Local government managers watch the events in Japan unfold with sorrow, understanding the time and effort it will take for the Japanese people to regain some semblance of normalcy. Urban search-and-rescue teams from Fairfax County and Los Angeles are among emergency personnel from around the world who have been helping to search for victims.

For those of us watching from a distance, it’s impossible not to ask, “What would we do in a similar situation to help our communities prepare for, contain, and recover from such a disaster? What can we learn from this catastrophe?”

“As important as preparation is, I’m not sure you can prepare for what the Japanese have experienced,” says Ken Pulskamp, city manager, Santa Clarita, California, and ICMA’s West Coast representative to the National Homeland Security Consortium. “When all is said and done, Mother Nature is going to get what she wants. But better prepared communities fare better.”

As chief executive of the city of Santa Clarita's Emergency Operation Center (EOC), Pulskamp has successfully fostered partnerships and enhanced coordination among various levels of government, business, and nonprofits during response and recovery efforts.  Since Pulskamp started as assistant city manager in 1988, Santa Clarita has had 11 declared disasters, including the 1994 Northridge earthquake; none of those disasters were on the scale of what Japan is experiencing now.

“You need to make sure your organization is prepared,” Pulskamp advises. “You need to do regular drills so everybody knows what to do. In Santa Clarita, we do a lot of training so that when we have an emergency, it’s borderline routine.” He emphasizes that for the drills to be effective, they must include leadership from all teams -- fire, sheriff, haz mat, the city, the county, the hospital, and utilities -- not just the internal city team.

Equally important, Pulskamp adds, is that communities make sure their residents are prepared to go it on their own for at least 72 hours after a disaster. “When an emergency happens, there’s so much that needs to be done right away that individuals can‘t rely on the government to do everything,” he says. “They need to figure out what they’re going to need, such as medicines, water, food, blankets, and a generator.”

Jurisdictions can help residents prepare by providing on their websites or via text messaging an emergency preparedness toolkit,  a list of the kinds of items critical to have on hand when an emergency strikes.

Interestingly, positives can come out of a disaster. “We found that in emergencies, particularly in the earthquake, neighborhoods really come together,” Pulskamp says. “We saw people start to have block parties and share their food and other resources. It ended up being a bonding experience for many neighborhoods in the city.”

Pulskamp says he’s also learned from his experiences that immediately following an emergency “you have to figure out with your team what you can do to take advantage of the situation and assess whether there is an opportunity to do things that you wouldn’t be able to do normally. We ended up coming out of the earthquake in a much better situation than we were in before; because of all the rebuilding that went on afterwards, it was a catalyst for economic development.”

ICMA Resources

The ICMA Bookstore offers valuable resources, including some that are free, to help your community plan for and respond to emergencies. Here are just a few:

Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Government (the Green Book on Emergency Management): The only comprehensive resource and textbook for state-of-the-art emergency management for local government.

What Elected Officials Need to Know About…Emergency Management: A summary of what local officials need to know about the need for integrated emergency management and what it entails.

Disaster Management InfoPak: the best of ICMA's publications, including excerpts from IQ and Special Reports, innovations from Ideas in Action, ICMA’s Green Book on Emergency Management, articles from PM magazine, articles culled from the publications of other organizations, and leads to other resources.

You will find many helpful materials in the ICMA Knowledge Network, including:

ICMA Policy Paper: A Networked Approach to Improvements in Emergency Management: Building on lessons learned from disaster experiences, this paper lays out an ambitious new approach based on a network of partnerships among cities and counties and supported by state governments and a sophisticated database. Updated in 2009.

Integrating 311 into Disaster Response & Recovery: A new toolkit, produced by ICMA and the 311 Synergy Group with technical assistance and support provided by the U.S. Department of Justice COPS Office, features articles, interviews, webinars, and other tools and resources to help communities make the best use of their 311 system before, during, and after an emergency or disaster.

Disaster Recovery: Two Cities Share their Experiences: In this tip sheet, two 311 managers share stories of how their 311 call centers played a pivotal role in the aftermath of the disasters that hit their communities.

And the archives of PM magazine offer excellent stories on the experiences of local governments in responding to and recovering from disasters:

"Disaster Recovery:  A Local Government Responsibility" (March 2009): A good overview of the phases of disaster recovery with a focus on economic development issues.  Includes recent disaster experiences as well as a description of the international response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

"Local Government Professionals Team Up on Disaster Recovery" (April 2007): An examination of Florida local government team's experience in supporting Mississippi communities in their recovery after Hurricane Katrina.

"After the Rescue Workers Go Home" (May 2006): After the immediate crisis passes, the media leave, the rescue workers go home, and the process of rebuilding begins. The road to recovery is long and difficult. How does a community pick up the pieces and move forward?