A Culture of Preparedness

Inside My Canoehead

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To quote Brock Long, a former head of FEMA, "a culture of preparedness in society" is one of the necessary legs of a chair that supports our modern and technologically enabled society. We've written and argued at length that our society is enabled and supported by the 10 sectors of critical infrastructure (CI), Director Long's commentary speaks to the human supportive elements of a successful community, namely: a strong local government, robust private sector infrastructure, and federal assets available, through the sub-national governments, for use in an emergency.

Since the transformation of civil defence into the modern emergency management (EM), we've seen a growth in the public sector role in preparedness. Our fore-fathers were independent, responsible for the totality of their lives - from building their own homes, growing food, earning an income and taking care of the family throughout calamities. As the urban density increased, the need emerged for more robust services for the residents, over time the modern EM was born and adopted the responsibility to serve and protect. That role was gladly offloaded by the population, along with a host of other supportive functions, from food production and distribution, to power, water, sewer and essentially all the modern day 10 sectors of CI.
What we have done is create a utopia of daily living, without which we will collapse in short order. To bring back the culture of preparedness requires significant cognitive investment, one that is longitudinal and in grounded in honesty. We need to first amend the public sector resident-facing preparedness communication to reflect the responsibility of the individual to assume care for and delivery of services to their family in times of significant disruption. To outline the reality of a loss of cascading CI due to cyber, natural or human induced circumstances. We need to bring back the idea that prolonged lapses in our wonderful technologically enabled world are likely and that it is not the government's role to provide for you in the interim. This must be supported by education, through models similar to the German THW or the American CERT programs, to build cable communities that are collectively able to support their members without government intervention.

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