Episode #32: Indicators of Community Disaster Fatigue

Renae Hanvin

In this episode, I’m talking with Dr. Val Ingham. She’s the Associate Professor of Emergency Management at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales. And we’re talking about indicators of community disaster fatigue. So a little bit about Val, Dr. Valerie Ingham, or Val to her friends lectures in emergency management and is discipline lead for the Doctor of Public Safety at Charles Sturt University. She’s extensive experience in the design and delivery of tertiary level programs in emergency management, fire services, adult education, and community services. Recently, her research has focused on highlighting the importance of local community organisations in building community connections for disaster resilience with a particular focus on her regional area of the Blue Mountains. I like to start with where we met. I met Val back in 2020, just after the bushfires. We had one funding to deliver a project in the Blue Mountains, and I was connecting with local stakeholders from the region.

From the very first minute I spoke with Val, I was interested and enthralled with her focus then on fatigue. Because remember back then, while we had experienced the terrible bushfires in 2019 and 2020, it was before Covid and before this new era of compound disasters. I was really interested in her focus on fatigue and networks and organisations. So I was left with no choice but to ask Val to be part of a white paper that was developed for myself and Professor Daniel Aldrich called Getting Connected, using networks to build Business Community Resilience in the Blue Mountains, which we published in July, 2022 and is available on our website. Val, thank you so much for joining me today.

Valerie Ingham

It’s a pleasure, pleasure to be here.

Renae Hanvin

1. Now let’s start with, can you tell our listeners about your interest and focus on fatigue?

Valerie Ingham

Yes, I can. A long time ago, after — it sounds like the start of a story, a nursery rhyme, back in, back in the day, back in 2013, a bushfire swept through the lower mountains, blue Mountains in New South Wales. And was involved in a project which was interviewing vulnerable people in disasters. And as we went around, interview very, very vulnerable people who had carers with them. And as we’re, you know, organising the research and moving around the community, gathering our focus groups and whatever I realized the people I was really interested in were the leaders, the community leaders who managed the programs and the organisations that these vulnerable people participated in. And so I started a project, that looked at interviewing them to see how they were coping with the increase to their workload due to that bushfire.

Well, so I interviewed these people with a colleague, Sarah Rachell in 2014, and we began publishing our research, and we formed a connection with those community groups. And then when various subsequent disasters hit, I rushed out with my ethics form of business case and my interview equipment and interviewed these community leaders. And I have to say, I was absolutely shattered because in the first series of interviews after the very first fire, they were, they were buoyant, they were full of plans, they were putting in place programs, they had a myriad of ideas, funding. And after two or three crisis events, these people were worn out, ready to quit, and on the verge of retirement. And I thought, something is wrong here. Something is not quite right. And so we began looking at the successive impacts of disasters, what we call cascading disasters, where, where a community hasn’t had a chance to recover from the previous disaster before the next one strikes. So they’re going into the second disaster under-resourced, tired, and depleted. And when you talk about community resilience in that state it’s it can be quite confronting. You can begin to see disaster fatigue, which we define as a breakdown of community resilience.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah, it’s such an interesting space. And I, I guess it’d be interesting to be out there interviewing people now because obviously, you know, when you started back in 2013, et cetera, I mean, that, you know, that’s like a decade of disasters and impacts. But I really like that, you know, choosing the leaders, I guess, too, because again, there are so many people in communities who tend to be the ones who put their hands up all the time for all the volunteering or all the help, or all the leadership. So if they’re fatigued, then it’s just gonna seed into sort of through the community more, isn’t it?

Valerie Ingham

It certainly is, and especially when you get to the business sector, because people just automatically assume those leaders can just step in, step up. You know, they might have lots of employees, so we assume they’re wealthy and they can just use their own resources. It, it’s really quite confronting when you see the effect on local businesses in these cascading disaster situations. So, frequently you will find a business leader will step up, but to the detriment of their own business, their family, and their personal health and wellbeing. Yeah, it’s, it’s a new situation. I don’t, I don’t think we can say we’ve confronted this in our community, that we’ve confronted this in previous decades. I think there is an increase in the veracity and veracity and frequency of crisis events, which we relate to climate change. And so it’s not gonna change. It’s just gonna speed up and get worse. So we need to do something about it is where I’m at.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I’ve got, I mean, I worked with a few Victorian communities and post the bushfires as well, and there’s one particular small business, a business guy. He owns the local store, and he was also captain of the rural fire service or CFA in Victoria. And he literally, his business basically went under because he was out volunteer firefighting to kind of seek, keep the community safe. So you talk about that fatigue when people are out there saving their communities and yeah, they have their, their businesses that are threatened kind of at the same time. But that’s a whole other conundrum to talk about now. I love that. And you know me so well and, and my own passion about business communities, which are really core to my heart for what I do.

Renae Hanvin

And I’m really focused on the role that business people play before, during, and after disasters.

2. So with the work that you are doing, and when it came to fatigue in the Blue Mountains, what did you specifically find with business people?

I mean, aside from they had to try and, you know, deal with the shocks and keep their business open. Was it something that, was it because they were dealing with customers as well, so they were taking on kind of other people’s concerns. They had to, you know, look out for their employees as well, so they were, they were trying to manage their own fatigue and their own situation of the disaster around everyone else’s as well.

Valerie Ingham

Yeah, look, what we’ve seen is we’ve seen a myriad of things happened. Some businesses just cut their losses and closed some businesses looked at alternative means of operating. So for instance, one, well, one NGOI guess you couldn’t really call it a business, but they, they hadn’t been on, they they moved to a cloud platform and trained their workers so they could work, operate from anywhere. I think some diversified, but you know, these leaders are just ordinary people. And when you become punch drunk with one success of disaster after another, which you know, could be of any magnitude, you can begin to disengage as a means of self-protection, you know, you and distance yourself. It’s a natural mechanism for self-protection. And when it becomes, when you become reliant on it as a person, as a coping mechanism, it then can go into really dark places and you end up with PTSD.

Valerie Ingham

And so I think there are some hurting people in our community, but by the same token, there’s a new generation of really young folk who’ve started innovative businesses that are mainly, well, they rely on a digital platform, quite innovative. And so you do see this sort of turnover. I know in my community there’s still empty shops, boarded up places where people have, I mean, it’s, it’s really hard to believe, but the, you know, the local stationary supplier who’s been around for, you know, a hundred years actually closed. And for me, that’s an indication that local businesses are suffering because us walk-ins ordinary members of the public, you know, we are just play money really. They’re their real source of income is other businesses who require their stationary supplies. And to see the closure of that store, I thought to myself, well, that is, that’s one sign of the health of the business community. And it’s frightening.

Renae Hanvin

It is frightening. You’re absolutely right. And I think there’s, I guess, a myriad of reasons why businesses close and, you know, the impacts that all types of disasters have. So it’s not just, I guess the, the natural hazards. So it’s not just the bush fires or the floods, I mean, you know, the real interest rates, you know, cost of living crisis, I mean, cyber attacks, covid, et cetera. It’s literally hitting, all of us, but I would say business people in particular from all levels. And I read a report the other day from the, federal ombudsman actually, and I think the statistics, they were quite staggering. I think it was close to like 50% of small businesses were operating at a loss. So if you think about like a small business really operates to bring in a livelihood for the owner and for their employees, and obviously contribute to the local community. But if such high numbers are operating at a loss, I mean, that, that’s, you know, that’s not good for anyone either. So I guess, Val, given you’ve been doing some great work over a decade or so in this space, what’s the magic formula?

3. So how does community fatigue evaporate and what can we do to help communities get through, or I don’t even know if that’s the right thing to say. How do we help them evolve from fatigue or turn around from fatigue? What value do you think would come to fatigued communities if there was a greater focus on people connections?

Valerie Ingham

Well, look, I’ve had a number of ideas and some of them I’ve seen not because I mentioned them, but implemented in various ways and places. But I think, one of the issues you face with a magic formula, is that it works when people know about it. But see, the issue, the real crux of the matter is in, in downtime, in peace time, when there’s nothing untoward happening, all the networks and connections that have been made in the, you know, shoulder to shoulder of a disaster, whether you’re a ordinary member of the public or a community leader or a business leader, you move on to the every day. And those networks can fall into disrepair. And I think one of the things we need to think about is how to hold those networks in place and grow them in peace time.

Valerie Ingham

No one’s solved that problem yet because you can keep meeting, but if you’ve got nothing to talk about, then you don’t go anywhere and people drop off. So I think, bearing that in mind, I think we have to include business leaders, community leaders. And by that I mean, could be the local football coach, you know, whoever is willing to stick their hand up really as a leader. We need them to be consulted in emergency planning stages. And I think business is a huge resource, which is completely emitted. Currently, our local emergency management planning committees in New South Wales are legislated to have, you know, all the uniform personnel represented. And the very large charities like the Salvation Army and the Red Cross, they get a seat at the table and they can speak, but they can’t vote. But community is seen as someone to consult, not to engage with as an equal.

And I think Victoria’s moving a long way towards rectifying that situation. And Queensland’s got something in place too, but some of the other Australian states were really lagging behind. And so I think the very first building block is engaging community as a genuine stakeholder, not ticking a box that you told them about something. And so they’ve been consulted. Yeah, the problem is, of course, that that’s time consuming. It doesn’t happen overnight. There’s arguments. Not everyone agrees, but, but in the end, you’ll end up with something a lot more stable that people are committed to and can enact and not just wait for something to happen to help them. I think the other mechanism is we have to think about surge funding. And the analogy is the emergency services, when they, when, you know, they have various levels of a crisis, and when, when they reach a certain level, things kick into place.

4. What’s the magic solution to prepare communities on how to deal with fatigue when we know there are many more, and multiple disasters ahead?

Valerie Ingham

I like to say, you know, the pizzas arrive at lunchtime, bells ring, volunteers turn up, and they have a very well-oiled machine of replacing people at the front line, in the community sector and the business sector. That’s a foreign concept because they don’t have the financial resources to do that, or the resources to replace themselves in a disaster so that they’re freed up to manage their, their business or their organisation while someone else steps in and manages the every day. Because you gotta remember a fire goes through, the business may not be burned down, but the clientele are affected. So it’s the implications and the complexities are huge. And I think until we have some kind of surge funding capacity for business and for community, we’re just gonna be behind the eighth ball because businesses and communities, while they should be in, you know, in a recovery mode, they’re locked away in an office applying for funding and there’s 6 million pages and half the documents are burnt or just gone down the river, it’s just an impossible situation. And I think if there was some plan to finance, or how you would be financed in that initial recovery space, I think recovery would be a lot quicker. It wouldn’t be prolonged. So that’s my magic two bullets.

Renae Hanvin

I, so I so agree, and I really like the surge funding. I think I’ve heard you say that before. And I think from my perspective too, I mean, you know, business people in communities really are the untapped golden nuggets. I mean, they live in those communities, they work in those communities, they employ people, they purchase from other businesses as suppliers. They sell to local people in the communities as customers, and they’re, you know, often they are the, you know, sports club, coaches or presidents or whatever. So I think if we, again, understand who they are, and as you say, invite them into the conversations so that the development of preparedness plans are co-designed as opposed to like, I don’t even, I think consulting is probably a, a loose term because so many times it’s like, oh yes, we sent a survey out, we asked them, and you know, tick, we tick the box, we did that output.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah, but they’re not interested in what’s in the survey. But that might, you know, have to change their opinion or their policy or program of how they do something. So to me, kind of the current focuses of engagement are very much, as you say, it’s like a tick the box outcome, which to me is very tokenistic. It’s, and token in my mind is broken. So there really is some progression that can be kind of made. And I think we, I mentioned in the introduction that you collaborated with Professor Aldrich and myself on the white paper getting, connecting, using networks to build business community resilience in the Blue Mountains, and we focused on business networks. And it was quite alarming the research that we found from that, that people kind of connected in business, but they don’t really, they didn’t really know why.

And I guess that, you know, if that’s the sentiment across the community and the business community of the Blue Mountains, it’s like, yeah, well we’ve kind of connected in the past and we sort of do it, but we don’t really know why or what the benefits are. I think it’s really fundamental that the sector of disaster preparedness and response and recovery pushes and puts focus on communities to build and strengthen those connections before, because we know then that that’s gonna save lives and that’s gonna help in the recovery and the response time as well.

5. From your fatigue lens how do networks strengthen or foster fatigue?

Valerie Ingham

Yeah, I think you’re right, Renae. And one of the ways that the first building block that a group, an organisation or a community, you know, whatever can do is to incorporate, resilience within their mission statement so that they’re going to focus on, on the longevity and, and resilience of their business, it to strengthen it for times of disaster and adversity. So it’s not a knee jerk reaction when something happens. It’s almost part for the course. Well, we, we planned and we prepared for this. And I, I think that’s one thing we can all take away, but, it does take resourcing to do that, and it takes commitment. And I think that that networking connection that you just mentioned, where people are like, happy to eat the sausage rolls and listen to a speaker, but they’re not quite sure what they’re meant to be there for, what they’re meant to get out of it, I think that can form a bit of a focus.

Valerie Ingham

And I like to think of it as a weaving, you know, you get, you get some really loose woven fabrics, especially home spun, and then you can, you get some really tight fine linen. And I think we just have to think flexibly that in times of ordinary everyday life and living in business and community, we’re that loose weave, but we are connected. And when a disaster strikes, we tighten up into that fine fabric. You know, we move in situ close together, arms linked, ready to face that, not on our own, but as a group strongly connected. But I think the missing link is how to make those connections and keep them going before there is an unscheduled event.

Renae Hanvin

I love that. I’m not gonna be able to look at my napkins the same way now, I’m gonna be, you’re a tightly woven piece of cloth. You are ready for a disruption, but I think you’re, so that’s, that’s how I roll. I think you’re so right, Val, and I guess a lot of the work that we do is about, you know, we purposely do business community resilience, so, you know, it’s all fine for one business to get ready, but we want everyone to be thinking differently and doing differently. And as you said before, it’s, it’s in your just everyday business as usual. And whilst I was presenting in well, I was presenting online up in Lismore recently, and I was presenting to community organisations and I talked about the elephant in the room because, I mean, you alluded it to it before, saying a community organisation is, is not really a business.

Renae Hanvin

And I, I actually disagree because community organisations have to run as operating entities. So you have to be in business, you just don’t wanna make a profit. And I think there’s so many ways for businesses and not-for-profits. I mean, you are all, you know, you all have essential operations and there’s all things that are gonna impact your business or community organisation from being able to do what it needs to do to stay in business, ie continue serving the community and, and bringing in livelihoods. And I think for me it’s about connections. But it’s also, as you say, it’s about conversations. And we are doing a lot of work with some communities around facilitating drip feeding conversations that the communities can have. And it’s problem solving. So it’s not just talking for the sake of talking, but it’s like, here’s an identified issue in your community. Here’s the conversation that you need to have with council or with state government or with the emergency services. So off you go and you know, you drive it. But here’s the, here’s the question or situation that needs to be solved.

Valerie Ingham

I think that’s really important that in, I think when you, you can hand that over to the group, you know, you cut down on a lot of lengthy processes, really, this is the issue now. You are the best placed group to go and research and address it. Because often people don’t know what that issue is. They’re operating in their own orbit. And it’s not ignorance, it’s just where people are at, you know? Yeah. I think one other thing we could consider in the future, which I alluded to before, it’s sort of been implemented here and there, is connecting people for disaster recovery. And by that I mean, say for instance, you have a high school principal, whose school is affected by a fire, whether it’s the students themselves or the school part of the school burnt down or whatever.

Valerie Ingham

Now there’s a whole lot of red tape bureaucracy that principal has to comply with. There’s a whole lot of psychosocial issues in the classrooms with the kids. There’s parents, there’s communication. It’s a whole lot of things. Now, if it was possible that that principal could be connected to someone anywhere, another state, another place, another location who’s been through a similar disaster, who can actually be a leaning post for them, can speak frankly with them about what to expect in the future, but can also listen to that leader’s angst, their concerns, their worries. Because when I was interviewing these people, one of the major concerns they had, they were looking after the people under them, their staff, their volunteers had programs and goodness knows what else, counseling and everything, but they themselves felt, they couldn’t confide in anyone within their location, within their geographical landscape. Because if, if anyone got wind of their concerns and what they were worried about, it could set the cat among the pigeons, you know, for the recovery. And so I think it’s important to have somewhere else to be able to communicate and vent and be mentored through that situation. And you could be the leader of a sports club, a principal. You could be a playgroup leader, you could be anyone really, and be able to benefit from that kind of mentoring scheme.

Renae Hanvin:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Valerie Ingham

An idea at the moment.

Renae Hanvin

No, and I think, I mean, we set up just after the bushfires, in fact, we’ve still got it. Somewhere we set up helper small B, which was basically a mentoring and, you know, I remember directly because of the issues with the businesses on the Blue Mountains, how the businesses weren’t impacted except for the fact that no one was coming. So we set up some matching kind of program which enabled business people say they just had a physical store and they wanted to go online. We’d match them up with someone who could help them teach them and show them kind of what they needed to do to get online. But I think yours is, it’s the same sort of concept, but it’s really, to me, it’s that lived experience. You wanna match with someone who’s got experience that can help you as the leader, because you’re right, you are giving so much to all the people around you, under you working for you, serving into you, et cetera, et cetera, that you need that help as well. Now I could talk with you for all day, but I always end my final two questions. Sorry, my final question. You probably already kind of answered this one. So just super quickly.