On the same morning that a U.S. Senate committee suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) be abolished, James Lee Witt, a former FEMA director during the Clinton Administration, addressed an international audience of disaster relief and mitigation experts. The April 27 talk was part of a three-day conference organized by the HSPH Department of Environmental Health and held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge.
Witt headed FEMA from 1993 to 2000, a time during which the agency was elevated to the Cabinet level and was generally thought to be effective, dealing with more than 300 federally recognized disasters including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. At the HSPH talk, Witt praised FEMA's response to September 11th. The attacks happened before the agency lost its Cabinet-level status and was folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Referring to FEMA's poor performance during and after last year's Gulf hurricanes, Witt said, "FEMA's problem is not its career employees, but its leadership." He added that he would need to study the proposal to abolish FEMA before commenting.
Witt now heads a disaster management and crisis management consulting firm that includes Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.), former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, and senior staffers from the Clinton-era FEMA. Recently, his group lent its expertise to Louisiana, at the request of that state's governor. Blaming lack of leadership before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, Witt said 1,300 people did not need to lose their lives in New Orleans.
Overall, nearly 200 participants from across the globe attended the three-day conference, convened to identify best practices, develop new frameworks for cross-sectoral partnerships, and generate specific outputs "to minimize the human and financial loss of disasters through strategies of coordinated action." The participants represented many fields and organizations, including research centers, major corporations, hospitals, UNICEF, WHO, and CDC.
Each conferee was asked to participate in two working groups: one examining targets, or types of disaster, such as natural catastrophes or disease epidemics; and one looking at tools that might prevent or mitigate them. Tools might include leadership and accountability, financial incentives, or effective, reliable communication systems.
The participants generated new ideas through discussions, and each group developed a "product" to present for review and critique at the close of the conference. One of the products was a working paper on pandemic flu planning, another timely issue since the White House revealed its latest plan on May 3.
Full reports and recommendations from each working group will be published and made available to the international community.
HSPH Dean Barry R. Bloom welcomed participants on the first day of the conference. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine and former HSPH Dean and Harvard Provost, delivered an opening talk. Other speakers that day included David Gergen, professor of public practice and director of the Center for Public Leadership at KSG, Howard Koh, director of the HSPH Center for Public Health Preparedness, and Barbara DeBuono, senior medical director for public health, Pfizer, Inc., all of whom spoke about the role of leadership in a crisis; Thomas Holzheu, senior economist, Economic Research and Consulting, Swiss Re, and John Odermatt, corporate director of business continuity, Citigroup, lectured on the financial repercussions of disasters; and Tahir Andrabi, associate professor of economics, Pomona College, took up the policy angle.
The second day featured talks by Professor Karlene Roberts of UC-Berkeley, who said that Hurricane Katrina provided a good example of what not to do in disaster mitigation and response; Adrian Fernandez Bremauntz, director of Instituto Nacional de Ecologia, Mexico City, who stressed the importance of training and empowering local governments to mitigate expected and unexpected calamities; Tova Solo, a noted urban specialist for The World Bank, who examined the financial incentives to effective disaster management; and Michael St. Louis, chief science officer for the Coordinating Office for Global Health of the CDC, who spoke about policymaking.
J.K. (Han) Vrijling, Delft University of Technology, delivered a keynote address on The Netherlands project of building a water barrier after that country experienced devastating flooding; N. Hari Krishna, action research coordinator for India, Oxfam America, and Mihir Bhatt, honorary director, All India Disaster Prevention Institute, spoke about natural disasters, while James Shine, HSPH associate professor of aquatic chemistry, and Georges Robichon, senior vice president and general counsel, Fednav Limited, described manmade disasters of alien species introduced to waterways.
John Balbus, senior scientist, Environmental Defense, and David Rejeski, director, Foresight and Governance Project, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, described the potential use of nanotechnology in disaster work. Mary Wilson, HSPH associate professor of population and international health, and Michael Ryan, director, WHO Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response, spoke about bird flu planning.
Salvano Briceno, director, U.N. Interagency Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, delivered a keynote address.
The last day of the conference featured HSPH Professor Jennifer Leaning, who has traveled the globe conducting relief work, and Alan Moult, senior advisor for business continuity, BP.
Joseph Brain, Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology and former chair of the Department of Environmental Health, and Howard Koh, director of the HSPH Center for Public Health Preparedness, co-chaired the conference.
—PHC
Copyright, 2007, President and Fellows of Harvard College
