I guess this is fair enough. After a disaster, there will always be delays in the delivery of aid. While planes and helicopters can arrive in 24-48 hours after the storm clears, massive deliveries can only arrive by ship, which can take several days to sail—longer if they have to sail around a massive storm. Worse, damaged ports may take weeks to fix. With severe damage like that in Tacloban, roads may be impassible for many days or weeks, making distribution of aid difficult. For many families digging out from the storm, this delay is too long. Any stockpiles of food and water will have been washed away or shared. Having lost everything, most lack the resources to do more than subsist for a short while. Some might forage in damaged buildings. Most communities will pool resources and help each other survive. When television crews race large cargo ships with airplanes and helicopters, the cameras will always win. Journalists will report on the gap between supply and demand. They will show the faces of people in need of western largesse. They will turn isolated incidents of foraging and removal of goods from a truck or warehouse into a report on rampant looting. Here is where the reports go very wrong. According to a friend who has worked in Haiti and the Philippines, “what happens when media talk up security issues is that aid agencies get worried about security of distributions, so they hold off until they have adequate security support. The velocity of distribution is dramatically slowed down. Scare mongering undermines the relief effort.” This dynamic happened in Haiti, and it’s happening here. The people of the Philippines face a multitude of disasters every year: earthquakes, tsunami, cyclones, floods, landslides, and volcanic eruptions. The whole nation—government ministries, private sector companies, the diaspora, and civil society organizations–has learned a great deal about how to respond to a typhoon.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 02:37:10 +0000
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