Episode 6: Disaster Relief with Daniel Sledge and Herschel Thomas

Hello and welcome to episode. We’re not actually sure what the episode number is of the Policy Agendas podcast.

I’m E.J. Fagan. I am joined today by Christine Bird. Hey. And Brooke Shannon, hello.

We’re recording at the Southern Political Science Association conference. The reason why we don’t know what episode number it

is is the paper we’re going to talk about today. It’s currently under embargo. And so this might

be coming out in a few months, might be coming on a few weeks. We actually aren’t all that sure. But today

we are joined by two authors of the paper from Disaster Response to Community Recovery.

non-Government Entities, government and public health response. Actually, I don’t

you don’t know the end of that of that of that subtitle, but it is authored by

from the University of Texas at Arlington, Professor Hershel Thomas. A.J., thanks for having us. And

Professor Daniel Sledge, Asia, nice to be here. Yeah. Thank you guys for joining us. This this paper is this project

is is exciting. So, Daniel, I wonder, can you. Can you explain what project we are talking

about today and kind of where it came from? Yes. So this is a project that

Hershel Thomas and I have been working on for about a year and a half now. It’s very heavily

focused on the role of non governments or entities. So nonprofits,

businesses and religious groups and how these entities identify

and attempt to fill in gaps in government’s ability to respond

to disaster. So I have a longstanding interest in non state service provision.

And Hershel Thomas, of course, has a longstanding interest in groups

and following Hurricane Harvey. We became really interested

in disaster response. We applied for and received a grant from the National

Science Foundation and we proceeded to do field work in Houston,

in Florida, in Puerto Rico, in Northern California and in

Southern California. And this project came together very, very quickly. I understand.

So did you guys pretty much started this as Harvey was was happening? Yes, sir.

Harvey, it happened. The NSF put out a call for proposals.

We started preparing our proposal. And during that time,

Hurricane Irma happened after returned in the proposal, Hurricane Maria

happened. Even later, the fires happened. So it ended up being

a situation where we had intended just to study Harvey,

but ended up with five cases that are geographically disparate.

Have political different political contexts and allowed for a significant amount

of variation, allowing us to do what I think is actually a pretty good analysis

of disaster response and relief. Hershael, I’m wondering, can you describe what you were doing

in these locations? So you traveled to all the locations that Daniel just mentioned. So you get there. What

are you what what’s your next move? What’s your action? Yeah. So that the way that we conducted

the research was essentially we created lists of organizations, not give us entities

that were involved in disaster response. We did that through looking at media articles,

through lists of early grantees, from community foundations, from a list

of organizations to donate to. So we compiled those names. And as as we’ll get

to we conducted a survey of all these organizations and in the process

of doing the surveys we then contacted either followed up with

or while our survey was in the field, contacted organizations to interview our there.

And we also contacted government officials ranging from emergency management officials

to elected officials and set up interviews. Semi-Structured interviews while we’re

here. There in the ground. On the ground. And so the interviews tended to

be much longer and more in-depth than we originally planned and said that the content that we have

fifteen survey responses. And so the breadth of the data that we’re able to collect in a very short time is

really impressive to us. Sorry to interrupt. We had some great experiences on the ground with

interviewing in terms of snowballs. So, for instance, would be somewhere in

Florida and mentioned to someone that we want to talk to someone in a different town. And

there were a few times that people just got on the phone and called someone. We got in the car and drove over and

talked to them. That’s amazing. So what did you find out? So what what are your what are your big findings

from from this? I mean, really massive data generation process, yes

or no one. When people think about disaster response,

when people think about disaster relief, they tend to think about the government. They

tend to. Think about FEMA. The things that FEMA does and

there’s a lot of pressure on governments officials. But

in reality, the response. The role of nongovernmental

entities in this response is absolutely critical, so if you look at the National Response

Framework, religious groups, businesses, nonprofits, according to this

response framework, just play a crucial role in

things. That response would not be possible with that. So that’s number one

on our list, the findings. These organizations are really important. I think number two and

maybe very critically, these organizations are able to

see things that government is not able to see. These organizations are

very often embedded in communities, are aware of where

the most vulnerable, vulnerable populations in those communities might be and are

able to engage in outreach that often government is not able to

engage in. So, for instance, undocumented workers in Texas

or Florida, these are people who, for pretty obvious reasons, are not excited

when federal or even state officials show up and say, hey, we’re here to help.

Right. These nongovernmental entities, however, are able to identify

where these people are. They’re able to reach out to them and they’re able to

engage with them and enjoy their trust. All right, so

there this is a big project. Generally, we’re talking about a specific paper right here. Before I kind of move on to

that, I want to ask Trey. Mitch Daniels, a public health guy. So I understand where the project

is from a public health standpoint. You’re one of us, right? You’re a political scientist. You state policy agendas. Where’s

the politics in this project? Yeah, I think that the one thing it’s really nice to be back in Maisie’s Hall with

you. All the the the thing that I find really interesting about this project is

now we’re looking at the politics of disasters in terms of

government’s capacity to respond and what these energy e’s are able to to do in terms of filling

in gaps in capacity. And so for me, it’s very much a public policy project

that looks at public health, but it also looks at disasters and applies

all these things together in a project that we think, you know, can really help the response

and recovery from disasters in the future. All right, so what

we’re going move on real quickly and talk about the paper. So I think there’s a there’s a lot of interesting findings

in this paper. I think the headline fine that we have to talk about first is the inequality of

these nonprofits across geographic locations. So I’ve got a graph in front

of me. This is a podcast. Some is going to do that. And that’s the graph. You can trust me that it exists there.

I can when you guys explain it. Yeah. Explain to me what’s on this piece of paper that I’m wrestling right now. So this

this graph shows the was it the weighted nonprofit

assets per person in by county? So what what findings here? Yes. So

in the course of doing our fieldwork, we started to realize how

across these different geographic areas. And talking to many different types of organizations

ranging from civic groups all the way through international relief organizations that are very professional and fly people

in that. When you look at the capacity of these groups across space,

you see a lot of variation in their capacity. And so to generalize that

and look at that in more detail, social scientists, we downloaded information

from the IRS business master file, which has information about nonprofits in their

reporting of assets to the federal government. And so we took those data and we match them with

the FEMA list of counties for the areas that

were affected by the five disasters we looked at. Our paper and we combine that with census data

on population growth across counties and Puerto Rican municipalities and

essentially created a measure of nonprofit capacity across space for these

affected areas. And the graph that you’re looking at, I can’t see it’s hidden, but

the graph that you’re looking at essentially shows that if you look across space

and across counties within a region, that you see high levels of variation

in capacity. Right. So the conclusion there is it matters where you live if a disaster affects

that area. And this is really important because as Daniel mentioned, the National Response Framework calls

and expects these organizations to do a lot. And the implication there is that if they expect to do

a lot and there’s a high variation in capacity across these areas, then

it can really have high implications for response or recovery for individuals. And the big outlier

among California, Florida, Texas, here’s Puerto Rico that you showed. So I know Brooke had a bunch of questions about Puerto Rico, some

they handed over to you. Yes. On this graph. It’s really visually apparent that Puerto Rico has

zero capacity. And most of the places there’s one higher

level area which we assumed was San Juan bacharach’s really assumption. Yeah,

we just assumed because it’s like the only big city. But how in y’all’s experience, how did

resource provision, service provision. And then just like the story of Puerto Rico. How does that differ from

a big metropolitan area like Houston? What are the resources available? And then is

it just as as simple of a story is that Puerto Rico’s an island? It’s not a state.

And what’s happening there with promesa, et cetera? Yes. So the National Response

Framework assumes that people at the local level from these in g.e.’s will step

up. As I think our graph makes abundantly clear. There are many areas

where these Ingeus just don’t exist, as you’ve suggested. Puerto Rico

is a major outlier on this on this point. San Juan is actually

somewhere in the middle of all those little dots. And I believe

the municipality that sort of really stands out has a big Mennonites mission

in. And that’s the nongovernmental entity that’s present there.

So, yeah. I think that that with both Puerto

Rico. The interesting thing in terms of what we saw when we were there. Right. Is that

we saw that graph I must play out in person and that some areas

had very little. I mean, if you read the news reports, it kind of verifies that also that some areas

just had very little nonprofit existing nonprofit capacity. Of course, there are nonprofits

there. They just tend not to have large amounts of assets like other areas that we studied.

Right. So like the local is that you all saw, especially in some places, diverse,

diversified, I guess, Puerto Rico. Is it like American Red Cross? Is this like the big

energy like example or like local nonprofits? Are we thinking about like churches just

feeding people? Like what’s the variation in which all thought? Yeah. So we talked to a variety of nonprofits

there. We talked to some people who’d previously been working with the homeless, for instance,

and expanded their mission to include all people within the communities. We

talked with people from a big disease advocacy group in general.

The Puerto Rican story is sort of similar to the story everywhere else. It’s just

the case that there are far fewer resources there. And there was a preexisting

situation in which, you know, Puerto Rico has been bad off for fifteen years.

Right. The argument that we make in the paper is that

it’s not just that the federal government fell through.

It’s that the federal government’s plan for responding to things like this

assumes things that just are not present in Puerto Rico. And the

geography of Puerto Rico, obviously, you mentioned Houston is significantly

different. So a lot of Puerto Rico is mountainous. Many

of the places that we went and talked to people in had become inaccessible

even for months following Maria. Obviously, electricity was out there

for months following Maria. So the situation you mentioned,

E.J., claimed that I was not a political scientist earlier. I will push back against

that slightly public health guy.

You know, I think the politics do matter a lot in Puerto Rico, right? It’s a

commonwealth, essentially a colony of the United States since 1898.

They don’t have voting members in Congress. They aren’t able to vote in presidential

elections. And Raul, including me, political scientists. So

we assume that elections matter. Right. And that government is somewhat responsive

to the needs of citizens. And in this case, Congress, you know, just to be honest

with you, has no electoral incentive to respond to what’s going

on in Puerto Rico. The president has no electoral incentive to

respond to what’s going on Puerto Rico. So I think if we did not include that as part

of the reasoning for what happened there, we would be very mistaken.

How did Puerto Rico what was Puerto Rico strategy with the federal government

in terms of political response? I mean, was was it the was Puerto Rico simply asking and

begging for for for help from the federal government was a weapon? What were Puerto Rican represented by members of Congress

and maybe a majority Puerto Rican, you know, mainland districts? Well, yeah. What is the situation? So

there we’ve done a little bit of research into this, into this. And we sort of floated

the idea of doing a paper on this. But there is some evidence that members of Congress

from districts with significant Puerto Rican representation,

for instance, the Bronx or Harlem in New York City, is ragers with

really large Puerto Rican populations. We also found on the ground

in Florida that the governor at the time of Florida, Rick Scott, was very

involved in the issue of Puerto Rican refugees

in Florida. And, you know, we heard from people on the ground over and over again

that Governor Scott was doing a fantastic job on this issue. And at some point,

I asked someone why exactly this was. And we were told that Governor

Scott plans on running for the Senate in the near future. And he did and

he won. Governor Scott planned on running for the Senate and was trying

to shore up the Puerto Rican vote in Florida and also ensure that these new

voters in his state would be at least potentially within his coalition.

And so he wasn’t just helping Florida, Puerto Ricans in Florida be in Florida. He was he was

projecting into Puerto Rico itself. Representing them there. That’s correct.

I think that some that that that is fascinating. I think I’d love to see you further further work

on that. I know what these projects going with. That would be very cool, Christine. We want to talk a little bit about

a broad disaster policy more broadly. And Christine has some experience with this. Yeah,

I’m from Oklahoma, just up I-35. And so we have these things called tornadoes

and they happen several times a year. Some of them, you know, being up to a mile wide.

Some of them being very small, but causing a lot of damage. And I was wondering how

you see the process of disaster response amongst nonprofits changing where communities

experience these more chronic disasters. So they have more experience to

address. They have the capacity because they do it so often. So Oklahomans know how

to clean up after a tornado. I’m wondering why you guys think about that. Yeah, we actually saw some of that

during our fieldwork. Right. So. And in Houston, we talked to people who had some experience

coordinating with each other during previous flood events. And so they already know knew who is who,

how to contact each other. And they had a system set up to do that. We talked to people

in California that because of a previous earthquake,

that they had set up a community organization action disaster and

had essentially a coordinated body already in place, that when the fires happened in that county, they were

already prepared to to respond. And so that the learning that’s involved with disasters

happening now, like you said in Oklahoma, tornadoes, you know, creates a a sense

of, you know, salience that that you see in the types of organizations

and in coordinating mechanisms that are in place. You know, we talked to people in Florida who

said, you know, there hasn’t been a major hurricane like this to hit Florida for 10 years. And so we are a bit rusty.

Right. And so almost everyone we talked to said that the FCC that play out. And that was really

fast. And I think that, you know, having multiple disasters, of course, it’s unfortunate

occur so close to each other, allowed us to really get a sense of variation. And

that allows us to draw the conclusions we’re talking about. Yeah. Do you think these responses are limited

to just natural disaster phenomenon or do you think it can be these types of coronation efforts can

be used to respond to these and the rise in mass shootings that we’re seeing are

other public. That’s a public health event. Yeah, it’s a really good question.

So we do think and we have not done specific research into this, so I can’t

make any particular claims. But we do think that a lot of the stuff that we’re doing is generalizable

to things like, say, pandemics, terrorist attacks,

mass shootings, the the ability of these organizations to coordinate with

each other and with government, at least in my mind, is something

that should translate across different events. It sounds like you translate against all right.

Around things that are not even public health or pandemic issues

like people activating a network for fire based on earthquake like

that. Sounds like community organizing. That sounds like social. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it was the

the Napa County versus Sonoma County in California distinction was an amazing

one. We went to Napa County. Everyone believed they’d done a fairly good job of coordinating

with each other. Everyone attributed this to the creation of this community

organizations active in Disaster, a group that had been coordinating beforehand.

Then we went over to Sonoma County and we heard the exact opposite. Right. We know

that in Napa County they had this co ad and we know that we did not do

as good a job as we might have had we had this resource. Is

is there something to learn there from my Pozzi recommendation, is there something that the state and

federal governments can do to encourage these organizations? Is that something that can exist outside of places where disasters

occur frequently? So, you know, when Superstorm Sandy Sandy hits New

Jersey. Is it their fault for not having a go at or is that some leaders would never expect

to be dealt with? Definitely. I don’t think it’s their fault for not having a phone call system down

upon them. I’m from New Jersey. So my people in New Jersey. I mean, [INAUDIBLE]. You know, it should.

They should every 10 years. These organizations exist outside of places like Oklahoma

or Florida or Houston. So one, I think it is very difficult mentally, right,

for people to anticipate these sorts of events when people don’t want to think that there are

going to be subject to a fire or an earthquake or a terrorist attack. Right.

I do think and we suggest in the paper that it makes a lot of sense for

the federal government’s in coordination with state governments to do everything

that it can to fund these organizations, these

volunteer organizations, active in disaster organizations at the local level in

every single county across the United States. Right. Every county has churches,

every county has businesses. Every county has some sort of nonprofit.

And unfortunately, every county at some point is going

to be subject to something. And it’s really, really

hard for people to prepare in advance. But if there is an infrastructure

in place, it can allow for coordination both within these groups

and with governments. And we think the outcome in that case is going to be significantly better for people.

And at the state level and at the state level, there are Vlade organizations in national Vlade

and through that organization there are state equivalents. Right now what we’re talking about, what we recommend

in the paper is that the funding and support and capacity building at the even more local level,

at least from our fieldwork. Right. And our surveys, it seems that building capacity

at the smallest level possible such that organizations who are already there,

right. Not in a few counties away or at Texas, a very big state. Right.

And that are very far away can be there and respond and already know

who’s who and things like that. This is really important for areas like Puerto Rico

that have really low nongovernmental entity capacity. So we think

that in a place like Puerto Rico, where there are not significant assets

for these nonprofits, having this sort of coordination in place

is going to boost the ability of these nonprofits to perform effectively

when something like this happens. It’s also the case we suggest in the paper that for

these outside groups that come in when a disaster happens, having something

like a voluntary organizations active in disaster group might allow them

to plug in to the locality and coordinate with people who are already there

rather than duplicating services, wasting time, money and effort, which

is something that unfortunately we saw a lot of guys have a great quote in the paper that I highlighted that

loved it, loved to report here, which is you’re referring to community indebtedness.

One person I interviewed was working at a I think at a church. It sounds like

and says that because of our location on the church grounds, people in the community trust that this is a safe

place for them to come. We didn’t need to advertise that we were disastrous. Eight people know and they just show up.

I mean, is that is that typical? I mean, is it you know, but before the before FEMA’s there, before

Feltl Garment brings in emergency money there, the response has already started in the

immediate aftermath of the disaster. The response and the recovery have started. And

there’s always a lag between when federal money becomes available

and when the disaster occurs. In that instance, I think is really notable

and interesting because the model there, this is a small town, inland farmworker

town in Florida. They’re the people in the town

knew this was the place to go. Right. As I’m the Catholic Church grounds

and other places. We saw non-profits, non governmental entities that went

out and tried to find people. Right. So there are two different models, right? People coming

to a place or you going out and trying to map and visualize

where a need is. And the former is much more efficient, you think?

Well, I’m not sure that I can make that argument. I think it probably depends on

where you are. Right. So this is a small town where a very

large percentage of the population is undocumented. A very

large percentage of the population was not willing to deal with federal or state

authorities. So I think in that case, going toward a door,

trying to identify people is probably going to have

almost adverse consequences. Right. People trying to avoid help.

So I do think that in this particular instance, having that model worked well. We’ve talked a little bit about

governmental energy entities and nonprofits. I think, Christine, one ask little bit about that. Some other people might they might be involved.

Yes. I I I think this project has some definite undertone undercurrents of political

economy story. So I was reading through this paper and the thing that jumped out to me

is. But what about the insurance company? So insurance companies will show up in these

places. They send teams out to start processing claims and all that, all that sort of thing.

But I wonder, in the aftermath of these disasters,

how does this incentivize the way a community is rebuilt? And I wonder if your faith, what it fieldwork

has reflected. Christine, I love this question. I’m not sure if you’ve

read the paper that we’re doing here at Sutter and ours in two hours. And I had a discussion

time that he says the discussion on, but it’s actually called the political economy of disaster.

So the American Journal of Public Health article that we’ve been talking about a little little bit today

is really focused on response. Right. Our work going forward is going to

look both that recovery and long term recovery in the short run. We

see a lot of these church groups, nonprofits, businesses

who don’t do disaster response stepping up. But in

the middle term, it’s contractors, insurance companies, people like that

who have, you know, a profit motive. Right. Who step in and begin doing

a lot of the rebuilding. And I think you are absolutely right that understanding

the political economy of this is critical to understanding disaster

recovery and long term disaster recovery. And we’re

just starting on this research. So I don’t want to make any major claims about it.

But we think that the political dynamics of response are very different

from the political dynamics of recovery and long term recovery response.

There’s a lot of media attention, political attention to what government is doing. Right.

Recovery. It’s not politically salient in the major actors

are people like insurance companies, people like contractors, all of

whom tend to be fairly good at lobbying Congress, lobbying federal officials

in maintaining the status quo, maintaining their position within

the political economy of disaster. Yeah, I think this is really interesting, because if you drive through

neighborhoods in a community like Denham Springs, Louisiana, which has just been recovering from

a huge hurricane right before the year before, Harvey, you’ll see for sale signs

everywhere. And people are not rebuilding because they didn’t have flood insurance. You didn’t have FEMA money.

And so, you know, how does that affect the overall home prices? This has a lot broader

effect. Yeah, from what I anticipates, I look forward to reading this paper, but

probably not in the next two hours. And one of the figures we have in the paper is media attention to

individual disasters where we search for each of the the five that we’re talking about in New York Times, Washington

Post. And what you see is a dramatic spike in attention. Of course,

when the disaster is happening and then immediately decays and there is hardly any attention,

and then a year later, you get a small like a quarter bump and then back to

very low levels of attention. But as you mentioned, and as is common knowledge,

disasters have impacts that last for many, many years. And so that

the policymaking and the advocacy and organizations involved,

we think that recovery is something that is really important to look at. And

so that’s we’re doing this. And the second follow up paper. Yeah, well, I’m going to start wrapping this podcast

up to the last couple of things I want to ask you guys about recommendations. So what have you read

in political science, either in disaster recovery with your current work or just something else that you think is worth worth

mentioning that our listeners should read?

Political science books don’t have a Star Trek on. And our our

current paper, the one in two hours. You know, there’s there’s a few that really stand out.

Literature and policy change in disasters. Thomas burkland book. There’s actually a panel

and about half an hour looking at that. The follow up to that book, Lessons, Lessons

from Disaster, that looks at a very kind of policy agenda as agenda setting,

focusing events, view of disasters and their impacts on lobbying

and policy change. Baumgartner now focuses on advocacy and maintaining of the status quo.

And so that’s something that our follow up paper we’re really kind of basing our work on. And then

Patrick Roberts has a great book on disasters that focuses really heavily on FEMA

and the federal government and takes Rubin APD approach. Course, you all should also read my

book, Health Divided. Fantastic. Thank you

guys for joining us. This has been a great episode. Thank you, everybody, for listening. I don’t know when you were listening to me.

So all these half hour, two hour things, just remember that was back in January. But other than that, this has been

your Policy Agendas podcast.