How To Live In An Age of Disaster

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Well, Ukraine is not the only crisis that the Biden administration has had to face. Our next guest is one of today’s foremost thinkers in disaster management, Julia Kayyem is an author and former assistant secretary for Homeland Security. Her latest book, “The Devil Never Sleeps,” is a guide on what to do when things go wrong. She sat down with Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how he learn from dealing with catastrophe.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. Juliette Kayyem, thanks so much for joining us. Now, in this book, here we are a couple of years into the pandemic, we have all lived through a very long, slow-moving disaster. But in your book, you go through a whole range of them and you find pretty interesting patterns. What is something that we consistently get wrong about thinking about disasters?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, AUTHOR, “THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS”: So, the book exactly goes from the Trojan War to even Surfside, Florida to basically look at the connective tissue of these disasters rather than thinking of each of them as sort of like the surprise and shock. And I think that the most important sort of lesson out of all of them is that we can measure success differently. In my field, we tend to divide the world into two phases, just, you know, before the boom or left of boom and right of boom. And the boom is agnostic, it is this pandemic, a cyberattack, a terror attack. And what I wanted to teach people is that we actually can learn to fail safer, that are our investments and anticipating the debt disaster actually end up protecting lives and property and our communities. And I wanted to give people that sense of agency over their ability to make things less bad. It’s — you know, it is a strange standard, but less bad ends up being pretty good in a world in which lots of bad things keep happening.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. You know, there are situations like earthquakes or a tsunami where people could be at the wrong place at the wrong time and you can’t help them. But what you figure out a way to say in this book is that we can prevent a lot of kind of the stupid deaths, the ones that we could’ve stopped.

KAYYEM: Yes. Exactly. And stupid deaths is the term that comes out of Haiti and the Haitians and what they have dealt with. And it obviously it doesn’t apply to the victims. Stupid deaths are those deaths that could be avoided if we had only gotten resources there fast enough, protected people fast enough. Water, electricity, whatever it is. And it’s not just in Haiti or countries that we think don’t have infrastructure. To this day, we still do not know how many Puerto Ricans died in Hurricane Maria. We know how many died at the moment of the hurricane, but what we call stupid deaths, because of the inability to get electricity and other sort of essentials to them. So, one of the goals is, how do you stop those what we call, you know, cascading losses, right? There’s that moment that you may not be able to help people, but how do we make sure that we can stop more harm from coming? One of my favorite stories — I tried to reframe the stories that we think we know about disasters. And so, we look at Fukushima, for example, nuclear facility radiation leak in 2011 after the earthquake and tsunami. And we think, oh, you can’t do anything about an earthquake and tsunami. But what I learned is just a couple of miles down the street, there actually was another nuclear facility, it also got hit by the earthquake, it got water rushing in from the tsunami. And it had trained to fail safer. And it was able to stop the radiation leak. So, there’s two stories out of that day in 2011, one is Fukushima, but one is the other facility. Now, I want people to look at that facility and say, what can we do to protect lives and stop the worst thing from happening, which, of course, in that case is the radiation leak.

SREENIVASAN: You know, we all remember the visceral images that came out of the Boston marathon. And that was one of those moments where it could have gotten so much worse in hindsight. But at the time there was so much chaos. Tell us a little bit about now just what happened, but how Boston kind of pivoted from that?

KAYYEM: Yes. So, I have been State Homeland security advisor overseeing the Boston response by the time the marathon attack happened, I’m out of government and able to assess it differently and sort of knew what was working. So, one reason I go back to the Boston marathon is to get us to get leaders and leaders of any type, parents, CEOs, managers, to think about how we are measuring success. So, there was the failure, right, that we didn’t capture the brothers in time before, you know, there was evidence against them. Three people perished at the finish line. But the number we often forget is over 280 people who had lost a hand, or a limb, or an arm, major injuries and trauma survived. Over 280 people were taken to area hospitals in three states. If you made it to a hospital, you lived. That is not lock, that is not Boston strong, that is not an attitude, that is the investments and our capacity to pivot, our training and the health facilities that were ready for the people coming, that is the number I want people to look at because that explains things like Boston strong. What I found looking at these things horrors across the centuries is, there is one animating theme, and that is family reunification. It means there is something that drives people after the disasters. Where my kids? It’s mostly, you know, where are my kids? And if you can, at home or at the Boston marathon, focus on how are we going to get, in that case, the runners with their families who are on the other side of the Boston marathon finish line, which now longer exists, of course, you will be able to protect them, get them from — away from a potential harm but also relieve the public safety apparatus from family unification so that they can focus on the essential needs. So, those are the kinds of stories that I look. And say, look, there is another story going on. We sometimes don’t tell the good news stories and good news amongst the bad news during disasters. And I wanted to tell those stories in many ways to say, that is the story, that is the lesson learned, right? That is why we invest in preparedness and anticipating the harm.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things that you mentioned here about preparedness, and I wonder how do we make these long-term decisions when it comes to money? Because oftentimes, we start to trim the budgets of the things that are emergency preparedness for events that we can’t see.

KAYYEM: So, this is where I constantly say, never again is a tough promised to make at an age like ours. We are — I don’t say the word safe. You’ll never — I never write about the word safe. I talk about safer. Is that what we are what we are trying to do is invest in preparedness so that we can just minimize the harm. So, how do we do that? I mean, the first is, of course, recognize that the harm is coming. If you look at budgets, whether it’s cybersecurity budgets or physical security budgets, they are very much focused on, I’m going to stop the breach, bad things won’t happen. We call it guns, guards, and gates, those are the investments, right? Those are the ones that we can see. But we spend too little time thinking about, what if I get that breach, what if something bad happens and how will I minimize the harm? So, one of the cases that I write about is, of course, colonial pipeline, which happened just a little while ago, in the last two years. Colonial pipeline was delivering our energy resources too much of the East Coast, it is hit by a really stupid ransomware attack. It was not sophisticated. And it had sort of invested in the notion that there would never be a breach. So, when the breach happens, they only have one play. They turned off their pipelines for a week. That is not a sophisticated response capability. We were able to sort of wean it for that week, but anything longer would have had disastrous consequences. So, part of telling the stories of how preparedness benefits us is not to envision a world of unicorns and rainbows and resiliency and building back better, this is a book about now, right? We can do this now. We can begin to focus on at the home level, the community level and the institutional level, the investment communication, the training, that will help us to feel safer and safely because, you know, we are basically don’t have time.

SREENIVASAN: Yes, yes. You know, people are also going to ask, OK, I get that there are these acute disasters, these moments that we can try to prepare for. But what about a longer-term inevitable problem like say climate change, which is already having some disastrous consequences to different communities around the planet but not everybody might see it as something that is imperative today?

KAYYEM: Right. So — and they will see the moment of the hurricane or the tornado as the crisis but not climate range. I’m pretty clear to distinguish between sort of the existential threat of climate change and the policy changes we have to make in terms of both mitigation and response and what it means to be in a crisis or a disaster, and that’s to find as you have a limited period to respond. In other words, people — we call it nine meals to chaos or anarchy that you really have three days to get communities the resources they need before lots of super bad stuff happens, as we’ve seen in many of these disasters. And so, I’m focusing on that very acute response, right? What can we do to minimize that immediate harm that gets us better for thinking about how we are going to live, right? How are we going to rebuild after the disaster? Why are we paying people through disaster funds to live the way that they work? Should we rebuild in paradise, which I’ve been to after their major fires. Those deeper questions will have to be answered. They will make us safer if we answer them correctly, if we focus on climate change. But there is also that acute need, which makes — which is the difference between say a crisis and the public policy challenge we have with climate change.

SREENIVASAN: You mentioned the Surfside building collapse, what could’ve been done in that case?

KAYYEM: This is in chapter called “The Way We Were.” And what I tried to do in each chapter is make it reader friendly so that people can see, oh, yes, I am recognizing this. So, one of the problems with the way we set up security and safety features is that they become rather immobile, right? And we think about our airline experience with shoes, that is almost 20 years now. Technology has probably makes that effort somewhat futile. And I think what happened in many areas of Miami and South Florida that we are seeing now is, whatever was built at the time cannot withstand without investments the burdens that are going to be placed on it now. Surfside was a combination of climate, human error, and faulty by design we are now discovering, that this was, in some ways, a doomed building. Even the flukishness (ph) of that does not excuse the homeowner’s apartment on those boards and the area, and the public sector from looking at whether they can withstand, right, what is about to happen to them overtime. And it may be, as we see in places in Florida, as we are saying here where I live, on the East Coast, or in Paradise, California, that the best disaster response is what we call manage retreat, that we begin to help people move away from areas that are no longer sustainable because of climate change. I certainly don’t like it, but the goal here is to protect human life, and sometimes we have to accept that in terms of the challenges that lie ahead.

SREENIVASAN: So, how do so many of the things that you’re talking about in this book apply to the pandemic that we have all been living through?

KAYYEM: The pandemic showed me a couple of things that I write about in the book and that I’ve been writing about them through the pandemic. The first is to get over this notion of a finish line. I think people are really struggling about, you know, is there going to be a white flag raised and we’re all done? No. This is we are adapting every single day in terms of what the risk is and how we minimize the risk overtime. And I think another key lesson out of the pandemic, which I’ve been critical of our public health officials about is the need to communicate what the strategy is in the future. I think that some of the impatience in the American public had — it maybe had to do with politics, but you certainly saw Democratic governors get ahead of this White House in terms of trying to change masking rules or vaccination mandates, and I think part of it is because not now is a really hard standard to maintain for people. So, what I say in the communications chapter is, it is rather simple what people need, they need numbers, they want to know what’s going on and how many are hospitalized and does that — or are they vaccinated? The real numbers that will matter to them and how they live. The second is, they need hope. They need to know that there is a metric out there that is going to make life better, and I think that we need to not only provide the numbers but provide what is this adaptation that we’re going to be living for the foreseeable future, and I think you’re starting to see people begin to accept that.

SREENIVASAN: So, how does a government play a role in this, any government, state government, local, national, especially at a time when there is so much distrust, misinformation and disinformation that is out there?

KAYYEM: Yes. I think it is an important thing that the rule in disaster management not be used simply as the government. I mean, obviously, we have local and state and federal resources or global resources try to protect people. But throughout the disasters that I look at, you see communities coming together, you see the private sector helping out and others who can play a role in terms of minimizing that harm. The title, in fact, “The Devil Never Sleeps,” comes from just a widow I met in Joplin, Missouri who had taken it upon herself to read Bill Joplin after it was devastated by a tornado, over 100 people died in that small community. And she was very tactical about her response. She sort of took it upon herself to help Joplin through, essentially, the next tornado. And I asked her, sort of, how are you so optimistic? And she replies, I live in Missouri, there will be more tornadoes, the devil never sleeps, but he only wins if we don’t do better next time. And it was that sentiment that I think is something that we all can absorbed and invest in, even with all the noise and disinformation.\ Something that I tell my students, it can sound really noisy on Twitter and in the politics of things, but always remember, over 75 percent of Americans are vaccinated. Like, there is a lot of noise out there, but it is not like it is 50/50. And if you can remember, the vast majorities of people are for the pandemic thinking about their communities. I think that is important for people to feel that things are working for them. In terms of disinformation, I actually think the Ukraine war is really interesting in terms of lessons learned. We used to think that if you view it as a sort of crisis and a disaster, of course, we used to think that we were sort of passive recipients of disinformation. And I think what the governments has been able to do, but also private actors who are using opensource intelligence and other aspects of taking information and then, driving our reaction, right, in terms of how Ukraine is going to fight back. I think you’ve seen how disinformation can be challenged, it is challenged with the truth, it is challenged with transparency and it’s challenges by engaging a community and opensource intelligence, in this case, in terms of fighting back. And I think that’s been really empowering for people because of the sense that, well, we are just going to live in a world in which two- plus-two doesn’t equal four anymore. And I think actually, two-plus-two still equals four.

SREENIVASAN: The book is called “The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disaster.” Author Juliette Kayyem, thanks so much for joining us.

KAYYEM: Thank you for having me.