TAXES AND DISASTERS
Disasters
and emergencies appear to be as inevitable as taxes; so too is our ongoing
effort to cope with them. The ability to cope lies deep in our primordial past,
which has taught us that ‘‘organizing’’ is the most efficient and effective
means to survive. Most of this organizing take place without our really being
cognizant that it is a special type of behavior.
It
seems the most natural thing to do when facing danger, channeling us to improvise
defensive types of behaviors that over time are reinforced in our families,
small groups, and communities. Whenever
an outside threat such as a disaster occurs or is likely to occur signals and
social cues are set in motion that prompt internal social group cohesion. The
most amazing thing about this process is that it seems never-ending. In the
last ten years, natural (not technological or industrial) disasters have
occurred, killing more than 880,000 people. In addition, they have affected the
property, health, and jobs of about 1.9 billion people and inflicted economic
losses of around $685 billion to the world’s economies.
The
apparent chaos and threatening nature of disasters—as unusual, uncontrollable,
and many times unpredictable events—facilitated the development of
organizational means to restore order and normalcy. The fact that there is
strength in numbers and that group and community strength accumulates when
individuals cooperate has apparently been one of the most effective means of
coping and surviving. In most cases the latent organizational structures that
have evolved over thousands of years to mitigate disasters lay dormant and were
only activated when needed. When we humans were still wanderers, our small, compact
communities moved to better hunting or grazing grounds when faced with a
drought or seasonal changes. With agricultural settlement and town life came
the oldest types of ‘‘first responders,’’ volunteer firefighters, who in
actuality were simply neighbors helping each other out. Each new situation
brought with it creative forms of disaster behaviors that were evaluated over
time and eventually incorporated into that community. These same latent
organizing behaviors appear today in a variety of ways and have embedded
themselves in our social activities.
The
reason this process repeated itself over and over again is because first and
foremost societies are in the business of surviving. Survival becomes problematic
when its members are killed or injured, when its economic viability is
thwarted, or when the fabric of everyday life is tattered. It is at these times
that we dig deep into those wellsprings of disaster experiences we learned over
thousands of years. It is extremely important to recognize that the activation
of these latent but tried and true ‘‘disaster-oriented’’ organizational social
skills was essential to increase the survival function of the group or
community.
This ability to organize has shown itself to
be effective in practically all manner of social and political behavior, from
helping neighbors to winning a war. In most cases this meant the participation
of the entire group or community so as to reaffirm and strengthen social bonds,
clarify the division of labor, and most important, set in motion practical
means to overcome the as stated in Pelling et al. (2002): ‘‘Reported disaster
frequency has doubled every ten years since 1960, with 96% of all deaths from
natural disasters occurring in the global south. The annual average financial
loss caused by natural disasters, accidents, technological accidents, and urban
fires, estimated between 1991 and 2000 in US$ millions at constant 2000 prices,
was 234 in Africa, 21,293 in the Americas, 40,346 in Asia, 17,930 in Europe,
and 1178 in Oceania.
Individual
annual losses fluctuate greatly, with 1995 being the worst year on record, when
0.7% of global GDP was lost to natural disasters. All disaster loss estimates
need to be viewed with caution. They are compiled from government reports and
insurance statements with no common methodology and little transparency in
their calculation. Moreover, they account only for loss of physical assets and
indicate nothing of the full scale of personal loss and livelihood disruption,
which is proportionately higher in less developed countries. Low human
development countries average more than 1000 deaths per disaster but less than
US$100 million loss, compared with high human development countries, that
average less than ten deaths but over US$600 million in losses per disaster.
Such losses are difficult for any economy to absorb but for developing
countries, they can be devastating. Hurricane Mitch is said to have set back
development in Nicaragua by 20 years.’’ various types of disasters that are
always about to occur. One should not be deceived into thinking that these
latent organizational qualities are a thing of the past. Just take a look at a
small part of a U.S. government report describing the organization plans that
emerged after the terrorist attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. This
report came after a ‘‘spontaneous’’ evacuation of thousands of employees
immediately after the Pentagon attack by terrorists and the recognition that
the officials did not ‘‘control’’ the situation.
The
federal government has created a new procedure for evacuating federal employees
in Washington in the case of possible terrorist attacks on the nation’s
capital. The protocol, which took effect in May, tells who can decide to
evacuate federal employees from agencies and how the government will
communicate the decision to employees and to city and state agencies that would
be affected by a mass exodus of civil servants from Washington. It is an
attempt to improve on the ad hoc process used on Sept. 11.
These
forms of disaster organizing have for centuries been an inherent part of a
community’s social structure. Today, most of these social functions have been
excised and replaced by public sector agencies dominated by external noncommunity
public administrations. What was once the province of the community being now
in the hands of local government. In some rare cases these overlap, but the
difference lies primarily in the form of organization; be it fellow community
members or government bureaucrats.
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