Message-ID: <199504121535.LAA117694@atlanta.american.edu> Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 11:11:42 EDT From: mailto:LANFRAN@VM1.YORKU.CA> Subject: Disaster Preparedness & NETS To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
There are two or three Disaster Preparedness Listserves. Some lists are:mailto: EMERG-L@MARIST HELPNET@NSDUVM1 (EMERG-L at UCSB forwards to MARIST)
Information on these lists follows my comments. - Sam Lanfranco
Subject: Re: Disaster preparedness and response in Africa
If I could contribute one suggestion to this discussion, as a partial outsider, it is that this venue (the electronic workspace) is precisely where various players should start to accumulate and make available the issues, questions and lessons learned. The preparedness is a continuous activity which can best be assisted by the asynchronous ability of the Nets and their associated information technologies to sustain all of (a) an ongoing dia/multilogue, (b) a query feature for researchers and planners, and (c) a storage site for relevant information. It is also the best site for the demands of an episodic disaster. Years ago I looked as post earth- quake housing projects in Guatemala and in recent years I served on the Board of Canada's Habitat for Humanity, self-help house building organization. I have been long impressed as how bad we are a learning lessons and transfer- ing lessons in the area of housing (in emergency times and in regular times).
I am reminded that in the earthquate in Maharastra, in India, a year or so ago, it was the NGO's (eg. OXFAM) with their computer links that were best situated to get the information out to information provider sites (where it could be accessed by many) and not the voice phone connections where dozens of people were trying to reach the same downed phone to get the same information. With LEOS satellite access sensitive areas can work with satellite modems for their regular access or store them for emergency access. As well, a remote unit can be dropped into place quickly by air, etc. The issue is not getting a unit to a disaster site (or units across a disaster site) it is what sort of prepared- ness system do they hook to and what sorts of socio/political obstacles can we anticipate which would prevent their use. Any day's news from Bosnia will make clear my point there. The ability to move supplies is not the same as the ability to deliver supplies.
I am also reminded of the wonderful TV coverage of the bombing of the U.S. Trade Centre in New York several years ago. Of course, the coverage was from a New Jersey station since the New York transmission towers had been on the bombed building (poor strategic planning there!). For much of the time while the coverage was on there was a message flashing on the screen of the TV broadcast. It said 'DO NOT CALL 911'. 911 is the emergency number. The problem of course is that 911 is to REPORT an emergency, not to do anything about it, and certainly not to do what most people wanted, that is to PROVIDE INFORMATION about what was going on. What was needed, of course, was an on-line information provider site. Consider the tens of thousands of people who were able to down- load the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope when they were loaded to the nets - and consider how hard it would have been to respond to requests and send out the information. This is similar to managing a disaster scenario in real time.
The recent postings on the risk associated with many of the Dams in India do remind us that the best disaster preparedness is to minimize risk and not do things what will "prime" situations for disaster. There is ample evidence that a growing source of "natural disaster" will be neither the weather or the plate tectonics fed earthquakes but epidemics which do no physical damage to the environment but great damage to humans as a species. It is as though nature had bet on its on version of bacteria/virus driven "neutron bomb" to reign in the human race. (However, I doubt that and refuse to attributed "purpose" to the rise in the incidence of epidemics. There are just more of us and we move around a lot - making an excellent host and vector).
It would appear to this simple mind that organizing here, in the virtual work- space, is the ideal site for dealing with disaster preparedness and with the actual disaster scenarios. It is global, asynchronous, allows multiple queries from multiple sources, allows us to create and reconfigure work teams, policy groups, strategy squads, etc. on the fly and - between episodic disasters - the same veneu is available for training, sharing and storing lessons learned, and building inventories of useful information. What is needed is leadership and labor to sustain an on-line process dealing with disaster preparedness.
* mailto:EMERG-L@MARIST * Emergency Services Discussion List * * * Owner= mailto:HZA1@MARIST (Marist EMS) * Owner= mailto:GRJS@MARIST (Joey J. Stanford) * * This is an informational network for the exchange of educational * topics concerning all branches of emergency services worldwide. * * A brief history: * * A long time ago, a number of folks exchanged ideas on CompuServe * in the old SafetyNet forum. With the rapid expansion of Fidonet * (an amateur store-and-forward network), FIRENET was formed as an * "echo", the equivalent of a mailing list or newsgroup. Later * misc.emerg-service on USENET was formed. After a * while, FIRENET was gated to the misc.emerg-services USENET newsgroup. * * In the late 1980's, CEMS-L (Collegiate Emergency Services List) was * formed and run out of SUNY Binghamton by Harpur's Ferry VAS. * In 1991, it was moved to Marist College in Poughkeepsie and run by * Marist EMS (founded in Feb, 1989 by Joe Stanford). * * This list was changed from CEMS-L to EMERG-L, November 1991 * * This list is merged with the newsgroup MISC.EMERG-SERVICES * as of 1/25/91 and mail is distributed in the path depicted by the * following list topology: * * +---> (newsgroup) <--> mailto:NETNEWS@AUVM <--> EMERG-L@MARIST <---+ * (relays memos) * * Netnews Administrator is mailto:JIM@AUVM (Jim McIntosh) * * Depending on where your site is in the chain, you will see postings * originating from any or all of these sources. * * For more detailed information or questions in general * please contact the list owner.
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