Cultural Norms and Religious Laws

As in the preparedness phase of the emergency management cycle, emergency managers, rescue team members, and medical service providers must be sensitive to the cultural norms and religious laws of the victims to avoid adding further stress during disaster response. For instance, some cultures require unmarried men and women to live separately, so disaster emergency staff could create significant trauma by asking men and women to stay in the same quarters. Emergency workers could also cause stress if they provided pork products to strict Muslim or Orthodox Jewish victims, whose religions strictly forbid the consumption of pork. Racial and ethnic issues might also come into play during disaster response. Emergency shelters might need to shelter people of different races and ethnicities, unintentionally placing incompatible groups in proximity and initiating conflict. In these and other potentially difficult cultural and social circumstances, emergency managers, staff, and volunteers must be ready to coordinate among people with varying backgrounds, needs, and expectations.