Natural disasters on both the East and West coasts have exposed governments in the United States at all levels. Local, state, and federal government agencies are not ready for a real emergency. Thousands of pages of disaster and continuity planning and still people are left without food, water, medical, and electricity. Why?

Paper Emergency

Every municipality is required to have an emergency plan for various situations. Cities create a detailed list of how their resources will be utilized during an emergency, including names and phone numbers of responsible leadership. Counties outline how their cities will cooperate with their own resources and under what situations the state will be involved. The state is then engaged when local resources fail or if evacuation is required. But, it’s a numbers game.

Most cities, counties, and states play this game the same way insurance companies do. A single car accident or even a multiple car pile-up on the Interstate can be managed, even if multiple jurisdictions are required. Insurance companies can easily cover damages of a few vehicles. But what happens when an entire area is affected? Hurricane Helene exposed both government resources and insurance protections as woefully inadequate. Learn how to prepare for grid failure here (Link).

How many first responders does your city or county have? Let’s take Atlanta as an example then we’ll compare it to the suburbs. Atlanta has 1,125 Fire and EMS employed to service its 500,000 residents. Cherokee County Georgia has about 300,000 total residents and about 500 Fire and EMS. Sounds like enough until something big happens.

The Buck Never Stops

When the city’s resources are exhausted, they lean on the county. When the county’s resources are exhausted, they lean on the state. When the state’s resources are exhausted, they lean on the federal government. FEMA has never provided support on time or at any adequate level. Don’t believe me? Ask New Orleans. Ask North Carolina. Ask Ohio, where trains seem to derail monthly. Or read this (Link).

Legally, it’s called an escape clause. No one expects the city to support its residents fully. They don’t control the water. The county can only provide water to its residents if the electrical grid stays in tact, but that’s managed by either a state or federally-regulated provider. And roads? Who is supposed to manage the myriad of roadways in your town? The interstate is federal. There are several state highways, county roads, oh, and all the private roads. Who is responsible?

Lower Your Emergency Expectations

This is really where most Americans are completely lost. Somehow we believe the lie that if things go sideways, help is on the way. But the Calvary isn’t coming. Sure, there’s a plan, but there’s always that caveat. What if the power is out? What if the water is contaminated? What if the semi tractor trailers full of food can’t get to us? Municipalities and businesses only ever plan for the ordinary. We should be planning for straight up Armageddon. How bad could it be? If the sun is the cause…well (Link).

How do we ensure tragedies such as the Los Angeles wildfires or Hurricane Helene abandonment never happen again? The real question should be, who do you want to be in charge of your neighborhood’s security? A suit in Washington DC or your State Capitol that has never held a real job? Someone who is driven to work in a limo and eats steak and lobster for dinner? You know, someone who has no idea what it’s like to be you? No, I didn’t think so.

Can We Keep Emergency Management Local?

But are you willing to pay the cost at the local level for real emergency response? Could an Atlanta suburban county of 300,000 shoulder the financial burden? Would you or your business be willing to pay a percentage extra in local-only taxes specifically to help yourself and your neighbors in an emergency? I already know your first question because it’s mine too. How much would it cost to provide for the county?

Three fundamentals are required; food, clean water, and electricity. Yes, you would need medical supplies, but this would be a reasonable expectation to lay at the feed of the dozens of medical offices, pharmacies, and hospitals in a county. We’ll talk about rural and urban areas separately. They each have their own unique requirements. Let’s assume the county must be self-sufficient for 30 days.

A 30-Day Emergency?

Yes, I know Ready.gov tells us we should have everything we need for 14 days, or two weeks. It took 5 days for troops to evacuate New Orleans after Katrina. It was weeks before some families received any help in North Carolina. The real problem? State and Federal officials blocked local, county, and volunteer resources from helping. Yes, many of them would have gone off and required rescue, too.

30 Days of provisions ensure if the emergency is wide-spread, such as hurricane damage, grid failure, or man-made disaster, residents are not pressed for provisions. The absolute last thing a community can do during an emergency is panic.

What’s The Bottom Line?

Electricity is by far the hardest resource to produce and this is where most updates would be required. Some counties have rivers and flowing waterways perfect for hydroelectric generation. There are many ways to accomplish this without environmental impact. You could supplement this with wind and solar, but both are highly inefficient, ineffective during inclement weather, and, as the Texas ice storms of 2021 showed, unreliable. A hydroelectric system (not necessarily a full dam) in Cherokee County Georgia on the Etowah river could cost up to $40 Million, but I wouldn’t expect the citizens to shoulder that cost alone, right, Georgia Power?

The most important aspect of a community-driven emergency plan is the community. Surely in the 300,000 residents there are Amateur Radio operators, neighborhood watch participants, citizen police, storm watchers, fire monitors, caregivers, and those trained in first aid. Insert the volunteers into the plan from the beginning. Instead of waiting for the Red Cross to arrive, the local chapter already knows where to set and what to do. Volunteers offer as-needed support with expertise not always available or affordable to county departments. Why not use them?

Worst Case Pricing

For our 300,000 residents of Cherokee County eating three meals per day with adequate water, we can expect to pay about $1 per person per day for 30 days. Yes, that’s $27 Million! Sure, we can probably do better on cost, but I expect most restaurants and grocery stores to pitch in. OK, it’s more than an expectation, it would be a requirement in an emergency. Trust me, all that food will go bad if they don’t.

Add in the overtime costs for hospital staff, first responders, and county officials managing the emergency, and our total cost comes in under $80 Million for a 30-day emergency. With our county budget at $415 Million (Link), I believe we could do it. We’d need help from our corporate partners. We would need volunteers. We would need to pay a little more in property and sales taxes. State and Federal grants and funds are already available. We would have to keep the politicians away from the money. Maybe we build it up over three (3) years, 10 Emergency days at a time. But it would be worth it. And for the love of disaster planning, test everything regularly to ensure it all works as expected! You blare the sirens on the first Wednesday at Noon. You can spin up the hydro-plant.

Extremes

Rural and urban areas offer their own challenges. Rural areas are spread out and urban areas are compact. Communication in both areas are critical. Neighborhoods in rural areas and city blocks in town could become self-sufficient with their own assigned first responders and volunteers. Relaying the emergency plan in detail relieves people’s stress of the situation. Just knowing there is a plan in place and help is right there will keep the peace in most cases. The most disturbing stories from any disaster are those who talk of the despair, solitude, and uncertainty if help will ever come.

Other Power Options

Of course, electricity can’t flow if a tornado has ripped up the lines or leveled houses. Shelters, hotels, conference centers, schools, office buildings, and any other public place would the be utilized to house the displaced. What if you don’t have a river flowing through the middle of your county? There are other options based on your location. Solar may be sufficient in the desert. Wind may work in Wisconsin. Just don’t put all your eggs in one basket and don’t expect full power during the emergency. You can’t force people to prepare, but you certainly could offer a deeply discounted emergency pack with food, water, and a simple battery backup unit. You could even use your electric and water meters as indicators of outage or end-to-end connectivity testing. Sorry, networking brain took over there.

The point is, we can’t be expected to put our trust in departments and officials so far removed from the affected people that they forget we exist or don’t understand how we exist. This type of planning would change your thinking of local elections if those people controlled your emergency management systems. If the outage is state-wide or regional, the county wouldn’t be waiting for State and Federal aid to eventually arrive. I guarantee North Carolina counties will plan better in the future. I bet Los Angeles county completely revamped their emergency response plans. Now is the time to plan, not when the power goes out and the water faucet is dry.