By John Farmer Jr.
The news accounts of rescue efforts undertaken by both first responders and citizen volunteers in the wake of Hurricane Harvey have riveted the nation. Stories of cowboys on horseback riding through floodwaters to save livestock, of rescue networks forming spontaneously on Facebook and other social media platforms, and of entire flotillas of volunteers in personal watercraft showing up to save people trapped on their rooftops have rightly led many to conclude that the emergency response to Harvey represents Texas at its best.
There is no question that Harvey brought out the best in many civilians, as well as in the trained responders. But to view the dynamic as uniquely Texan is to miss the broader significance of the storm and its response.
As Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long put it, Harvey should be "a wake-up call for this country for local and state elected officials to give their governors and their emergency management directors ... the full budgets they need to be fully staffed, to design rainy day funds, to have your own standalone individual assistance and public assistance programs."
More than that, I would argue, it is a wake-up call to the nation to recognize a common element of every mass casualty event from 9/11 to Katrina to Sandy to Harvey to Irma: The essential role of civilians. The 9/11 Commission Report noted, for instance, that on 9/11, after the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, "The first response came from private firms and individuals -- the people and companies in the building. Everything that would happen to them in the next few minutes would turn on their circumstances and their preparedness ... . The 'first' first responders on 9/11, as in most catastrophes, were private-sector civilians. ... (P)rivate sector civilians are likely to be the first responders in any future catastrophes."
This prediction has been borne out in the response every catastrophic event since.
During Katrina, a civilian, Kenny Bellau, saved some 400 people in his boat. Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA director during Sandy, observed, "The first responders are the neighbors, bystanders, the people that are willing to act."
Civilian response was a fundamental reality during Sandy, in the aftermath of numerous terrorist attacks, and now in the response to Harvey -- and it will likely be true after Hurricane Irma. It is a fact of life in large-scale emergency responses.
Given the acknowledged importance of civilian response in the wake of catastrophic storms, and the much-publicized role of the average citizen in the "see something, say something" counter-terrorism program, one would think that educating the public in the rudiments of emergency response and in the identification of suspicious activity would be a priority for our local, state, and federal governments.
Think again. Although websites such as ready.gov offer assistance to those who seek it out, there has been no coordinated national effort to provide basic civil defense training as an essential attribute of citizenship, as during the Cold War. Such an effort is warranted; in its absence, the government simply expects civilians to "show up and lend a hand" when a catastrophe happens.
This approach assumes that assistance from untrained civilians will be benign and "do no harm." This is not always the case. As the Heritage Foundation has concluded in its report on the aftermath of Sandy, "Americans ... should and must take a more realistic and pragmatic view on which actions community members should take based on the risks they are likely to face." In particular, a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation noted that "One of the biggest issues arising out of Sandy was that many people who failed to evacuate did not have enough supplies on hand to survive."
Dozens of survivors of the 9/11 attacks told the 9/11 Commission staff that those who had been trained in such basics as evacuation protocols, and who were aware of locations of the various stairways, were not only more likely to find their way out but assisted greatly in evacuating others. Those who had training in basic first aid were able to render assistance to those in need.
By contrast, people who have no training in emergency assistance are as likely to prove an impediment as a aid to the professional first responders. Even during Hurricane Harvey, the Washington Post reports that "many rescuers ignored official warnings to stay off streets flooded with treacherous and fast-flowing waters."
FEMA chief Long is absolutely correct: "What we need are for elected officials at all levels of government to hit the reset button, sit down, evaluate where their programs are ... and make sure that they have everything they need to increase their levels of self-sufficiency." As they hit that "reset button" and move toward what former director Fugate calls a long-awaited "bottom-up approach," here's hoping that they look closely at the history of 9/11, Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and Irma.
That history teaches that government officials at all levels can do nothing more important that assuring that their populations are trained in the basics of survival.
Effective civilian response during a catastrophe should no longer be a human interest story of random chance and extraordinary heroism. It should become part of the plan.
John Farmer Jr. was New Jersey's attorney general on Sept. 11, 2001. A former senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, he is a university professor and special counsel to the president of Rutgers University.
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