Intro To Emergency Management Movie Evaluation
Abstract
The
current paper examines the emergency management principles, protocols, and
strategies featured implicitly or explicitly in the film “The Impossible.” In
this family, a family is divided by a massive tsunami while on vacation in
Thailand. The family struggles to reunite and each member must make moral
decisions based on their own estimations of safety, risk, and whether their
family members were safe and together. There are numerous components to
emergency management and planning and preparing for disaster is difficult. Often,
such planning comes down to balancing highly targeted strategies to implement
in specific situations and generating flexible and adaptable strategies that
are widely applicable. Resource provisions, ethical decision-making, community
coordination, goodwill, and contingency planning are all highly applicable to
preparations made for a tsunami. The current work demonstrates that emergency
management involving the preparation and planning for a potential tsunami requires
not only needs assessments and constant inventory of resources, but also
contingency planning (with the possibility of chaos ensuing) and findings ways
to minimize risk in a situation that is likely to disrupt infrastructure and the
expected personnel available for relief.
Intro To Emergency Management Movie Review
Introduction
Emergency management operates within highly unpredictable and uncertain conditions. Effective emergency management minimizes the likelihood of certain structural failures, the death toll, and the physical and emotional destruction and damage caused by a disaster, manmade or nature. Effective emergency management requires many different steps, most of which are taken long before an emergency happens. The current paper explores relevant emergency management principles, considerations, and procedures based on an examination of the emergency management practices employed in the film “The Impossible.” This film features a family on vacation in Thailand. Their vacation is cut short by a massive (and likely unrealistic) tsunami that subsumes the beach area with a massive wave, washing away almost everything in its wake. The family is divided into two groups. Uncertain of the fate of the others, each half of the family must decide whether to continue searching for the other or fight for self-preservation above all else. Ultimately, the entire family survives with the help of random individuals across the community and a highly motivated but at times unhelpful set of supporting disaster relief groups. By framing various emergency management principles and processes around the events of the film, an understanding and contextualization of these practices can be developed.
Household Preparedness
Emergency management across all context and domains involves many of the same processes and principles, such as resource allocation, needs assessment, and contingency planning. However, some are much more applicable to others. In the events in the film, the family is on vacation in Thailand, meaning that they are not at home when the natural disaster strikes. Moreover, the immediate beach area and resort are wiped away, forcing the family into emergency shelters. Many disasters impact families when they are at home. In such cases, household preparedness becomes crucial. Families that plan for disaster preparedness will likely have the supplies required to survive for weeks without external support. Household preparedness is, therefore, extremely useful. But for the family in the film, household preparedness is largely limited to what the family has on them at any point in time and the knowledge that they have acquired concerning surviving during and after a disaster. In the film, the oldest son has very strong swimming abilities, allowing him to avoid drowning or major injury after being swept up in the massive wave likely moving at more than 20mph. Realism aside, it is undeniable that the boy’s swimming skills served as a source of preparedness in case of a tsunami or any other disaster that requires strong swimming. More realistically, though, knowledge of the nearby shelters, knowledge of high ground, and various survival skills and knowledge would likely be the primary source of household preparedness for the family. Families are in many ways dependent on communities, organizations, and governments for relief from disaster, but the acquisition of knowledge and skills that are useful in various disaster and emergency contexts can increase preparedness massively.
Community and Organizational Preparedness
Community preparedness refers to the combination of resources and processes for the utilization of resources within a specific community. This encompasses all organizations operating within the community and the individuals within the community. For example, if there is a community that is in a low-lying area, then having a community center that one-hundred meters above all surrounding areas within the community, then such a community is more prepared then without such a community center. The preparedness of a community primarily involves how well the community can respond to a specific disaster. It is a capabilities assessment, effectively. Additional resources added to a community may not increase its preparedness if those resources do not contribute directly to the capacities of the community to resist the negative effects of a particular disaster or prevent the disaster from impacting the community. Similarly, a community can increase its preparedness by installing structures that make more effective and efficient use of resources. Therefore, it is possible for a community to increase its preparedness for a natural disaster simply by adding leadership, installing protocol, and planning for the most efficient use of resources. In the film, the community was not well-prepared for the disaster to strike, in part because the tsunami was so massive that it wiped out much of the infrastructure close to beach and in part because of the many people who died in the tsunami and the tourists in the area. If the tsunami would have been smaller, then the community would have likely been much more prepared, as it clearly had structures in place to provide relief to members of the community and tourists. From this perspective, the community was prepared for a tsunami, just not a tsunami of that scale.
Organizations have similar requirements for preparedness. However, organizations tend to fulfill specific functions within a community. A food bank, for example, can serve the function of providing food-based resources and personnel to disaster relief efforts. The preparedness of a local food bank may depend entirely on its food resources, personnel, and contingency planning for disaster. Various organizations, both public and private, within a community tend to comprise the preparedness of a community for disaster. But there are generally much broader coordination efforts. For example, state and federal agencies may strategically plan for disasters by coordinating with various local organizations. If a food bank is part of a network of local organizations that work together when disasters strike based on a state or federal plan for disaster relief and intervention, then the community will likely be much more prepared. In the film, the exposure to various different functional organizations that make up the disaster response and relief network in the area was limited. The shelters were the primary organizations involved and it was not perfectly clear where they were receiving their resources from or whether they had them all on-hand. Coordination was the government of Thailand seemed limited, suggesting that the community was much more dependent on the efforts and coordination of local organizations than a federal coordination plan.
Resource Seclusion and Preservation
Many natural disasters lead to the seclusion of communities from outside help for an extended period of time. In the film, the community was unable to receive many resources from outside sources. As a result, the community had to make effective use of its resources and preserve them as long as possible. The flooding made travel impossible for most vehicles in the area. As a result, there was limited resources that could be delivered to the community. Even so, while the resources at the shelters appeared to be limited, they were not immediately scarce. As a result, there was not a clear pressing need for the shelters to receive outside resources. This may have been portrayed in this way in order to focus on the moral choices made by the two halves of the family. After all, if one shelter had virtually no resources available, it would be an easy decision to go in search of the other family members, as staying at the shelter would be similarly as risky. Resource seclusion could have been a major theme of the film and provided a much more tense situation if the family had not been divided.
Resource seclusion can severely impact how resources are utilized in emergency relief shelters. After all, many of these shelters are full of people. The resources are scarce in the sense that they are not unlimited. They will run out if not replenished. Resource seclusion means that replenishment may not happen for a long time. When resources are depleted completely, then major risks are incurred. The lack of clean drinking water is often the most pressing resource-based need. Treating the injured and sick constitute another. Behavioral issues increase as resources are depleted as well. The disaster in the film was much larger than anyone anticipated. It was also largely unexpected. This meant that resources could not be accumulated, and that resource seclusion would have much worse impacts on the community. Fortunately, there were no other major disasters or exacerbating circumstances that extended the community’s resource seclusion. If there would have been heavy rains leading to extended flooding for more than a week after the tsunami, then resource management could have become a major problem. Finding a way to overcome resource seclusion may have become a priority. Emergency management may involve the formation of contingency plans just for such extreme circumstances. Assessing the potential level of damage and on-going exacerbating factors can help in the development of an understanding of protocols that need to be installed to identify threat levels and potential resource shortages and respond appropriately.
Needs Assessment
Needs assessment is one domain in emergency management that spans across virtually all components, from planning and preparation to post-disaster operations. Assessing needs tends to begin with determining community sizes and the resources available and demand available in case of emergency. In the film, it was clear that the disaster relief organizations were prepared to host more than locals. There was clear planning for visitors, suggesting a needs assessment was conducted to estimate the number of visitors to that location at any given time. If there had been even more visitors, then the resource capacities would likely have been strained. The film, nevertheless, skipped over any needs assessment that was going on during and after the disaster. While records were being created for everyone in shelters and receiving assistance, the mechanisms for need assessment were not explicated. Perry (2007) conducted a case study of a tsunami hitting Indonesia and Sri Lanka to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the needs assessment processes before, during, and after the tsunami hit. The researcher found that the needs assessments were conducted in every stage of the natural disaster. Yet, the researcher found numerous problems with the needs assessment. One of the pressing problems concerned the coordination between organizations. The researcher states:
In establishing the urgent provisions required following a disaster, thorough “needs assessment” is by its very nature normally fraught with logistical and coordination difficulties, yet the assessment of urgent needs remains absolutely essential for efficient and effective relief efforts. The majority of the needs assessments were made separately by the international aid agencies for their own particular requirements. However, in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster, many of the humanitarian aid agencies sent in their own assessment teams without including local people. An important finding has been the lack of a system of shared needs assessment amongst agencies and with the domestic governments…It was evident that in their haste to provide for the disaster victims, some organizations tended to follow their normal pattern of catering for the needs of the assessed number of people in each community, with some not aware at the time that the actual number of people to cater for was drastically lower than anticipated because of the great loss of life from the tsunami waves. (Perry, 2007, p. 420)
Another clear problem with the needs of assessment processes involved conflicts that emerged between organizations. Effectively, disaster relief organizations were in competition even after the disaster. The researcher continues:
Organizations experienced an initial delay in involvement in the relief effort while they obtained information, determined priorities, negotiated with global parts of their networks and obtained appropriate supplies. “Our people responded probably say two to three days later than perhaps they should have.” Following such initial delays, it is apparent that poor coordination amongst different parties was a major obstacle during the tsunami disaster. Many of the NGO organizations were working independently. Some of the large international organizations had been working in the affected countries for many years and thus already had their regional offices and volunteers working in those areas. There were also many smaller organizations that became involved in the affected countries for the first time. The presence of so many aid groups hampered coordination efforts. (Perry, 2007, p. 421)
In addition to issues that emerged because of the ways in which relief organizations interacted, there were also issues found concerning the leadership and operations of the organizations.
Planning Across Flooding/Tsunami Lifecycle
All disasters have a lifecycle with distinct stages. Tsunamis and the resulting floods of tsunamis are no exception. Even though there are always multiple variables and differing conditions present in every tsunami, there are also certain predictable patterns that can make strategic planning and contingency planning more accurate and effective. While a general severity scale can be useful for assessing the overall severity of a tsunami, the resulting flooding can also be scaled by severity. In fact, agencies can develop severity systems with multiple points that would allow for a more precise estimation of damage and challenges facing the relief efforts. In the film, these processes likely occurred to some degree, although likely only in the background. They were not explicitly referred. Watching the film with these potential lifecycle planning factors present, it appeared that the community expected certain areas to be heavily flooded and thus dangerous. There was also an understanding of when the conditions might clear up, at least to make travel safe again.
Envisioning Chaos
A major challenge in planning and preparation is envisioning chaos. Planning for emergencies requires making decisions beforehand in response to events or conditions that are expected to occur. Disasters, especially the magnitude of disaster present in the film, create chaotic conditions. Planning for chaos is extremely difficult. The guidelines of activity and protocols in response to specific events must be flexible enough to respond to a variety of conditions. An inability to adapt to varying and difficult to predict conditions can lead to major inefficiencies and troubles concerning community preparedness for disaster.
The Helping Hands of Others
Throughout the film, the family members must make decisions that involve helping others, at the cost of time and resources that could be spend finding other family members whose whereabouts are not known. Most often, the family members help those in need. At the same time, they are helped by many other individuals. In fact, the well-being of the entire family is dependent on the goodwill of others. In emergency management, including planning, goodwill simply cannot be accounted for. This is because the presence of goodwill cannot be assumed. For example, if an emergency organization is preparing for a disaster and planning for protocol to be initiated when certain disaster levels are reached, assuming goodwill could lead to a dearth of resources and an inability to respond effectively to disaster. Preparation and planning for disasters involve determining the resources required to minimize the risk associated with such disasters and the collateral damages that such disasters can lead to. Assuming goodwill from individuals who are not volunteers or employees of an emergency or government organization would, then, be a mistake. Of course, goodwill can be assumed from volunteers who agree to serve specific functions within an emergency organization. If fact, without the assumption of goodwill, it would be impossible for these organizations to function. After all, they rely on volunteers and employees to allocate and utilize resources for the benefit of the community and those in need. The film seems to suggest that the goodwill of others plays a major role in the minimization of risks during disasters. Perhaps this is the case. But when preparing and planning for disaster, organizations can only afford to assume the goodwill of those individuals who have agreed to play significant roles in such organizations.
Ethical Decision-Making During Disaster
Philosophers have pored over ethical decision-making for millennia. Hypotheticals have long been employed by philosophers to gauge the worthiness of certain moral approaches and principles. Rarely are the purposes behind such thoughts experiments to determine what to do in such situations. However, ethical decision-making as part of emergency management requires considering hypotheticals. After all, many types of disasters are quite rare. It is difficult to predict what exactly will happen and with what levels of severity during a disaster. Exacerbating conditions is the human factor which is much less predictable than natural events. Using hypotheticals to make more informed decisions regarding emergency management, especially for emergency planning and contingency planning, can be highly effective. There may be situations, after all, then resource allocation becomes crucial. In order to decide how to allocate resources, ethical decision-making may be required. Many of these hypothetical situations may be troubling, but are still useful, as disasters create conditions that can be extremely troubling. For example, if there is a situation in which resources are running very low and help may not be on the way. If the suppliers are very low, it may be worth sending many of the adults to go scavenge for food and fresh water or to try to make contact with other groups or emergency personnel for more resources. It may be deemed ethical to give the remaining supplies to the youngest children who need the fewest resources to survive and who have lives that can be considered in some ways more valuable than those of adults. This type of ethical decision-making involves extreme hypotheticals that raise important questions about the number and type of resources on hand, as well as the best ways to allocate resources after a disaster.
Conclusion
The current project featured a
discussion of emergency management principles, protocols, and strategies based
on a framework provided by the film “The Impossible,” which depicts a divided
family’s struggles to reunite after being separated by a massive tsunami while
on vacation in Thailand. There are many components to emergency management. For
most major disasters, emergency shelters with sufficient resources to serve a
large population are required. Yet, the conditions of disasters can vary so
greatly that planning becomes a matter of balancing specific strategies to
implement in specific situations and generating flexible and adaptable
strategies that are widely applicable. The film may not go into explicit detail
about the protocols and strategies utilized by the organizations that helped
the family through the disaster. Nevertheless, it depicts how random sets of
people can work together for mutual benefits in getting through a disaster and
its effects.
References
Phillips, B., Neal, D. M., & Webb, G. (2016). Introduction to emergency management. CRC Press.
Perry, M. (2007). Natural disaster management planning: A study of logistics managers responding to the tsunami. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 37(5), 409-433.
