Disaster Responders Research Articles

Operational Stress Injuries in Disaster Responders: A Framework for Supporting Mental Health in Climate Crisis.

The rising occurrence of natural disasters linked to climate change has drawn the attention of disaster response leaders to the significance of addressing operational stress injuries among disaster response personnel. We define and describe operational stress injuries in this workforce and explore theoretical frameworks that can inform the development of programs and interventions to mitigate these effects. We aim to establish a conceptual framework for understanding an operational stress injury by introducing a model specific to disaster responders. We also emphasize strategies that can be employed within a stress injury awareness framework to promote the mental well-being of those who respond to climate-related disasters.

Self-care strategies used by disaster responders after the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria: a mixed methods study

BackgroundDisaster responders are exposed to several physical and mental health risks. This study aimed to describe self-care strategies used by disaster responders after the earthquake in Syria and eastern Turkey in February 2023.MethodsA study specific web-based questionnaire survey was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data according to a convergent mixed methods approach. Data from 252 disaster responders responding to the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria were analyzed using both descriptive and analytical statistics and summative content analysis of free-text answers. Data were collected in March to July, 2023.ResultsThe most used self-care strategies included resting, social support from colleagues in the field, extra intake of food or drink, and intake of medicines. The recovery strategies varied due to previous disaster response experience, indicating that supportive self-care strategies can be developed or learned.ConclusionGiven the extreme conditions and limited possibilities of external support, sufficient self-care is an essential competence among disaster responders. Self-care strategies can be both external processed such as intake of medicines, social support from others, and internal processes such as personal reflection. Providing oneself with self-care activities seems to be a skill developed with increasing experience supported by pre-deployment training. Therefore, to enhance resilience, self-care strategies should be encompassed in pre-disaster response training.

Disaster management training for environmental health: A narrative literature review.

The review suggests that with proper basic training for disaster responders, more lives can be saved during and after disasters. It highlights the insufficiency of current training programmes and emphasises the need for advanced role-specific training for environmental health practitioners. The review emphasises the need for advanced role-specific training, community assessment skills and focused disaster response strategies to enhance environmental health practitioners' ability to respond to disasters and improve public health resilience. Enhanced training, capacity building and collaboration are necessary to improve the competencies, skills and knowledge of environmental health practitioners in disaster risk management and public health emergencies.

Assessing the role of sustainability competencies in enhancing psychological first aid effectiveness for disaster responders in Fiji.

Psychological first aid (PFA) is essential for mental health and wellbeing after traumatic events. Integrating competency-based outcomes is crucial with the increasing demand for effective psychological first-aid interventions. This study examines the correlation between sustainability competencies and PFA principles within Fiji's disaster responder's context. The research was guided by a theoretical framework based on a comprehensive review of sustainability competencies and PFA principles. A cross-sectional survey assessed the importance of sustainability competencies in disaster responders to deliver PFA effectively. The survey used a stratified random sampling method to get diverse PFA-trained participants (66%) and non-PFA trained (34%), aiming to understand how these competencies can impact PFA success in various disaster situations. The survey, encompassing various domains of disaster response and a diverse range of respondents age, gender, and years of experience, employed the Likert scale to assess the importance of competencies such as integrated problem-solving, strategic, systems thinking, self-awareness, normative, collaboration, anticipatory, and critical thinking. The study involved 49 PFA-trained participants (55% female, 45% male) and 15 non-PFA-trained participants (53% female, 46% male), excluding 10 responses from the latter group due to ambiguous answers to critical questions. The correlation between age, experience, and the valuation of professional competencies among disaster responders indicates that disaster responders, with extensive experience and PFA training, rated competencies as "important," reflecting a perspective shaped by long-term career development and practical experiences. Equally, younger and early career responders emphasize competencies as "very important," indicating an initial recognition of their significance. The appraisal patterns across different age groups, especially among those with PFA training, suggest a tendency to moderate assessments of competency importance with increasing experience. Statistical analysis, including mean, median, standard deviation, and variance, provided a detailed understanding of the data, underscoring competencies like self-awareness in both data sets and integrated problem-solving and collaboration within PFA-trained responders as the key for effective PFA interventions. The study underlines the critical need to integrate sustainability competencies into the PFA curriculum in Fiji's unique sociocultural context. This interplay between age, experience, and competency assessment stresses the diverse factors influencing perceptions in the disaster response field beyond experience alone. The results show that sustainability competencies are the ultimate to the effectiveness of PFA measurement and interventions. The research lays the foundation for future studies to develop validated tools for assessing sustainable competencies in different cultural contexts, thereby improving the effectiveness of PFA in disaster management. Integrating these competencies into PFA training could significantly strengthen PFA intervention and competency-based evaluation.

Whose disaster? Disaster response as a conflicted field between cooperation and competition

Disasters reveal solidarity as well as contestation in many different aspects. This article deals with the increasing significance of spontaneous volunteers (here non-official responders to disasters) and the resulting impacts on the established population protection system in Germany. Considering respective changes and differences, it explores subliminal and manifested conflicts among official and non-official responders. Based on a survey among disaster officials (n = 1957), qualitative interviews (n = 12) and workshop outcomes, the findings reveal competing opportunities to participate in disaster response, clashes of logics of disaster response practice, challenges in task distribution, and points of friction due to shared public recognition. This article uses a Bourdieusian lens to analyze these obstacles to cooperation against the background of habitus-related role expectations, shifting dispositions, newly emerging demands for official disaster response, and altered volunteering reward patterns and attractiveness. It concludes with a discussion on underlying hurdles for cooperation among different disaster responders, changing social norms as the significance of non-official volunteers increases, cascading effects of different conflict lines, and effects of societal dynamics on disaster response systems.

Residents’ experiences during a hydrogen sulfide crisis in Carson, California

BackgroundIn early October 2021, thousands of residents in Carson, California began complaining of malodors and headaches. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a noxious odorous gas, was measured at concentrations up to 7000 parts per billion (ppb) and remained above California’s acute air quality standard of 30 ppb for a month. Intermittent elevations of H2S continued for 3 months. After 2 months of malodor in this environmental justice community, a government agency attributed the H2S to environmental pollution from a warehouse fire. Research has yielded conflicting results on the health effects of H2S exposure at levels that were experienced during this event. This research fills a critical need for understanding how people perceive and experience emergent environmental health events and will help shape future responses.MethodsThrough a community-academic partnership, we conducted 6 focus groups with 33 participants who resided in the Carson area during the crisis. We sought to understand how this incident affected residents through facilitated discussion on topics including information acquisition, impressions of the emergency response, health symptoms, and ongoing impacts.ResultsThe majority of participants were women (n = 25), identified as Latina/o (n = 19), and rent their homes (n = 21). Participants described difficulty obtaining coherent information about the emergency, which resulted in feelings of abandonment. Most participants felt that local government and healthcare providers downplayed and/or disregarded their concerns despite ongoing odors and health symptoms. Participants described experiencing stress from the odors’ unknown health effects and continued fear of future odor incidents. Residents sought to take control of the crisis through information sharing, community networking, and activism. Participants experienced longer term effects from this event, including increased awareness of pollution and reduced trust in local agencies.DiscussionThis study demonstrates the necessity of clear, comprehensive, and prompt responses by relevant decisionmakers to chemical emergencies to appropriately address residents’ fears, curb the spread of misinformation, and minimize adverse health effects. Participant responses also point to the benefit of supporting horizontal community networks for improved information sharing. By engaging directly with community members, researchers and disaster responders can better understand the various and complex impacts of chemical disasters and can improve response.

Nurses Taking on Readiness Measures (N-TORM): A nurse-facilitated household emergency preparedness intervention feasibility study.

This research evaluated the effect of a nurse-facilitated intervention on elderly or medically frail community members' level of household emergency preparedness as measured in knowledge, actions taken, and supplies gathered. These community members had access and functional needs that must be accommodated during disasters to mitigate their increased risk of injury, illness, and death because of the disaster. With adequate preparedness, it is plausible these community members may survive the aftermath of a disaster without needing assistance from disaster responders. This was a non-randomized, single group, before-after feasibility study (N = 31) conducted in a one-on-one session with a nurse interventionist in an urban community setting in the United States of America. We used the Household Emergency Preparedness Instrument to measure intervention effectiveness and a Participant Experience Survey to evaluate participant satisfaction with the intervention. The intervention included an educational booklet that provided instruction to participants on how to create a disaster-related evacuation and communication plan and identify community resources. Upon completion of the booklet, participants received a complimentary disaster supply kit. Mean general preparedness scores increased from 5.5 (SD = 4.1) pre-intervention to 20.2 (SD = 3.1) post-intervention (p < .001). Preparedness in all sub-scales also increased significantly (all ps < .001). Study findings provide support for the feasibility of the intervention to increase all measured aspects of emergency preparedness (knowledge, behaviors, and supplies) among elderly and medically frail adults with access and functional needs during disasters.

Social Impacts of the American Red Cross (ARC) Disaster Interventions: A Scoping Review.

The American Red Cross (ARC) self-reports post-disaster efforts annually, potentially biased for public image. The lack of formal reviews of ARC interventions' social impacts further exacerbates the issue. This scoping review aims to address both issues by summarizing and evaluating the social impact of ARC's national disaster interventions. As a secondary objective, this review will also provide important information to guide ARC and other organizations in truly fulfilling their missions. The inclusion criteria involve participants of all age groups, marginalized communities, displaced individuals, and ARC disaster responders. Opinionated statements, except for anecdotes, were excluded. This review involves all United States (US) areas that have been affected by disasters and required assistance from ARC. With no search limits, all evidence was searched on PubMed from July to August 2023. Two stages of screening were conducted by two independent reviewers: title/abstract screening and full-text screening. During each stage, each paper underwent a quality assessment. Disagreements in each stage were resolved before proceeding to the next stage. Through 22 academic papers, the review outlines key themes in ARC comprehensive interventions on disaster preparedness and on-site disaster interventions. However, research gaps were found in ARC recovery interventions, especially their impact on evacuees. This investigation found that ARC makes general efforts to address the needs of communities they assist before, during, and after disasters. Because the results suggest that ARC is moving in the correct direction in reducing the nationwide harm disasters cause, ARC's social impact on studied populations is mostly positive.

Impact of Media Information on Social Response in Disasters: A Case Study of the Freezing-Rain and Snowstorm Disasters in Southern China in 2008

Disaster information content is an objective mapping of disaster situations, social response, and public opinions. Social response to emergency is an important mechanism for implementing and guaranteeing emergency management of major natural hazard-related disasters. Understanding how disaster information content affects social response to emergencies is helpful for managing risk communication and efficient disaster response. Based on the 2008 freezing-rain and snowstorm disasters in southern China, this study used Python to extract 7,857 case-related media reports and applied natural language processing for text analysis. It used three typical cases to identify and analyze disaster media report content and the relationship between these reports and the social response to the emergency. Eight categories of disaster response—such as prewarning and forecasting, announcements by the authorities, and social mobilization—appeared in the disaster information in the media, along with disaster impact information, that is, real-time disaster status. Disaster response information and an appropriate amount of disaster impact information played important roles in prewarning, disaster relief, public opinion guidance, and social stability maintenance and can serve important functions in communicating with all stakeholders of emergency management, assisting or influencing emergency departments or individuals in decision making, and eliminating “information islands.” Empathy caused the general public to become “disaster responders” through receiving information. Rumors and an excess of negative information may have a perverse amplification effect on public opinion and increase the unpredictability of the disaster situation and the risk of social crisis.

재난 대응 직무 요구와 COVID-19 대응 인력의 번아웃

This study examined the impact of job demands of responding to the COVID-19 on psychological burnout among disaster responders. Online survey data from 1163 participants from 17 public health centers across South Korea. Multiple regression and threshold regression analyses were conducted with subscales of the MBI-GS as dependent variables. Explanatory variables were categorized into the unique factor of responding to a novel infectious disease disaster and another factor of increased general job demands related to disaster response. The results showed that the unique and general job demands differentially affected on the disaster responders’ emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and sense of professional efficacy. Furthermore, the relationships of the variables with burnout differed at the threshold of three to four imposed tasks. Agency managers and policymakers should continue to recruit and train specialized personnel on an ongoing basis, reorganize job assignments, and consider avoiding overburdening a single responder during disaster response.

Factors Associated with Behavioral Health Outcomes in Veterinarians Involved in Disaster Responses.

The objective of this study was to determine what factors are associated with behavioral health in veterinary disaster responders. An online cross-sectional survey was distributed via snowball sampling. Results were analyzed using chi-square analyses. Responses from 237 veterinarians were analyzed. Being involved in more than 1 disaster event was associated with higher anxiety and/or depression (43.4% vs 28.6%, respectively), difficulty with relationships (28.1% vs 14.3%, respectively), and a greater prevalence of sleep problems (44.6% vs 28.0%, respectively) compared to only being involved in 1 event. Veterinarians that were deployed longer than 2 months had the highest prevalence of anxiety and/or depression (43.9%) and sleep problems (50.0%). Veterinarians that received behavioral health training before deployment had lower rates of anxiety and/or depression (27.8% vs 42.9%, respectively) compared to those who did not receive training. Respondents involved with depopulation had the highest rates of anxiety and/or depression (66.7%) and sleep problems (58.1%). Factors associated with behavioral health outcomes included the number and length of deployments, receiving behavioral health training, and being involved in depopulation. To reduce the risk of behavioral health outcomes, interventions such as time-off and behavioral health support are needed.

Disaster Prevention and Management: A Critical Review of The Literature

This article explores disaster management, focusing on ethical considerations and fair allocation of relief resources in public health disasters. Disasters require emergency resources to aid and protect affected populations, raising ethical questions about fair allocation of relief funds for speedy recovery. Research in crisis situations presents moral dilemmas, balancing the ethical obligation to protect study participants' interests with the necessity for research. This literature review examines these topics in disaster response and recovery, emphasizing virtues such as caution, courage, justice, stewardship, vigilance, resilience, selfless charity, and communication in catastrophe response. Using the PRISMA method, relevant peer-reviewed articles were selected, highlighting the need for further research in disaster mitigation and management. The paper emphasizes the importance of justice and ethics in crisis situations, underlining the fundamental role of ethics in driving societal changes. Intending to enhance disaster management, this study introduces ethical concepts to stimulate discussions among disaster responders and managers. As an original contribution, this paper provides valuable insights for disaster management students and educators, significantly contributing to understanding the relationship between disaster prevention and management, and offering relevant recommendations to enhance disaster management outcomes.

Nonprofit Disaster Response and Climate Change: Who Responds? Who Plans?

Abstract As weather disasters intensify under the impacts of climate change, an important public policy question is whether the kinds of organizations most likely to provide disaster relief are themselves planning for climate change. A statewide Indiana survey of the leaders of a wide variety of community “social safety net” organizations (N = 467) provides rich descriptive data to understand the realities of local disaster planning as it relates to climate change. Our findings support federal disaster policy in showing first that most of these charities have been or expect to be involved in local disaster relief, either as a primary or secondary mission focus. Charities identifying as primarily disaster responders are much more likely to belong to local emergency planning networks and slightly more likely to plan for emergencies. However, most charity leaders do not acknowledge climate change’s human origins and have not discussed climate change at the board level, with this position strongly related to their understanding of climate change’s potential impact on the communities they serve. And most have not taken some risk mitigation steps. We conclude that the Federal Emergency Management Authority’s national disaster response policy, which relies on the readiness of nonprofits to fill in service roles, does not account for the potential unpreparedness of nonprofits themselves. Policymakers should expand their “whole-community” (three-sector) approach to reinforce local network opportunities as forums for exchanging experience and knowledge, including an explicit linkage between the communication of the science of climate change and emergency planning.

Geo-knowledge-guided GPT models improve the extraction of location descriptions from disaster-related social media messages

Social media messages posted by people during natural disasters often contain important location descriptions, such as the locations of victims. Recent research has shown that many of these location descriptions go beyond simple place names, such as city names and street names, and are difficult to extract using typical named entity recognition (NER) tools. While advanced machine learning models could be trained, they require large labeled training datasets that can be time-consuming and labor-intensive to create. In this work, we propose a method that fuses geo-knowledge of location descriptions and a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model, such as ChatGPT and GPT-4. The result is a geo-knowledge-guided GPT model that can accurately extract location descriptions from disaster-related social media messages. Also, only 22 training examples encoding geo-knowledge are used in our method. We conduct experiments to compare this method with nine alternative approaches on a dataset of tweets from Hurricane Harvey. Our method demonstrates an over 40% improvement over typically used NER approaches. The experiment results also show that geo-knowledge is indispensable for guiding the behavior of GPT models. The extracted location descriptions can help disaster responders reach victims more quickly and may even save lives.

Quantitative Earthquake Loss Estimates the New Frontier

Abstract Since 2003, an early focus has emerged on estimating earthquake fatalities, injuries, and financial losses. This new inquiry is not yet practiced by a majority of researchers, even though one might argue it is the most important question in seismology today. No sensitive structures like reservoir dams and nuclear power plants could be built without a detailed seismic hazard analysis specifically focused on the site. On the other hand, cities near large active faults do not have their building codes determined by rigorous and specific seismic hazard and risk analyses. This contrast is startling. It seems that where mostly money is at stake, it is mandatory to consider deterministic seismic hazard analyses for construction, whereas where mostly lives are at stake, it is not. I advocate that it should be mandatory for every major city near active faults to have the seismic hazard and risk estimated so as to put an adequate local building code and other safety measures in place. To this end, a standard procedure should be defined to assess local earthquake risk in populated areas exposed to earthquake hazards. In numerous countries, the population numbers in villages, as well as the locations and sizes of schools and hospitals, are not known, and some governments refuse to distribute this information, in spite of the fact that it would be for humanitarian purposes. Because the Open Street Map and Open Building Map begin to cover the globe, this missing information, essential for first responders in natural disasters, will become available and will contribute to preparing populations at risk to reduce the impact of unavoidable future earthquakes.

On the benefits of insurance and disaster risk management integration for improved climate-related natural catastrophe resilience

Insurance serves modern society and commerce by pooling risk to reduce the economic impact of disasters. Concurrently, Disaster Risk Management (DRM) scientists, responders and policymakers are co-developing proactive resilience and mitigation strategies with European citizens against accelerating climate-related natural catastrophes. The increasing frequency and severity of natural catastrophes exacerbates the insurance coverage gap by incurring even greater losses for (re)insurers, leading to higher premiums in exchange for cover or the withdrawal of services entirely. This paper presents a conceptual framework for cross-sectoral collaboration between the insurance and DRM communities towards open, transparent and optimised disaster risk management for all EU citizens and businesses. Furthermore, this research identifies key enabling technologies (satellite, drone, artificial intelligence, blockchain) and novel risk transfer mechanisms with the potential to accelerate societal resilience to climate disasters through effective risk management. The study emphasises the critical role of the insurance industry in effective DRM and highlights where insurers could take a more active role across the temporal plane of a natural disaster by engaging in ex-ante interventions to protect those vulnerable to climate change-related risk.

From self‐care to compassion resilience: Extending the model of protective factors for humanitarian practitioners

AbstractHumanitarian practitioners, specifically emergency aid and relief workers, disaster responders, social workers, and crisis clinicians, are at elevated risk of experiencing trauma as a result of their professions. Approaches for responding to the silent pandemic of reactive traumatic stress, including secondary traumatic stress and vicarious traumatization among humanitarian practitioners continue to be inadequate. The current model of self‐care, emphasizing internal regulation and processes to promote positive health, wellbeing, and the ability to continue to support others, is insufficient to best equip humanitarian practitioners with protective factors to stave off reactive traumatic responses to their work. We therefore propose our theory to extend the current self‐care model to include the external focus of compassion resilience and conclude with recommendations.

‘Uncovering hidden struggles among disaster survivors in Tanzania: Are they vulnerable survivors or resilient victims?

Understanding experiences of disaster survivors as they struggle to bounce back from disaster-caused traumatic experiences, requires concerted and focused efforts involving scholars and practitioners. Developing countries like Tanzania accommodate people who after crisis end up living in misery and not completely recovering. Notwithstanding, however, those labeled resilient or vulnerable usually simply portray a distorted 'face value' reality of the struggles endured. Using a qualitative approach informed by a Chordal Triad of Agency Conceptualization, the paper’s main objective is to uncover hidden struggles among disaster survivors. By recapitulating on the previous study conducted in Kagera14, I extend the argument based on ‘mundane’ experiences to enlighten complexities people encounter as they survive multiple disasters. Findings indicate that understanding vulnerability and resilience encounters among survivors, requires scrutinizing reductionist and exceptionist approaches normally applied by disaster responders often for concealed interests. This process produces vulnerable survivors and/or resilient victims. The paper therefore, unpacks post-disaster struggles among survivors considering their real voices mostly as always ignored by actors. I conclude that struggles of people cannot be summed up without a critical examination of their experiences.

Decision-making support utilizing real-time tsunami inundation and damage forecast

In the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, tsunami inundation caused devastating damage over a wide area along the coast of the Tohoku region. Since then, hazard maps for tsunami flooding have been prepared or updated nationwide. These maps assume flooding in the event of a tsunami of the extreme class (L2) with a recurrence interval of 1000 years, in which the top priority is to protect lives. However, once an earthquake occurs, the situation of inundation differs depending on the earthquake rupture mechanisms and its magnitude, so the area of unexpected damage needs to be grasped as soon as possible. Therefore, a forecast of tsunami inundation and damage needs to be provided immediately after the disaster to support disaster responders’ decisions. In this paper, we propose a framework to utilize a tsunami inundation and damage forecast. Specifically, we introduce “recovery levels”, which allow areas that need immediate response to be more easily recognized to allocate human and physical resources. We evaluated their usefulness from the viewpoint of disaster responders by surveying users in a local government through a disaster response drill and an explanatory meeting. Consequently, it was found that the recognition and understanding of the tsunami forecast advanced, and many positive opinions were obtained about utilizing the forecast in the initial activity of disaster response.

Responding to Disasters: Training Can Overcome Issues in Disaster Response.

Training can assist in overcoming gaps in disaster response. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Worker Training Program (WTP) funds a network of nonprofit organizations, or grantees, that deliver peer-reviewed safety and health training curricula to workers across a variety of occupational sectors. Grantees' experiences providing training for recovery workers after numerous disasters show the following issues need to be addressed to better protect the safety and health of recovery workers: (1) regulations and guidance documents not sufficient to protect workers; (2) protecting responders' health and safety which is a core value; (3) improving communication between responders and communities to assist in decision-making and guiding safety and health planning; (4) partnerships critical for disaster response; and (5) greater attention to protecting communities disproportionately affected by disasters. This article provides insight into addressing these recurring issues and utilizes them as part of a continuous quality improvement process for disaster responders that may help to reduce responder injuries, illness, and death during future disasters.