The Butterfly Effect on Emergency Management
Edward Lorenz’s 50-year-old-plus premise “if a single flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado” certainly sounds disaster-based. Can it be a positive, as well?
Edward Lorenz’s more than 50-year-old premise, which starts out that “if a single flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado” certainly sounds like it has a direct impact on disasters, but it was designed as a metaphor for chaos theory. There’s even a paper published on the Butterfly Effect of the Butterfly Effect itself. I’m going to make the point that Emergency Management can help society benefit from the Butterfly Effect in a positive way, through Preparedness.
Photo by Ian Parker on Unsplash
So there’s this theory that when a butterfly flaps its wings in one place, something bad happens someplace else. It’s called “The Butterfly Effect” – and while it was originally used to be a metaphor for many actions and impacts (mostly economic, as many theories are), it built an entire physics model known as “Chaos Theory”. Usually, these theories do end up with something bad happening. I’m going to take the more “glass is half-full” approach and make the case for how the Butterfly Effect can positively impact people – and Emergency Management/Emergency Managers can play a part in making those butterfly wings flap. Just as all disasters start and end locally, local prevention, protection, and preparedness efforts can help locally. It may not be tomorrow, or next month, or even ever. But those communities as a whole – and the emergency managers who perform these missions and encourage their teams to do so as well – will be better off, regardless. I like to attribute the quote “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time” to Desmond Tutu, as he was talking about the chronic, endemic disaster of apartheid. What he was allegorically describing was that everything in life that may seem daunting, overwhelming, or even impossible can be accomplished gradually by performing small actions - just a little at a time.
Here are two examples of where I think emergency managers need to get tactical – actually perform preparedness tasks themselves:
Smoke alarm installation
The American Red Cross has had a preparedness program involving installing free smoke alarms in people’s homes - more than 2.4 million nationwide - since 2014. They indicate they have made contact with more than 2.7 million people through these home visits, made more than a million homes safer and most critically, saved more than 1,400 people’s lives through their “Sound the Alarm” program. I was an employee with the Red Cross when this program started.
Initially, I hated it. We didn’t have volunteers at the time who were interested in doing preparedness work (before this, we had a sporadic school program for disaster education and some “Be Red Cross Ready” programs we offered around various communities – mostly to senior citizen’s groups – which mirrored the FEMA “Ready.gov” program) and the national goals were quite high – thousands of alarms to be installed in each state, each year. We had fire departments who had their own program (and didn’t want to partner with us), towns who didn’t want to get that much involved in looking the other way on code enforcement issues, even union issues in some communities. I didn’t see the direct connection between the extra work we were doing and the possible positive impact in the communities we served. There was no Butterfly Effect for me.
Over time, we got better at getting volunteers (some corporate groups even came out to do these installs as a “community day of service” for them) and fund-raising had another angle to use to collect donations (and at a national level, even Kidde routed 26,000 alarms to the Red Cross as a donation in 2016). We had a single home fire in New Jersey where everyone got out safely – 18 people! – which really turned the tide for me. I have been a big advocate to others about this campaign ever since – and the number of lives saved has not only increased over time, but the size and scope of the fires has gone down – communities are seeing a reduction in damages and devastation across the board. This year – after a three year hiatus of major installation events by the Red Cross with partners like local fire departments – they started the Sound the Alarm canvassing campaign back up again. I got a chance to join them on 2023’s MLK Jr. day on January 15th, to help install almost 200 alarms in a section of Patterson, New Jersey. We canvased nearly 1400 homes, and left preparedness info everywhere we didn’t install an alarm, or two, or more.
I can hear those butterfly wings flapping now.
Teaching kids to swim – especially socially vulnerable kids.
One research paper I read said there around 360,000 drowning deaths worldwide each year; with the World Health Organization (WHO) indicating that the very high percentage of those premature deaths of children (they are a high percentage of those folks who drown) are preventable. The WHO focused a lot of their report on advocating for day-care, swimming lessons, and water safety. Their water-safety recommendations did include both in-water and out-of-water measures which can save lives. How you act around the pool deck can make a difference in whether you walk away or die from drowning if you go into the water unexpectedly.
How can emergency managers play a role in helping prevent these tragic disasters? First, live by example – you should know how to swim yourself – and so should all your family. And set a good example for water safety at the pool, lake, out on boats, etc. Don’t make it like you are “too tough” to wear a life preserver on a boat even if you do know how to swim. Second, encourage everyone else you know to learn how to swim. Make water safety and learning to swim part of your emergency preparedness messaging to the public, especially in socially vulnerable groups, such as folks who consider themselves BIPOC.
My wife was the staunch advocate for getting our daughters to learn to swim; and now our 8-year-old granddaughter is (finally!) a swimmer, too. It took at least three swim schools and probably five years of lessons to get there. We had the challenge of being the only ones who really wanted her to learn to swim (we only had one day a week to help on this) and we firmly believe her life literally depends on it.
One of the things that I noticed for myself right away when she was taking lessons, is that I had to keep both eyes on her whenever she was in or near the water. We really could not count on the lifeguards to pay the attention to our kid, as we thought was necessary. And what that really meant for me was to keep my phone down or in my pocket. No calls, no texts, nothing. This is harder than you might think. Back in the day when no one had a phone at the waterside, we would still be distracted and then if something bad happened we had a longer response time to get medical attention on-scene. Now, we can use our cell phones almost immediately (and hopefully we know the address and have good cell reception!). However, we all need some major social reengineering to get back to what’s important: watching for threats and hazards.
I have been thinking about a “smarter water watcher 1“ program – one where you (temporarily) trade your cell phone in for a break-away lanyard and whistle. I am working out the details on this now – and have even pitched the idea to a major U.S. kids water safety foundation (waiting to hear back from them!). I’m going to run this by some attorneys next (like a webinar ‘think tank’ to see what might go wrong, liability-wise) and need to find sponsors to ‘get this to market’ pro bono. I would like to offer the material and the lanyard/whistle for free – this way as many people get used to the idea of watching their kids (and everyone else’s) instead of their phones. EMN subscribers, if you want to join me on this quest and put a whole bunch of butterflies out there to flap their wings, post a note in the comments!
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