Would you prefer an organized, professional response in two days, or an impromptu Walter-Mitty-wants-to-help response in an hour? I don't think it's ever feasible to rely only on professionals for response to wide-scale events like this. You need neighbors helping neighbors.
Think about whatever naturally sourced neighborhood disruption strikes your area. For us in New England, it's snow storms and ice storms. In a snow storm, I go shovel/snow blow out some neighbors sidewalks and/or cars. In an ice storm, I'll help clear the sidewalks near my house of fallen branches because I have the time and equipment to do so. I'm not about to sign up and attend year-round training or drills on disaster response, as I have other things to do. Instead, I'm going to fire up my chainsaw or snowblower as/when/if I see it's needed to help someone who can't reasonably help themself and when I'm not reasonably needed at work anyway due to the scale of the event.
I'm on a volunteer fire department, and have had the same concerns, although on a more local level.
There were even wings from New York and other states who went to Texas just to assist: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/08/31/harvey-helicopter-res...
According to the first article, "We haven’t deployed this many people since World War I. So, this is literally the most we have deployed in 100 years."
It's impossible (or, at least, not anywhere near feasible) to plan for disasters on this scale, and there will probably always be a level of response from people who aren't professionals.
Try to direct development to less vulnerable areas, require flood control planning ahead of building construction, stuff like that.
Professionals train and plan to coordinate the work of other professionals. Volunteers from outside that process can supplement their work or serve in other roles entirely.
Your questions imply that there is something wrong with more chaotically organized volunteers supplementing the work of those professionals without close supervision. You couldn't be more wrong. There are plenty of people in need of help to go around, and volunteers might easily reach people who are overlooked or triaged by the professionals during the early stages of recovery.
> What are FEMA and the Red Cross doing if not helping coordinate emergency response when the normal channels are overwhelmed?
I am sure they are all just sitting around since there's basically nothing going on to demand their attention.
> Don't the people who do this deserve to get paid and have resources for dealing with PTSD?
It's the middle of an ongoing disaster. Thank God people are acting and helping rather than pondering these questions...
> And don't the victims deserve organized, professional response?
Limiting the response to organized professionals would be stupid. Turning volunteers into professionals in the midst of a disaster is impossible. It's hard to know what you're on about here.
My question is, what would have happened if the author hadn't stepped up to do dispatch? You would have had people searching blindly street by street, not knowing where they were needed. I am not for one second advocating that neighbors (or strangers) don't step up to help when needed, even at great personal risk.
By all reports the disorganized response ended up working well in difficult circumstances. But when (not if) there is an earthquake in a major city, this level of response is going to cost many lives. You will have a million people in need of food, water, and medical attention. There will be no power (let alone cellular service or Internet needed to run an app). There will be no gasoline because the pipelines will be out of service and a good number of the refineries are near fault lines. And you will have no warning.
We spend a trillion dollars a year on the Defense Department (and before anyone asks, I support that, too) that can, as noted elsewhere, project military force almost anywhere in the world, within hours. It's justifiably marveled at for its capability. Why can't we make it a national goal to get 911 up and running in a disaster zone in our own country within a similar time period?
I used the word heroes to describe the volunteers, your interpretation that I could possibly have been opposed them contributing is uncharitable at best.
Some other solution would have emerged, or the volunteers would have proceeded with a lower level of coordination.
> You would have had people searching blindly street by street, not knowing where they were needed.
I expect you saw plenty of this in the last week, even with a relatively good communication network in place. It's not necessarily a big problem. It would be a mistake for rescuers on the ground to assume that their dispatchers are omnipotent and to only proceed based on what they're told via radio. You would miss everyone in need of help who was unable to communicate out.
> Why can't we make it a national goal to get 911 up and running in a disaster zone in our own country within a similar time period?
I feel your comments are grounded in an overestimation of the importance of universally available centralized realtime control in disaster response. That is something we've never had in a genuinely large disaster that takes out a lot of infrastructure.
The closest we have to universally available communications is actually Amateur Radio networks. I'm all for spreading that hobby among high school students and encouraging more people to volunteer.
We could also do the 911 whatever technological thing you have in mind, but we should proceed with the understanding that we will encounter disasters big enough to knock it over.
The Red Cross is a different story altogether. During the last few crisises they were caught asking for money but never spending it but kept up asking for it. Charity hording for lack of a better term means other smaller locally based charities don't receive the support they really need.
Frankly, there is never enough money to hire enough people to do all the work. This is the US and we have a long tradition of neighbor helping neighbor. Many of the "amateur" responses are professional grade people. Many areas of the country are covered by volunteer fire departments.
The Red Cross often banks the money, and people should really read the authorizing legislation for FEMA since it is a more limited organization than many think.
Not that the pros are necessarily in good shape themselves. On 9/11 the NYC emergency command center was located in the towers and there was extensive compatibility problems with radio communication. Or the firefighters after the Loma Prieta quake who rushed to help only to find they couldn't use the hydrants. But shouldn't we, as a country, resolve that in a major disaster we'll at least have enough people and communications infrastructure on the ground to coordinate the local resources? Especially one like Harvey where you have a 48-hour forecast with a small error.
Why DoD? You might as well double train all the Fish & Wildlife people. The US has a long tradition of volunteers and they are enthusiastic and fairly effective. Single point of dispatches fail, badly. Its in the national character of the US. Having the government do everything isn't.
We do, but what this showed was that the different levels have different uses.
Local levels are distributed and have better latency--they can get to the most immediate problem fastest. National levels are centralized and a little slower but have way better throughput--they can help massive amounts of people over time.
I get that local organizations deal with some situations better than some large, clumsy bureaucracy but I tend to agree with wnissen, if this continues as trend relying on a patchwork of individuals (heroic as they may be).
I wish there was a non-military or less-military domestic version of this, I've considered joining the national guard for this reason but I'm don't trust that I wouldn't end up fighting and dying in a pointless war. If there was another volunteer force that was devoted to humanitarian issues and search and rescue I would be all for it.
Or the Civil Air Patrol? Or (less military, not non-military) US Coast Guard?
You're basically describing the Coast Guard. I believe they do hire reservists.
Not entirely non-military, but typically IIRC military aspects are almost entirely defense only.. so for example barring a USA invasion, or perhaps a complete depletion of the entire national guard system, you're not going to war.
clearly involved in this case.
It seems like its size may have been supplemented by serving as an alternative to conscription, however.
There's no conscription anymore though, and given the short serving time of 9 months at the end of "civil-service" (the alternative to conscription), that shouldn't play a role anymore.
I actually think this is pretty reasonable. We're too used to thinking that bad things are Someone Else's Responsibility. Maybe general-purpose tools (internet, walkie-talkie apps) combined with a sense of civic duty are the solution we should embrace, perhaps with a bit more public training (ala volunteer fire departments).
I would be all for stopping volunteers from trying to do rescues (and coordination) if there is evidence that they don't really improve outcomes. For instance, in the article the author helps get information to the Coast Guard, but the better solution there is to make people more aware of the Coast Guard having call centers and to make sure those call centers have capacity, not to have random people passing info along.
Clean up and restoration, not so much, if people want to help with that, whatever.
Would it be better to quadruple the size of FEMA or train more Americans in CPR, hypothermia, how to react in a flood, how to prioritize casualties, how to interact with others and coordinate, etc...
This is the difference between Americans and many other cultures — there is a sense of self-reliance that often doesn’t exist in other places. Many people would prefer to let the government handle it as if the government was some omnipotent force with infinite resources that are positioned exactly in the right place: like battalions of Rangers sitting in a C130 at Hunter Army Airfield just waiting to drop into action. People underestimate the logistics of massive rescue operations.
Also, a practical question: how do you deploy 1000 boats instantly? Air drops? Does the government just have thousands of boats staged across the country with thousand of qualified operators ready to jump into action?
Americans as a culture are different — they don’t sit around waiting for “official” help — they jump into action. I’d personally rather count on some redneck with a boat than just hope government comes through. While bureaucrats are figuring out what to do, old Jimbo with his swamp boat is already in the water en route.
That’s America. You don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to like it, but Harvey was a great example of the American spirit in action: neighbors helping neighbors — even local businesses, like Houston’s largest furniture store, opening their doors to help. In France, you would never see an IKEA or Auchan opening their doors to those in need during a disaster, you’d never see a virtual armada of volunteers ready to jump into action. During the great Europe flood of 2016, people died in their homes — wouldn't they have loved to have the Cajun Navy? In Triftern, Germany, 250 students were trapped in a school for 24 hours — I bet they would have liked to have some rednecks with swamp boats.
I am not arguing against government disaster response, I am arguing that in times of disaster, Americans, especially in the South, are proud to jump into action. Lives were saved because a whole bunch of people decided to act.
Likewise in London, a waiter held a door to keep terrorists out [2] and people again opened their doors to let visitors to the city stay [3]. The US does not have a monopoly on "the people" looking after themselves.
1: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/attack-in-par...
2: http://metro.co.uk/2017/06/06/waiter-blocks-door-to-stop-ter...
3: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/04/sofaforlondo...
I'm always amazed at how willing some Americans are to attribute basic human traits to "American Exceptionalism" and then deny those traits to peoples from other countries.
Hundreds of people opened their home on July 14 2016 after the terrorist attack in Nice. Same in Paris before that. And same in Barcelona this summer.
While it's true that American people jump into action, it's just wrong, and immensely disrespectful of the people who helped, to say the same doesn't happen in France or in other countries.
as for 'the south':
see also sandy recovery efforts
see also people getting shot when they shouldn't have in nola for being in the wrong neighborhood and having the wrong skin color..
that said, we do have more boats, monster trucks, jetskis, and guns, and arent afraid to use them (even to rescue national guard trucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAvNd7eH9MA)