Opinion by L. Vance Taylor, Chief of the Office of Access and Functional Needs at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services
I’ll never forget when my phone rang and I was told we were activating in response to the imminent failure of the Oroville Dam, the tallest in the United States, in the Sierra Nevada foothills north of Sacramento. I’ve never seen our State Operations Center as busy as it was that night in 2017 when we coordinated the evacuation of about 188,000 people. It was the largest non-hurricane evacuation in US history.
And for some individuals with access and functional needs, it was a nightmare.
One of the impacted jurisdictions had, as part of its emergency operations plan, outlined a process to provide accessible transportation resources to individuals who needed them. Unfortunately, nobody from the emergency management team had told the accessible transportation provider that they were part of the plan. So, when the evacuation order went through, the drivers evacuated the area, leaving behind a fleet of accessible vehicles with no one there to operate them.
Imagine being in that situation. All reports indicate that a dam failure is going to send a 30-foot wall of water downstream through your community and, because there’s no memorialized agreement in place with accessible transportation providers, you have no way of getting out.
Meanwhile, you see your neighbor, who got the same evacuation order at the same time you did, quickly toss a “go bag” in her car, hop in her vehicle and drive to safety.
That experience highlights one of many barriers within emergency management: Individuals with disabilities must face and overcome unconscionable hurdles to have the same chance at safety and security following disasters as people without disabilities. The neighbor who is able to quickly flee can take this for granted, because those without disabilities enjoy the benefits of a system that was designed with them in mind.
No two disasters are ever the same — hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, earthquakes and floods hit with varying intensity, strike diverse landscapes and are amplified to different degrees by climate and countless other factors. Yet virtually all disasters have one critical commonality: They disproportionately impact individuals with access and functional needs, such as people with disabilities and older adults.
Historically, as a nation, we haven’t done a very good job of integrating access and functional needs into the way we plan, prepare, respond to and recover from disasters. For individuals at greatest risk for negative outcomes associated with disasters, the results have been devastating.
This hard truth was put under a bright light during Hurricane Katrina, when 71% of those who passed away were older adults and a disproportionate number of victims had disabilities.
Keep in mind, that was the toll of one disaster in one state.
Now, think about this: We live in a country with more than 336 million people and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one out of every four of us has a disability and, per the US Census, about one out of every six people in our country is 65 years of age or older. This, coupled with an increase in the number, scope and severity of disasters impacting the nation will, without meaningful action to integrate access and functional needs throughout the emergency management process, result in a catastrophic increase of human suffering and loss of life among those deemed to be the most vulnerable among us.
Continue to CNN's website here to read the full article: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/07/opinions/disabilities-disasters-challenges-failing-taylor/index.html | 
