Disasters Are Different, Therefore Planning For And Managing Them Requires Innovative As Well As Traditional Behaviors

Our major overall theme is that since disasters, as a whole, differ significantly from even everyday emergencies, to plan for and to manage them requires new or innovative as well as traditional behaviors. We discuss this general theme by organizing our remarks around ten general points, with four about the nature of disasters and four about the planning and managing processes required to deal effectively and efficiently with the crises created by such social occasions. (1) Unlike in the past, our knowledge about disasters is now research based; Nature of Disasters: (2) Risks and hazards are myriad and everywhere, but relatively few of them result in crisis situations; (3) Crises and everyday emergencies create different social occasions; (4) Crisis occasions can be conflictive or consensus ones; (5) The consensus crises that are suddenly disruptive of ongoing social life are disasters, either of a major or catastrophic nature; Planning for and Managing Disasters: (6) A problem solving rather than a command and control model of planning and managing is more realistic. (7) Disaster planning and managing are different social processes; (8) Planning is not enough, it has to be good planning, the major characteristics of which are known; (9) Good managing particularly has to deal with the organizational heterogeneity that is distinctive of the crisis time period of disasters; and (10) Social change in societies is a constant that will affect future disasters as well as planning for and managing them