Disaster Relief as a Global Effort (Part II)

Organized relief efforts following large scale natural disasters are not a new phenomenon. What is new is the ability to launch massive global relief efforts immediately. In 1755, an earthquake wrecked havoc on Lisbon, Europe’s fourth largest city at the time, and took nearly a third of Lisbon’s population. This disaster was also the first time in history that the state took responsibility for launching an emergency response and later rebuilding. Hundreds of thousands of natural disasters later, we have our contemporary relief efforts which are on a larger scale and include such things as celebrity inspired telethons to raise funds, benefit concerts, and congregations of people from all religions collecting donations, in addition to various NGOs and State-sponsored aid coming in from various corners of the globe. The elements of disaster relief that have remained constant are the desire that human beings have to help one another when large-scale disasters occur, and the tendency to look for somewhere to place blame when the devastation and casualty rates begin to climb. Not all things remain the same; the organization and speed of such efforts is constantly evolving as we learn from the mistakes that each disaster relief effort inevitably brings with it.

“It is after a disaster that the benevolence of the United States society and the affluence that makes such benevolence possible becomes clear,” says C. Ronald Rosensteil of the University of Kentucky on the disaster recovery efforts that followed a devastating tornado in a small Kentucky community in 1972. So willing to help were those from neighboring communities, that disaster relief made a tremendous difference in the quality of life of all the people in the community, not just those directly affected by the tornado. Affluence and race tend not to be factors in disaster relief as evidenced with the 2005 devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and along the gulf coast of the United States. One of the very first international offers of aid came from neighboring Cuba, with whom the United States has had strained relations for decades. Cuba offered to immediately send nearly 1600 doctors and 26 tons of medicine. Unfortunately for relations, the United States rejected the aid offer, but the sentiment remains. Countries big and small were willing to provide aid to a country as affluent as the United States when they saw human suffering. There is an obvious trend towards willingness to help others when they are suffering because of natural-caused disasters. When aid is needed and the perception is that the people are responsible for their own situation, such as with poverty, there is less inclination to help.

And while people turn their backs on suffering when it is perceived to be of their own making, there is no shortage of sympathy and willingness to help out when a large scale natural disaster is to blame. What often happens during the reconstruction period following a massive disaster relief effort is that often the donations and aid offered stops matching the needs of the victims. There is a common misconception that any and all aid will be appreciated when, in fact, each recovery effort has its own unique needs. Following the devastation created by the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, unnecessary items being shipped in as donations were actually impeding recovery efforts. An area only needs so many blankets! The generosity that underlies the donations is still admirable and a reflection on the goodness of humanity.

At a certain point in the post-relief period, questions start to arise about what caused the scale of destruction experienced by the natural disaster. This blame game isn’t new. In the before mentioned Lisbon earthquake of 1755, criticism was present after the initial relief effort was completed and recovery was well under way. Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes to Voltaire in a letter dated August 18, 1756, “Without departing from your subject of Lisbon, admit, for example, that nature did not construct twenty thousand houses of six to seven stories there, and that if the inhabitants of this great city had been more equally spread out and more lightly lodged, the damage would have been much less and perhaps of no account.” Even in the eighteenth century, urban residence patterns and housing construction trends were acknowledged as contributing to damage and casualties in a naturally occurring disaster event. Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was criticized for lack of planning and coordination, and the levy maintenance was heavily scrutinized and blamed in causing an elevated death toll. Looking for someone or something to blame is part of the post-disaster recovery process that helps victims with the psychological aspects of recovery. Once those affected can find some meaning in what happened to them, they can begin to move on and to rebuild with confidence that things will be different and that they are not sitting ducks just waiting on the same event to occur again.