Language Issues and Barriers

Language is the primary vehicle for communicating information that allows individuals to make informed decisions across all phases of a disaster. The effectiveness of educational disaster preparedness materials, emergency response training curricula, emergency warnings, and post-disaster recovery services are all contingent upon information being conveyed in a linguistically appropriate format. For this reason, individuals with limited-English proficiency (LEP) in the United States face a number of barriers to receiving timely, accurate, and useful disaster information, contributing in many cases to disproportionately adverse disaster outcomes. The 1989 Loma Prieta and 1995 Northridge earthquakes, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the 2007 southern California wildfires, and countless other natural and human-made disasters have evidenced perennial language-related issues that pose challenges to LEP communities before, during, and after a disaster.

According to the 2007 American Community Survey, there are an estimated 24 million Americans who speak English “less than very well” and can be classified as LEP. This figure does not include the approximate 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, many of whom are LEP.

The linguistic isolation of LEP communities is often compounded by a number of factors associated with newly arrived immigrants, such as cultural isolation and low socioeconomic status, which further contribute to the disaster vulnerability of these communities.

Prior to an event, LEP communities are often ill prepared for disasters, in part as a result of minimal exposure to language-appropriate disaster education materials and training opportunities. Furthermore, language barriers often inhibit LEP communities from receiving pre-disaster warnings and evacuation orders that allow them to take protective action. LEP communities are also beset by a number of challenges across the phases of response and recovery, as they face communication barriers with first responders and are often unaware of, or unable to obtain, post-disaster recovery aid as a result of the dissemination of English-only information.

The critical need to provide linguistically appropriate services to diverse segments of the population has been formally recognized by government agencies that [Page 380]have produced guidelines and benchmarks, such as the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in the United States, and the Charter of Public Service in a Culturally Diverse Society in Australia. Yet, limited organizational capacity and deep-seated cultural issues have reduced the extent to which such strategies have been embraced in practice at the local level. Community-based strategies to define, locate, and partner with linguistically diverse populations have proved to be most successful in ameliorating language barriers and disparities in disaster outcomes.