A good primer on Disaster Response

[nadinbrzezinski]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8466595.stm

Why can't our media do this?

Oh wait, that would detract from they aren't doing anything.

By the way... read this, in case of another Katrina sized disaster in the US... what you read there is what will happen.

Of course they also are missing the part when the LOCAL National Red Cross puts a call to Geneva...

In the case of Haiti, probably handled by the ARC advisers already on the ground. We have the logistics, and communications, and as long as the formality of a letter of request is filled by the local Red Cross... pretty much red tape CYA.

[Hekate]

1. KnR

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Thanks extremely good summary as well

:-)

[galileoreloaded]

3. Listen, my company has contracted to UNHCR in the past......

and I get the idiosyncrasies. But you HAVE to admit that at a minimum the expectations were managed very poorly here, and at best, the lessons of Katrina were not absorbed. (re: expectations, actions)

I appreciate your desire to educate, but unfortunately, it becomes more than something you can look at the textbook and comment about, it has crossed to the political. Through what, unfairly or fairly, will be seen as inability to act, and bent through the lens of unlimited resources. That scares folks, especially folks who assume wrongly that given a similar situation, unlimited resources will be spent on them, because they are Americans.

I spend over 40% of my year in Mexico, and I know you have served there. What I think you are missing is the "expectation of perfection" that exists here versus Mexico. From my experience, lose a limb save a life IS perfection in MX, while here in the US, a 4 minute response time from incident to an engine or helicopter is the expectation (and norm).

You MUST see your audience through their lens, not yours.

Thoughts???

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. You mentioned Katrina and Katrina also did a lot of damage to the American psyche

see the 1927 great Flood for the closest to what Katrina did.

It burst that bubble of perfection and people do not see the actual problems in what is an extremely complex operation.

And to be brutally honest what CNN is doing is feeding this, because they are not telling people a lot of what is actually going on in the field.

Now I have actually had to call EMS in the US, for my dad... and later on sent a scalding letter to the medical director... you think they violated protocols, did they ever. I did not call a lawyer. I sent a letter, and they have, from what I understand, corrected those ahem issues.

If this had happened before Katrina... I suspect the reaction would not be as loud... truly.

and there are reasons for that.

As to mexico... save a limb, save a life... 20 years ago, yes... not now anymore.

Why? The Mexico City quake. It literally went from willy nilly and "training" to a solid civil defense system... No I did not have some of the gear, but that is another story.

[shireen]

5. very good article, thank you! nt

[lazarus]

6. nice summation

our media has been simply horrible. I'm harassing Cox to get us some foreign media in San Diego.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Time Warner did in Hawaii

we had BBC, Seutche Welle, Mexican TV... CNN-I, not the same animal...

And of course Japanese and Taiwanese that I did not understand, and CBC

I got spoiled. Here in San Diego... well... at least I get the TJ Station...

These days I scour the media.