Getting my kindergartener ready for bed last night, I was overcome with sadness, anger, grief, frustration. I’m an emergency manager. I work to protect communities from ALL hazards and reduce our shared risk. Also, disasters are not natural. 1/
Disasters are the result of policy decisions, often how and where we build, and the investments we choose to make. Or not to make. We develop mitigation strategies and make recommendations to policymakers to reduce our risk from fires, floods, earthquakes and other hazards. 2/
Some recommendations can be controversial and encompass building codes and land use, and how we interact with the built and natural environment. Want to reduce risk? Change this policy, adopt that code, or amend these laws. Emergency managers must be comfortable with this. 3/
A massacre like the Uvalde mass shooting is by every measure a disaster. So was Parkland, and Sandy Hook and Umpqua Community College right here in Oregon. Emergency managers need to lead policy discussions about reducing THIS risk, one that has taken more lives 4/
than wildfires or flash floods or earthquakes in this country over the past 25 years. We need to advocate for policy change that reduces the risk of 19 beautiful little kids and their teachers being murdered in their classroom. Our mitigation strategies 5/
must expand to include changing policies and laws that allow such open access to weapons that take away so much. We have to step beyond simply installing thicker doors or panic buttons or better locks. That’s setting up sandbags after the river has begun to flood its banks. 6/
We need to assess the entirety of the threat and make bold decisions to effect the changes we demand. We do this for other risks, hazards and threats to our communities. We must also do this for the threat of mass shootings. It is our responsibility. This is our charge. 7/7
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