An example of the high stakes in not thinking error avoidance is the same as “risk management” (major read)

I

Friends are telling us wonderful things about their recent move to a rural area in the Pacific Northwest. They were also surprised, given all the rain, about the high fire hazard risk mapped for their area and nearby environs. As in California, such maps created political and insurance company push-back. And there are methodological issues in mapping fuel loads in the absence of not knowing point-of-ignition information in advance.

So what to do? In their case, they talked about how they and neighbors agree in advance to help each other should a wildfire threaten (ignited, say, by vehicle sparks along the roadside). If one neighbor was threatened, all would move to that site to help out.

Such self-organizing happens all over the world and there is nothing extraordinary in this example, except one thing that deserves highlighting.

What is going on here (and I suspect many other examples) is not managing the risks associated with fire hazards so much as avoiding known errors when faced with fire hazards, whatever their risks. More formally, risks are to be managed more or less effectively in an emergency; errors in contrast are to be avoided—not more or less, but categorically yes or no. 

II

And what errors are these? They include the need for robust communications among the neighbors and the need to have firefighting tools and associated equipment distributed and accessible beforehand. This may or may not be in our friends’ case. In addition, it is hoped that they and other residents use their county’s hazard mitigation plan to seek federal and state support for improving their lifeline infrastructures (water, electricity, roads and telecoms), should fires and other disasters actually undermine them in the future.

Ensuring more robust communications, more dispersed equipment and tools, and greater use of existing planning and funding mechanisms are opportunities that must not be missed, if they already exist. In fact, it is an error not to take advantage of them.

And why is that distinction important? It implies that there should dedicated support and staffing to assist such locality-based error avoidance, in addition to and separate from risk management efforts, not least of which being those fire hazard maps.