This paper examines the importance of disaster preparedness and training in the United States, drawing on two landmark events — the September 11, 2001 attacks and Hurricane Katrina — to illustrate the devastating human and institutional costs of inadequate readiness. The paper surveys definitions of "disaster" offered by the World Health Organization and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, quantifies the global toll of disasters over the past quarter century, and assesses the specific failures revealed by both events. It concludes by weighing the strengths and weaknesses of disaster training exercises, including challenges related to volunteer labor and compensation.
The manmade and natural disasters seen in the United States over the past several years have produced a public demand for higher levels of preparedness and competency. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a disaster as "a sudden ecological phenomenon of sufficient magnitude to require external assistance." The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) offers a somewhat different definition, describing a disaster as "an imbalance in the availability of medical care and a maldistribution of medical resources versus casualties within a community." Certainly other definitions exist. These two definitions focus on the medical aspects of a disaster, while there are indeed many other aspects of an event that might qualify it as a disaster.
It is estimated that 3.4 million lives have been lost and trillions of dollars in related damage have accumulated worldwide due to disasters over the past quarter century. It is therefore imperative that disaster training be implemented at both the national and international levels of society. Poor disaster training can place a significant negative burden on society, as demonstrated during the September 11th attacks and Hurricane Katrina. Both events created widespread havoc in the United States, in large part due to inadequate disaster preparedness.
The attacks on the United States in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina placed an unprecedented strain on the nation's disaster capabilities. An estimated 2,541 people were left dead or missing after Hurricane Katrina — an outcome that can be attributed, in part, to poor disaster training. Many more individuals could have been saved had the United States possessed a better-trained response team. Additionally, seven of the sixteen acute-care hospitals in the metropolitan New Orleans area permanently closed as a result of the damage. Every one of the fifty Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) in the United States was activated; three mobile military hospitals and several ship-borne hospitals, totaling 789 beds, were also deployed. Innumerable nursing homes were damaged or destroyed, and approximately 1.2 million residents required temporary or permanent relocation.
The U.S. House of Representatives Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and the Response to Hurricane Katrina found a "litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses, and absurdities" at all levels of government. As a result of poor disaster training, many individuals lost their lives during these devastating events. Lives could have been saved if proper disaster preparedness planning had been in place years before these events occurred.
"Trade-offs of training programs and volunteer labor"
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