Responding to Black Swans: Why Ordinary Citizens Matter

By Simon H. Okoth

Given the frequency of natural and man-made disasters and the degree to which ordinary citizens find themselves as first responders, this book offers some well-researched answers to the following and frequently asked questions:

What motivates ordinary citizens to (or to want to) assist others in danger even when their own lives might be at stake?

To what extent do human emotions influence public policy and administrative decisions on how to mitigate, prepare for, and respond to catastrophic events?

How can governments better prepare for emergencies knowing these facts?

The book goes further to suggest a number of strategies for policy makers, communities, and individuals to protect human lives and property. Tool kit URLs for preparing to different types of emergencies are included.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512787238

Simon H. Okoth

Simon H. Okoth, PhD, is a professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University. His scholarly interests include international water rights, comparative public policy, and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in international relations, comparative politics, comparative social policy, politics of developing areas, development and underdevelopment, international political economy, politics of the Middle East, government and politics of Africa, public policy analysis, and the practice of public administration. His teaching has taken him to a number of countries, including Afghanistan (American University of Afghanistan), Saudi Arabia (King Saud University), and United Arab Emirates (Zayed University). Dr. Okoth previously worked for the U.S. Peace Corps and American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Copyright © 2017 Simon H. Okoth.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-8724-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8725-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8723-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017907689

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/25/2017

To my children, Amy, Jona, and Jesse; grandchildren, Mazen Alexander, Ellie Josephine, and Kito Valentino; and loving wife, Elizabeth.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter 1 Citizens’ Responses To Emergencies: Some Explanations

Chapter 2 What Makes Humans Unique

Chapter 3 Potent Instinct At Work: Global Examples

Chapter 4 Potent Instinct: What The Numbers Say

Chapter 5 Emotional Influence On Policy Response

Chapter 6 Incorporating Ordinary Citizens

Chapter 7 Recommendations

Appendices

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

A number of people contributed to the final product of this book. First, I am grateful to Angelica Bega of the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University for meticulously proofreading the manuscript. To graduate teaching assistants Brittany Keegan, a PhD student, and Bradley Corallo in the MPA program, both of Virginia Commonwealth University, for their initial edits, I am also thankful. I also appreciate Jesse Okoth (Traybien) with whom I debated this subject from time to time. His thoughtful questions triggered deeper thoughts both below and above the surface. To my daughter, Amy, who occasionally called me in the evenings from work to ask about my progress and insisted that I read over the phone what I wrote that day; her insights helped improve the arguments. I appreciate the comments by and understanding of the First Lady Elizabeth. Her challenge to my assumptions often led to additional research and introspection. Thanks to my students at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and Virginia Commonwealth University who shared their views on related issues. I am equally indebted to all those who participated in the survey I conducted in Abu Dhabi, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and Kenya. The data collected helped answer some of the intricate questions debated in selected chapters of this book. The publishing staff that rectified the somewhat messy draft into a readable format, you deserve the biggest of kudos.

Preface

One Easter weekend in 2000, my wife, Elizabeth, my brother James, his daughter Hilda, and I were driving from Nairobi, Kenya, to the western city of Kisumu, a journey of about five hours. Upon completing the drive across the floors of the Great Rift Valley and beginning to take the descent through a rather winding road from the tea plantation neighborhood of Kericho town, a private vehicle overtook us at a high speed. Before long, I noticed the same vehicle in a standstill position behind a truck parked on the opposite side of the road. I immediately alerted my passengers and slammed on the brakes. We got out and ran to the car because the vehicle appeared to have been involved in an accident. After forcing the doors open, we noticed that the driver had passed on, as his head lay motionless on the steering wheel. We left him intact and decided to remove the passenger from the front seat and laid him on the ground. Next we carried three female victims, who were still alive, from the floor of the backseat and laid them out next to the other victim. My wife waved down private vehicles heading in different directions in order to seek help. Fortunately, with the kind response of motorists, the ladies were rushed to Kericho District Hospital, some twenty minutes away, and the surviving man to Aga Khan Hospital in Kisumu, another ninety minutes away to the west. After we had reached our destination, the following day we decided to check on the condition of the victim at the Aga Khan Hospital, only to learn that he had passed on before arrival. As we later came to learn, the ladies had recovered at a Nairobi hospital. We were fortunate to meet two of them by their hospital beds later that month.

Almost two years later, my wife and I were driving from Western Kenya back to Nairobi where we lived. Hardly ten minutes’ drive from Nakuru town, which is midway between Kisumu to the west and Nairobi to the center of Kenya, we noticed a passenger bus involved in a serious accident. Human bodies were strewn all over the field. Since it had just happened, when we reached the scene, some passengers appeared motionless and were probably dead, others were writhing in pain, and some seemed alive but maimed and simply staring. After parking our vehicle on the side of the road, we rushed to the scene and tried to assist in any way we could. Fortunately, several private vehicles had stopped to provide assistance to the victims. At the scene, we found one lady in pain, whom we brought to a Nakuru hospital. Upon arriving in Nairobi that evening with contact information of her next of kin, I managed to trace her husband and provided him with the details about the accident and of his wife’s medical condition.

In 2010, my daughter, Amy, was involved in a car accident on her way from Baltimore to work a few miles outside of Washington, DC. A light truck ran a red light and rammed into her vehicle while she was waiting at the intersection. Within minutes, smoke engulfed her car as she struggled to get out. Passersby who witnessed the incident ran to her rescue and, on finding that she was able to speak, instructed her to stay put, as help would come soon. They were right. Someone who had seen the incident through an office window called 911, and within five minutes, a police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck were at the scene. She was then rushed to a nearby hospital where she recovered from emotional shock. Note the difference: the passersby did not pull Amy out of the vehicle but told her to stay put, something we will revisit later in this book.

I have heard of similar stories from people I have met. Strangely, four years into my college teaching in Virginia (United States), Kabul (Afghanistan), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), and Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), several newspaper and televised reports about ordinary people assisting victims of catastrophic events began to attract my attention. Consequently, I asked myself: what leads ordinary people like me, regardless of their locations across the world, to instinctively jump to assist others in distressful and harmful situations? I began to argue in my mind that there must be something intrinsic that unites us, we humans, to respond to emergencies that are potentially harmful to others. When I posed the same question to my family at a dinner table to see what they thought drove humans to assist others in danger, the unanimous response was, a natural feeling, but I wanted to know more. Subsequently, I decided to conduct a systematic investigation as to why this is so. That is the genesis of this book.

The central thesis of this book is that unpredictable disasters (black swans) are happening on an unprecedented scale, that ordinary citizens often are the first to help (potent instinct), and that official preparations and responses have been dangerously inadequate. How can governments better prepare for emergencies knowing these facts? The partial answer to this big question lies in the incorporation of ordinary citizens in emergency preparedness as the likely first responders. Another related question to which this book explores some answers is, how can the same instinct that drives ordinary people into assisting in emergency situations drive movements for broader political change in response to tragedy? These questions can be collapsed into three and framed as follows.

1. What motivates ordinary citizens to (or to want to) assist others in danger even when their own lives might be at stake? I hypothesize that potent instinct (PI) drives ordinary citizens to assist those in danger.

2. To what extent do human emotions (or PI) influence public policy and administrative decisions on how to mitigate, prepare for, and respond to catastrophic events? I hypothesize that human emotions have the tendency to influence political and administrative decisions about how and when to prepare and respond to catastrophic events.

3. How can governments better prepare for emergencies knowing these facts?

It is my hypothesis that, given the tendency of emergencies to overwhelm the administrative capacity to respond effectively and on time, agencies will improve their effectiveness by incorporating ordinary citizens into emergency plans, creating supportive structures and equipping them with basic skills and tools."

Central to this book is the number of cases gathered from different parts of the world that show how human instincts or emotions can drive ordinary people not trained in rescue operations to assist those in distress or danger. These narratives collected from newspaper reports and published materials, as well as from analyzed data of a survey conducted in 2012, seek to show that humans are naturally inclined to rescue others in danger not for some intrinsic or extrinsic reward but because it is the right thing to do. It is the power of what I call the potent instinct (PI). This is the natural force in humans that urges an altruistic reaction to assist those in danger.

Although social research, particularly in psychology, is inconclusive about what drives humans to help others even when their own lives might be at stake, narrative evidence across nations supports the view that it is the instinct that stimulates our altruistic behavior and consequently causes a sympathetic response to those in distress. There are, however, some exceptions, such as the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed repeatedly on a street in Brooklyn, New York, while witnesses ignored her cries for help. It took more than forty-five minutes for a neighbor to finally call the police. In another example, a woman was gang-raped in India in December 2012. She was left writhing in pain by the roadside while screaming for help, but no one stopped to assist.

Although the reluctance to help those in life-threatening situations might invariably be explained by the circumstances, cultural norms, existing local laws, or by the nature of the situation, two schools of thought have debated this rare side of human behavior. One school of thought argues that the reluctance to provide assistance is most common in larger cities where witnesses think there is a greater chance that someone else will help. The second school of thought states that the opposite seems to be true. In smaller and less populated towns, passersby will most likely respond to the needs of a victim without much hesitation. This book focuses on the more common response, the instinct of those near an incident to rescue others in life-threatening situations, whether in bigger cities or smaller ones, rural villages or market towns. The bystanders are the true first responders, before professional rescuers arrive on the scene because we typically associate firemen, police, paramedics, and so on as first responders.

Although the term emergency response in its wider sense means putting preparation plans into action, as well as damage assessment, search and rescue, and even sheltering victims, this book uses the term specifically to denote actions taken by a bystander (not trained in rescue operations) to save lives and to prevent further injuries sustained by victims of an emergency.

The book is organized as follows: chapter 1 begins by examining some theoretical explanations as to why humans are driven