Emergency aid; Donations and logistics

After an disaster emergency aid will start to flow to the affected area. Some are from local organization, some larger (inter)national organizations and some from private persons. One important thing is not just to send 'stuff', make sure you send the right stuff. A lot of people will basically donate things they don't use anymore. Paying off the guilty of buying things they didn’t need. Make sure whatever you are donating is actually useful. I mean things like sending winter coats to a tropical place or high heels to any disaster area is absolutely useless and actually harmful (it clogs up the logistics).

If a lot of (appropriate) items are donated don't just send items and dump it at the local emergency center and expect it to be useful. Things are useless without the required logistics and resources to use it. With logistics and resources, I mean everything between needed to get things off trucks and all the way in to the hands of those whom need it in a useful form. Buying things locally and using existing logistical systems are the quickest and most cost effective methods. Buying things means full control over the type of product, limited sorting required and pretty much ready to use. So in most cases cash donations are the best. However a lot people won’t donate money, because of all kinds of reasons.

Another thing to know is, when something is needed. Sent the right things at the right time. Having the items at the wrong time, means you are clogging the limited logistic system with things that are not needed yet. Don't be surprised to see pallet loads of items being pushed away in to any available space, including grass patches or even ditches to make space for priority items. These pallets will sit exposed for days and depending on what the contents are turn useless.

Some things about the various types of donations:

Textiles (clothing's and blankets): After a disaster a lot of textiles gets donated. This process is not just sending the bags full of clothing to a disaster area. To make textile donations effective, the clothing need to be sorted between useful and useless, cleaned and sorted to type and size. Than they need to be shipped and distributed. All these steps take a lot of man power and time. This takes too much time (=money) and old donated textiles are often sold as rages and the money is used by NGO's for the recovery effort or other emergency's.

Food: You can't just send food. For example sending just trucks loads of potatoes is useless. You can't eat them raw, so you need lots of cookware, stoves and people to turn potatoes in to something you can eat. A healthy diet is needed to keep people's immune system up, so you can't just send just a few food items. Nor does everybody eat the same due to religion, moral issues or allergies. So the challenge is to send food and required tools to feed people. What this should be depends on the situation, on the available resource, logistics and manpower. Generally food is sourced locally, because of the availability and they are familiar for the locals. But MRE type of foods can be very useful if there are limited cooking methods available.

Water: Bottled water have its place, but water purification units can be better. Bottled water needs to shipped in and leave a lot of waste. However they do provide ready to use water in a easy to distribute package. A purification unit might be bigger than a shipment of bottled water, but will produce far more water. This means a lot less distribution is needed. Freeing people and resource for other important tasks. Again what is right depends on the situation.

Good read on this subject:
http://www.emergencymgmt.com/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/the-ugly-truth-about-disaster-donations-011113.html

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/09/168946170/thanks-but-no-thanks-when-post-disaster-donations-overwhelm

Responding to disaster: non-proffesionals

A disaster response require a lot of people to perform all kinds of tasks. Professionals and a lot of (non professional) volunteers are eager to response to a disaster. However don't jump in a car and expect to be helpful.

Professionals know not to self deploy. The units nearest will usually respond first, but the rest will be send by the command posts. There are reasons for this:

- If everybody is deployed, you don't have a second or third shift.
- An mayor incident does not mean there are no 'regular' incidents left. You still need your emergency professionals for those incidents.
- Having enough people to do the work is good, but having too many will slows things down significantly. (same goes for the equipment)

For regular incidents the only thing you can do as a civilian is to provide information to rescuers, maybe secure the scene (you need the correct knowledge and equipment), provide first aid (if you are trained and know what you are doing) or a quick rescue (when doing nothing means certain death), but only when it's safe to do so. But when the professional rescue workers arrive, there is very few things you can do.

For civilians responding to disasters. There are a few things to consider:
- Your own safety first! Do not risk your life, we don't need more victims.
- Do not block the road/parking space! Firetrucks, cranes and other heavy equipment need lots of space to maneuver. Ambulances need to be able to stage and transport victims.
- Are you trained or do you have the equipment to do the things you want to do? if not; go away.
- If you are told to leave, leave! Some people are offended when they are told to leave. Professional responders are not there to please you, but to save lives. If you are in the way, go away.

So am i saying that civilians should not do anything during a disaster; no. Regular people are essential. Especially when the rescue services are overwhelmed, however know when you are useful and know when to go away.

The normalization of deviance

Safety rules are usually set for a good reason. Some might not be that good and need to be adjusted after careful evaluation. However if a safety margin in set there for a reason, don't bend the rules! Sometimes safety margins are crossed and nothing went wrong. Enforce safety rules and safety margin. If you don't, the fine line between safe and unsafe become blurry and shifts. If you move the safety margin instead you might end up using all the safety margin and have a accident.

There is a term for this 'The normalization of deviance" and is defined as: “The gradual process through which unacceptable practice or standards become acceptable. As the deviant behavior is repeated without catastrophic results, it becomes the social norm for the organization.”

This caused the NASA space shuttle Challenger explosion, because they moved the safety rule on there minimum temperature of o-rings, instead of enforcing a safety rule. In aerospace also know as go-fever; getting things done in a hurry despite high risks.

This does not only apply to NASA or other big origination, but also to you. Not wearing proper PPE(Personal protective equipment), driving through red lights, etc. Do it once and you will do it again and probably worse. Know what you are doing, be aware of the normalization of deviance and try to prevent this from causing problems.

Some interesting reads:
http://theemtspot.com/2009/10/03/the-normalization-of-deviance/

http://lmcontheline.blogspot.nl/2013/01/the-normalization-of-deviance-if-it-can.html

Getting people to think

Everybody knows smoking is bad. Having champagnes reminding people about this doesn't really help. Here is a interesting approach to get people to quite smoking:

Nobody makes mistakes on purpose

In research in human behavior there is a common assumption; nobody makes mistakes on purpose. This fact is not only important for researchers. A lot of people have the assumption that certain mistakes are only made by 'stupid' people or at least others and not them. People think they won't make mistakes because they are experienced, they are smart enough or what ever reason they can think of. Nobody makes mistakes on purpose. People do what seemed right at the moment. If you made a mistake on purpose, it's not a mistake but sabotage.

When was the last time you did something smart, that might not have been so smart? Realize you are just human and you also make mistakes. Check and recheck your self. If possible do a buddycheck. Put markings or other 'red flags' on your equipment.

Texting and driving

Everybody knows texting and driving is dangerous, increasing the chance of a accident up to 23 times (depending on the size of vehicle), but still people text while driving.

How do we educate people to change there behavior?

Do we make a website: http://www.distraction.gov/ ? (USA)

Do we show (not to graphic) footage? (South Africa)

Do we make TV commercials? (Australia)

Do we add this in to popular TV series (USA)?

Do we make a documentary? (USA)

Do we make a graphic drama's about it? (this is a trailer) (UK)

So what works best? Well it depends on the local culture and your target audience. It's very hard to determine how much effect a campaign actually has. But after seeing these video, maybe you won't be texting  while driving.

What would you grab during a fire?

There is website and book dedicated to this question: http://theburninghouse.com/

People are primary choosing emotional things, instead of survival things.

Obviously if your are on this website, you might already have an emergency bag with more practical things, but sometimes it's also good to think about the things we are emotionally attached to. We are in the end just humans.

Trust, but do check

In most dangerous jobs and situations people are trained to work in pairs and check each other; the buddy check. This check is to make sure you did not do something stupid or forgot something. Humans are just humans and humans make mistakes.

Always take your buddy check seriously. I have had seen people failing in doing there buddy check, resulting in climbing harness buckles not being doubled backed, screw carabiners left open, incorrect attaching them self to ropes and having twisted harness causing side ways loads on there equipment. 

During work or hobbies this might be due to work stress, haste, distractions, excitement or carelessness. I have had people saying 'I trust you' and skip the buddy check. Don't skip it! Humans makes mistakes. regardless of you experience. Most mistakes are made by beginners or by highly experience people. Highly experience people loose there attention on safety, because of there experience and the countless time it went well. Two people seriously checking each other should reduce the chance of making human mistakes, so do your buddy check properly and stay safe!

You can only spend your money once.

A few years back, when I was attending a class about crisis management the professor stated that there are many people against putting a money aspect on a human life. However you can quantify the cost of measures to safe/extend human life and you can only spend your money once. A very important point of him.

With the limited amount of funds and the current budget cuts, there is a need to invest the money in measures which are the most cost effective in extending an health human life. This applies to all levels of safety organizations and emergency response; National, regional, local and even individual persons. These seems very logical, however it is not. Human perspective and simple statistics usually don't match. The media is playing a huge part in changing our perspective. If you are a professional in the safety or security field, you have fought the influence of perspective. Politicians are pushing organisations to prioritise differently.

Examples of the difference between perception and statistics are for instance crime and dangers of the modern world. In most western countries, crime was on the decrease and the average life expectancy has been rising. However the perspective is an increase in crime and having more risks to life.

This does not mean we should ignore current human perspective. Human perspective is an important factor, especially when dealing human emotions.  Balancing these things out is an on-going challenge.

When we apply this to our self’s, are we preparing for the most likely events or for our not always accurate perspective? Are we putting our money in the most cost effective ways to keep us safe and having a long healthy life?

Recommended reading:The field guide to understanding human error, by Sidney Dekker

Understand why people makes mistakes. The field guide to understanding human error, by Sidney Dekker is a great book for people researching human mistake and people whom want to know more about human error.