Unity and resilience never mattered more
Extreme weather means communities must respond to crisis together
It’s weeks before Christmas. Uptown Manhattan, NYC. I’m in a room full of frighteningly extraordinary people: religious leaders who practise the art of disaster chaplaincy.
Spiritual caregivers, they are angels of hope to victims of mass trauma. I am the only Canadian in the room and the sole participant not affiliated with a religion. I have travelled 560 kilometres for this two-day “disaster chaplaincy” training, run by the National Disaster Interfaith Network (NDIN), where religious leaders learn how to prepare to serve in emergencies. They have witnessed the terror of 9/11, the horror of Sandy Hook and Orlando shootings and seen the devastation of hurricanes Katrina, Harvey, Irma, Maria.
I am filled with their brightness. We seem worlds apart.
While they place themselves in the thick of it, ministering to the griefstricken, I am on the periphery. I have only recently started engaging Hamilton faith groups in preparing their houses of worship as neighbourhood hubs for extreme weather preparedness.
Faith communities responding to mass disaster is far from a new concept. And with the increasing severity of extreme weather events, emergency management departments are starting to look to a broader, crosssection of faith and communitybased organizations for support in all stages of the disaster sequence. Across North America, there are groups like Mennonites Disaster Relief, US Episcopal Relief & Development and the National Disaster Interfaith Network, doing this work.
In Brampton, where the 2013 ice storm left 20,000 homes without power for days and overwhelmed volunteer agencies, the Emergency Management Office, led by manager Alain Normand, has set up a program that is currently engaging with 21 multi faith groups, to train them in emergency preparedness response. Looking to Brampton for leadership and mentoring, the new pilot, also called the Lighthouse Project, is a program between a number of groups including (Environment Hamilton, Faith & the Common Good and CREW Toronto) to create a support network for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton region.
I’m looking for what can bring our worlds closer together. Where are the overlaps, where are the intersections? So I focus on our shared commitment: taking care of people.
I learn that to care, we must seek to understand one another, because we will meet all kinds in the field.
To understand one another, we can find points of commonality, such as a common language. However, the use of military words in the context of caring strikes me as discordant: “deployed” and following the “Incident Command System,” and “chain of command” seem counterintuitive. But there must be a process. If not, we risk worsening the situation and putting people in harm’s way with our good intentions. Having a plan in place for who does what is key.
Resilience, on the other hand, is a word that I easily grasp. The chaplains talk about affected people being able to bounce back, to adapt. In terms of houses of worship and faith communities helping their neighbourhoods be more resilient, we must first know our neighbours.
Documented experience from cities that have struggled through extremes of flooding, ice storms, drought and heat, shows that what’s central to making communities resilient is their social capital: the local residents and workers who organize before, during and following shocks and stresses. So who are our neighbours and how to we meet them?
As houses of worship, learning about the many different cultures builds relationships and social infrastructure that can nurture networks of support and connections that we can draw upon when a disaster strikes. This is one way to grow trust as the foundation for shared action.
Extreme weather hubs can be where minds meet, to exchange ideas and share information.
Over the two days, we talk at length about “the gift of presence” in a time of horror. In the context of neighbourhood resilience and the role a faith group can take on, presence is the equivalence of a welcoming physical space. As well we can carry out practicalities, such as doing assessments, knowing the evacuation routes, what systems are in place in the community to keep us safe. Connection is what we want above all.
It’s been a month and a half since the training. My sister in Santa Barbara, Calif., has had to evacuate her home twice. First, because of the Thomas fire, and more recently because of the winter storm and the flash mudslides.
At home, we’ve just come out of a deep freeze and are heading into another one.
The world is getting smaller and smaller as the effects of climate change impact all our lives. And the need for community resilience has never been more pressing.