toward making our communities safer.

Increased collaboration between public and private sector organizations.

In response to the severe shortages of some products (e.g., gasoline and ice) during the Rita

evacuation, emergency management personnel have devised a plan to ensure that necessities are available in

areas of high demand during an emergency. The proposed solution involves a partnership between

government and private business. For example, in terms of fuel, the governor has mandated that the Texas

Department of Transportation work with the Texas Oil and Gas Association, Texas Petroleum Marketers and

the Convenience Store Association to guarantee adequate fuel supplies (Executive Order 2006). In fact, the

coordination of fuel



provision has been centralized in the position of state fuel coordinator and an industry

representative was appointed to the position (Hurricane Fuel… 2006). Again we see the centralization of

authority, but here we also see a blurring of the boundaries between public and private sectors.

Increased coordination among regions.

Although the law made it possible to order mandatory evacuations in June 2005, Rita was the first

major event in which it was exercised. Confusion resulted and it became clear that evacuation orders would

need more coordination and control to avoid the traffic problems witnessed prior to that storm. To address the

need for further coordination of wider areas and multiple jurisdictions, regional coordinating committees were

created and/or strengthened. At the regional level, then, decisions can be made and coordinated across

jurisdictions to manage traffic, shelter people or appropriate/allocate resources. This increased coordination

could be seen as taking some of the freedom from local-level decision makers.

As the lessons from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike have taught, effective disaster planning must

go beyond an individual approach. Planning and mitigation must take individual decisions and behaviors

into account, but must take the necessary steps to ensure that infrastructure, resources and personnel are

capable of supporting people in disasters. To do this, it is clear that increased coordination is needed within

and among organizations and across territories. As Quarantelli (2006) notes, two elements that distinguish a

disaster from a more common emergency are that ―organizations have to quickly relate to far more and

unfamiliar converging entities‖ and ―there is much closer than usual public and private sector interface.‖



These changes are even more accentuated in the case of a catastrophe. Clearly, Quarantelli‘s is a

warning that organizations must become increasingly capable of flexibility and collaboration.

Recently, several scholars have pointed to governance networks as an approach that could facilitate

disaster coordination (citations). Perrow (2007) also points to loosely coupled networks as successful and

robust organizational types. As we begin to think of safety in ways that extend beyond individuals,

governance networks may well offer the needed more flexible and participatory approach to disaster

management.

Governance networks reinforce the role of social capital and disasters (for example see CITATIONS).

Each of these authors recognizes that the ability of people, groups and organizations to work together in

unexpected ways becomes crucial in disaster events. Social capital refers to the social ties through which

information and resources may be accessed and is typically thought of as either belonging to an individual

(knows everyone, well-connected) or to a community as a whole (close-knit, strong sense of community).

Both are examples of informal governance networks.

Post-Katrina and Rita plans adopt a more collective approach implemented in Ike. For example, under

extreme conditions, borders (geographic, territorial, government jurisdictions) are often not present in the

same way that they are normally. Resources must be shared, transportation coordinated, decisions made

during an emergency that may not follow typical decision-making paths. What we have seen, in fact, is a

trend toward the creation of governance networks. We see in fact an expanding of the geographic territory

considered in policy making in emergency planning that might be seen as analogous to what advocates for the

environment have argued for some time. The Houston-Galveston Area Council existed prior to the 2005

hurricane season and the Unified Area Coordination Committee (13 counties and the cities of Houston and



Galveston) has been created since. Both are attempts to better coordinate resources in more

collective ways. Each of these councils represents a collection of counties and there is some overlap

between the two, but they are not identical.

Advantages to these organizations are the sharing of information and resources on a broader scale so

that supply and demand may be more efficiently matched within a relatively delimited geographic area

without having to request assistance and materials from a distant centralized state agency. One downside of

the creation of these regional entities is that there is some confusion about jurisdiction and how decisions

regarding allocations should be made. Furthermore, these regional councils were created by drawing

somewhat arbitrary boundaries. For example, Walker County is the northernmost county in one of the

councils. This means that for some resources it would be more natural and immediate to contact the county

directly to the north, east or west rather than counties within the regional organization. With the development

of the regional councils, it is not clear if solutions that might extend beyond the reaches of the defined areas

will still be feasible.

In September 2008, evacuation for Hurricane Ike went more smoothly for several reasons primary

among them, the considerable upgrade in emergency management planning since Hurricanes Katrina and

Rita. Mandatory evacuation orders were phased so that residents on the coast could leave before more inland

residents. Vehicles were pre-staged near evacuating coastal counties to evacuate special needs populations.

The definition of special needs population had been broadened since 2005 to include people whose only need

was a ride out of harm‘s way. Fuel supplies were managed so that even though there was a shortage in some

places, we did not see people stranded along evacuation routes as witnessed before Hurricane Rita. Provisions

had also been made since the 2005 hurricane season to encourage evacuating people to take their



pets. Unlike the Hurricane Rita evacuation, however, pet shelters were available to provide for

the care and feeding of animals while owners are evacuated. Those evacuating with animals were directed to

areas with emergency animal shelters located in the vicinity of people shelters. Finally, there is an increased

emphasis on awareness and training. Signage along major evacuation routes has increased significantly from

pre-Rita days as has the availability of on-line information regarding hurricane preparedness procedures.

Additionally, several statewide simulation exercises have been conducted. While training does not yet reach

the majority of residents, the trend seems to be one of more community involvement and participation rather

than less. The end result was that as Hurricane Ike threatened the Texas Gulf Coast, over one million people

evacuated, or were evacuated, without the dire consequences the Hurricane Rita evacuation caused.

However, before declaring a complete success, it must also be kept in mind that Hurricane Ike was

forecasted as and made landfall as a Category 2 storm (unlike the Category 45 Katrina and Rita). Ike was

neither classified as a ―major‖ storm, nor was it regarded as so by many of the area residents. Consequently,

many people along the coast (perhaps recalling the gridlock associated with Hurricane Rita) chose not to heed

the mandatory evacuation orders. Further inland residents were also more complacent regarding the Category

2 Ike and opted not to hit the roadways either. In fact, the devastation wrought by Ike was unpredicted given

its Category 2 rating. Forty-two deaths were directly attributable to Hurricane Ike with hundreds still missing

and/or unaccounted. Indeed, the magnitude of destruction associated with Hurricane Ike took many residents

by surprise. U.S. weather officials are contemplating revising their hurricane forecasting system because of

this wide-spread destruction which belied the relatively benign rating.



Conclusion: Safety Is a Public Good

All the modifications to both the county/city emergency plan and the state‘s take a more collective

approach, involving a broader, more coordinated perspective on emergency response. At least temporarily in

an emergency, we are able to ensure accessibility of resources (goods and services) more indiscriminately

than we do under normal circumstances.

Nevertheless, recent hurricanes pointed to weaknesses of all the emergency plans, federal, state

and local, and revealed a general inadequacy in scope. As the Assistant to the President for Homeland

Security and Counterterrorism, Frances Frago Townsend, explains

Emergency plans at all levels of government, from small town plans to the

600-page National Response Plan—the Federal government‘s plan to

coordinate all its departments and agencies and integrate them with State,

local, and private sector partners— were put to the ultimate test, and came up

short. Millions of Americans were reminded of the need to protect themselves

and their families (Townsend 2006: 1).

Indeed, this statement highlights not only the failure of the plans more generally but the consequences of

these failures as well – namely, the reinforcing among the citizenry that safety is their own responsibility,

not that of the government.

For reasons beyond the scope of this paper, government officials appear reluctant to heed the lessons

that emerge from the large-scale disasters despite a relative consistent message. Per David Walker,

Comptroller for the Government Accountability Office (GAO), ―many of the lessons emerging from

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are similar to those we identified more than a decade ago, in the aftermath of

Hurricane Andrew in 1992…‖ (Walker 2006: 2). Walker points out that successful disaster mitigation

involves more than simply learning from past mistakes, but the implementation of recommendations that

address the planning deficiencies as well.



Perhaps unconscious recognition that some of these recommendations challenge the prevailing

neoliberal winds is part of the explanation for the difficulty in implementation despite the dire

consequences.

In fact, recent changes in the emergency response agencies nationwide reflect a tendency toward

increased organizational centralization. By advocating a more collective approach we do not propose an

increase in centralization of authority or resources, we advocate a more collective management approach like

governance networks. There are real risks associated with increased centralization. For example, centralized

authority, decision-making capacity and resources can lead to more ―normal accidents‖ (Perrow 1999) and

increased vulnerability (Perrow 2006: 531).

Here we use ‗collective‘ to describe a conceptualization of risks, hazards and resources as public

goods. In our view, collective responses should be managed in a decentralized, coordinated manner. What we

envision is a modular network approach similar to the examples of reliable decentralized systems presented

by Perrow (2006: 530-533). Preparedness, mitigation, response, recovery activities should be managed on the

local and regional levels to ensure that local responses remain unfettered by artificial bureaucratic obstacles

like lengthy chains of command, authorization processes or red tape. However, the collective approach

emphasizes the need for coordination among/between local level emergency response activities. A less

popular aspect of thinking more collectively about disaster preparedness, recovery and response is that it goes

hand in hand with increased regulation of housing standards, land use, chemical storage, natural resources,

public utilities, etc. No doubt that stricter regulations are linked to costs, but as Perrow argues with regard to

reducing chemical targets, increased safety could justify higher costs (Perrow 2006: 525).



Perhaps the relative lack of implementation of lessons learned from previous disasters

should not surprise us. Fifteen years ago, a call for substantive change was not heeded after the tremendous

destruction wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Whether the significant loss of life and property that

resulted from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was enough to challenge the status quo remains to be seen. As this

paper documents, significant changes to existing disaster plans have been made and the process of reform is

still actively underway. The elements to disaster mitigation including a broader, more collective orientation

appear to be working its way more prominently into the disaster mitigation vernacular. The modifications to

both the county/city emergency plan and the state‘s take a more collective approach and involve a broader,

more coordinated perspective on emergency response. However, whether these are substantive changes to the

status quo, only the next major disaster will tell.

On a hopeful note, the revisions to emergency plans that helped facilitate emergency preparations and

evacuation in the face of Hurricane Ike, indicate that more collective management approaches and

partnerships are not only possible but are gradually being recognized as necessary to the wholesale

marshalling of resources required during times of disaster. In the future what is needed is a new

conceptualization of safety as a collective resource ---a new kind of abstract ‗commons.‘ Safety is a public

good.



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Endnotes 1

Thanks to Steve Kroll-Smith for this observation.



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drawing on perelman‘s (2005) critique of individualism, we

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