'The Devil Never Sleeps' makes the case for disaster preparedness in a changing world

'The Devil Never Sleeps' makes the case for disaster preparedness in a changing world

　　Transcript¹

　　NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to author Juliette Kayyem, a former Homeland Security official, about shifting crisis management from how to prevent a disaster to how to minimize its consequences.

　　STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

　　Homeland Security analyst² Juliette Kayyem says she grew up expecting disaster. It was a side effect of living in earthquake-prone California.

　　JULIETTE KAYYEM: We were prepared in ways that seemed so normal, and that's how we need to get with all disasters now. I mean, we did earthquake drills. We had a list of everyone's phone numbers. I knew where to walk to if I was away from home. Those are the kinds of investments that we can make on an individual level.

　　INSKEEP: The former Department of Homeland Security official is making an argument for a particular kind of readiness - prepping for an age of more frequent disasters, which she writes about in a book called "The Devil Never Sleeps."

　　KAYYEM: In an age that we are in where disasters are not random³ or rare, we basically need to learn to fail safer. And I think that's inevitable⁴, but I also think that it is hopeful because it will help save lives and curb⁵ destruction.

　　INSKEEP: Are you assuming that the world is changing in a way that will make disasters more frequent or feel more commonplace, at least to Americans?

　　KAYYEM: Yes. I mean, and I look at the numbers. I mean, if you just take a three-year period, from 2017 to 2020, the United States had seven what we call hurricane disasters. So that's over $1 billion in damage. That total was about $335 billion of damage. In all of the 1980s, there were six, and their damage was just about 38 billion. And this is all, you know, adjusted for inflation. So you can just see in the numbers alone that we're suffering these disasters and consequences because of the changing climate, because how we live and our connectivity, which is, you know, both a blessing⁶ and a curse. And so they will keep coming. And it's not just the climate disasters; it's the cyber disasters and, of course, what we've experienced the last couple of years with the pandemic.

　　INSKEEP: So what do we do about that?

　　KAYYEM: Well, I think - I mean, part of it is redefining success. I'm in a very simple profession. I often say what we do is not rocket science. You know, we tend to divide the world into just two phases, right? There's right and left of boom. And the boom is agnostic. It could be a cyberattack, a terror attack, a pandemic. And left of boom is all the things we try to do to prevent the harm, and right of boom is all the stuff we do to try to recover. And success is generally viewed as, can we stop that bad thing from happening? And failure is when we can't. And I think now we need to prepare for disruptions, that sort of moment of the boom as a common phenomenon and view success as whether those preparations essentially⁷ led to less harm and destruction than might otherwise have occurred.

　　INSKEEP: So we don't prepare to prevent a disaster.

　　KAYYEM: Yeah.

　　INSKEEP: We prepare for the inevitability⁸ of disaster. And you go through some case histories from different countries. What did a Japanese nuclear disaster about a decade ago show you about preparedness?

　　KAYYEM: Well, this is interesting. Well, everything I do was interesting. Let me go back. So we...

　　(LAUGHTER)

　　INSKEEP: It's good to feel that way about your job. But go on.

　　KAYYEM: No, OK, so let's go back. So the Fukushima nuclear meltdown happened in 2011, and most people who think about the earthquake and then the tsunami⁹ and then the meltdown, you know, are sort of narrated¹⁰ as well. Nuclear energy and nuclear facilities are inherently unsafe, and that is true, but we do a lot of things that are inherently unsafe. We get into metal tubes and fly across the country or across the world.

　　And what I didn't know until more recently was that there was actually another nuclear facility, Onagawa, just down the street from Fukushima. It was hit harder. It was closer to the epicenter. It also suffered from the tsunami. But because the people at Onagawa prepared to fail safely - they understood that they could respond to something, some disruption, and avoid the worst, which was, of course, radiation meltdown - they were prepared for it. They built for it. And they had emergency response features that were very, very sophisticated so that in the moment of that boom, when the water was coming, the Fukushima folks sort of stood there and just watched the water come over the facility, where the Onagawa folks were ready to shut it down. So the difference between a radiation leak and a not radiation leak is the lesson learned. And they were ready to fail.

　　INSKEEP: Is there something about human nature that makes it hard for us to prepare?

　　KAYYEM: Yes, absolutely. And we have a name for it. It's called the preparedness paradox¹¹. It is the - you know, the more we prepare for bad things, the less the destruction is, and then everyone wonders, why the heck were we so prepared, or why did we need to get prepared? The best example of that is, of course, Y2K, when the computers switched over to 2000. There was a lot of focus on getting the computers ready because we didn't know if they would, you know, go to 0000 or the year 1000. That effort was actually successful because nothing happened on January 1 when the computers changed to the year 2000. Looking back or the narrative¹² of Y2K, it's often described as being an overreaction to a threat. The reality is it was because the preparedness worked. So we call that the preparedness paradox because you never can win.

　　INSKEEP: And you've got another example that gets to this question of preparedness and the human difficulty of being prepared. You compare the 2004 tsunami that devastated¹³ Indonesia and lots of other places with a later occasion when there was a tsunami warning. What do you get from that?

　　KAYYEM: I didn't know much about tsunamis¹⁴ before the 2004 devastation¹⁵, which killed 250,000 people in the moment...

　　INSKEEP: Yeah.

　　KAYYEM: ...When the waters hit shore. And common sense would have us believe that, well, if you were close to the water when the tsunami was coming, you were dead, and if you were further away, you could survive. And going back, that actually turned out to not be true, that older communities on the shorelines, villages that had been there a while, understood how to read the ocean. When the ocean goes still and the waters start to recede¹⁶, they say run for the hills. And so they understood what was happening. For newer villages and immigrant villages and, of course, tourists who are in hotels, they see the water recede, and they think it's a curiosity. It's a, you know, interesting phenomenon. And so when we went back, it showed that proportionally, those who understood how to read the oceans survived in greater numbers. So what do you do if you're that country? Well, you say, OK, I better tell everyone that when the waters recede, run for the hills. So you saw significant changes in information and education.

　　So fast-forward to 2011. There's another major earthquake in the ocean, and they don't know whether a tsunami is coming. So the alarms go off. They start communicating to people, and people start running for the hills. Fortunately, there was no tsunami, but it was a test of that preparedness system that showed we actually can't stop the tsunami, but if it had hit in 2011, lots fewer people would have perished. That is success. And that's how we have to view it in an age of disasters.

　　INSKEEP: Juliette Kayyem's new book is "The Devil Never Sleeps." Thanks so much.

　　KAYYEM: Thank you.

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 analyst   

n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家

参考例句：

• What can you contribute to the position of a market analyst?你有什么技能可有助于市场分析员的职务？
• The analyst is required to interpolate values between standards.分析人员需要在这些标准中插入一些值。

3 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

4 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

5 curb   

n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制

参考例句：

• I could not curb my anger.我按捺不住我的愤怒。
• You must curb your daughter when you are in church.你在教堂时必须管住你的女儿。

6 blessing   

n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿

参考例句：

• The blessing was said in Hebrew.祷告用了希伯来语。
• A double blessing has descended upon the house.双喜临门。

7 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

8 inevitability   

n.必然性

参考例句：

• Evolutionism is normally associated with a belief in the inevitability of progress. 进化主义通常和一种相信进步不可避免的看法相联系。
• It is the tide of the times, an inevitability of history. 这是时代的潮流，历史的必然。

9 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

10 narrated   

v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Some of the story was narrated in the film. 该电影叙述了这个故事的部分情节。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Defoe skilfully narrated the adventures of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. 笛福生动地叙述了鲁滨逊·克鲁索在荒岛上的冒险故事。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

11 paradox   

n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物)

参考例句：

• The story contains many levels of paradox.这个故事存在多重悖论。
• The paradox is that Japan does need serious education reform.矛盾的地方是日本确实需要教育改革。

12 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

13 devastated   

v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的

参考例句：

• The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
• His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。

14 tsunamis   

n.海啸( tsunami的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Our oceans are alive with earthquakes, volcanoes, and more recently, tsunamis. 海中充满着地震、火山，包括最近发生的海啸。 来自常春藤生活英语杂志-2006年2月号
• Please tell me something more about tsunamis! 请您给我讲讲海啸吧！ 来自辞典例句

15 devastation   

n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤

参考例句：

• The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
• There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 recede   

vi.退(去)，渐渐远去；向后倾斜，缩进

参考例句：

• The colleges would recede in importance.大学的重要性会降低。
• He saw that the dirty water had begun to recede.他发现那污浊的水开始往下退了。