HOW DO WE REALLY CHANGE CULTURE 
Frank Lucier  Editor
Every community in this Country has been, or will be, affected by a natural or human caused disaster at some point in time. Most are woefully unprepared to handle an event of any magnitude. Profession emergency response is staffed for every day emergencies. Budget constraints and common sense will not allow staffing at levels that are needed for a major emergency, which, if we are lucky, may seldom happen. Regional, State and Federal resources can make up the gaps in local resources, but there is always a delay in these resources getting to the location where they are most needed.

Federal, State, the American Red Cross and others agencies, have had disaster preparedness programs in place for years with some success. Preparedness programs can have a great effect in a community following a major disaster but, as time passes and the memory of the event fades, people fall back to daily routines. The CERT program is spreading across the country but the number of people trained in disaster skills is still small. The percent of people in this Country who are truly prepared for a disaster is still miniscule when compared to the overall population. This situation is not acceptable since it may result in unnecessary death and injuries following a major disaster. What can we do to change that?

 The solution to this problem appears simple on the surface but as with most major problems it becomes much more complex as we begin to unfold the layers. The solution is to stop trying to get people prepared, a change of behavior, and instead, begin to change culture, a change of beliefs. A change in behavior is often times temporary; a change in beliefs is permanent. Rather than people depending on overwhelmed professional emergency services in the time of a disaster, they should be depending on their own knowledge and skills to survive and assist others until professional resources are available to assist them. This is a cultural change.

If we look for past examples of changes in culture of the American people, we only have to look as far as the children. In California, when that State wanted to change the earthquake preparedness culture, they started with the children. “Duck, Cover and Hold” became part of the lesson plans in the schools and practiced on a regular basis. The school children brought this home to the parents and families.

Seat belts are another example of culture change. I can remember when I first began wearing a seatbelt. I had picked up my 10 year old son at school one day. He got in the car and buckled  his seatbelt. As we began to drive away he turned to me and said, “Better put on your seatbelt”. I did not teach him that, he learned it in school, and he taught me. We changed culture in these to areas by teaching them in our schools.

It could be the same for disaster preparedness, but there must be a comprehensive program teaching disaster preparedness and skills at each level of schooling. I certainly don’t qualify as an expert in school curriculum development, but after years of training families in disaster skills in San Francisco, we found that children were very receptive and could grasp the concepts at a young age. By developing a curriculum of a graduated-skills program for grammar, middle and high schools, we can begin to institutional this culture change with our youth. We already know that high school students are ready to learn advance disaster skills since, all around the Country, CERT is being taught in high schools with great success.

Of course there are other issues, layers, which must be addressed before this type of curriculum can be incorporated in the schools. All of the teachers we spoke with at the Community and Family Preparedness Conference were extremely committed, but most felt overwhelmed with the day-to-day requirements of teaching. Adding more to an already overloaded class day is a daunting task. But curriculum development should not be a difficult task since there are already several models in existence today. The CERT training, as it is taught at the Train-The-Trainer course at EMI, is a 17-hour training spread over a period of seven weeks. I’m sure the educational community can find a way to incorporate seventeen hours of this type of skills training into ten or so years of the schooling process. The skills taught could be regularly practiced as an after school activity.

There are also several resources that can be used to assist in this process. The expertise of FEMA, the American Red Cross, local fire departments and law enforcement, local and state emergency management and local medical responders can be use to develop, implement and practice such skills training.

Another major issue is modifying existing models to fit the needs of the local community. The types of disaster that occur faced in Florida or Montana are not always the same that occur in Arizona or Oregon, so some modification must be done at a local level. But the life-saving skills are similar whether it is following an earthquake, a tornado or an act of school violence. The only modification of existing models that is needed is in the preparedness area and most local community emergency managers already have that developed.

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