CHAPTER 11 VICTIMS

Event: Alaska Earthquake Date: 27 March 1964 Summary: The quake registered 8.6 on the Richter scale, larger than the 2010 quake in Haiti (7) and ten million times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Response came from 40,000 US service people stationed in Alaska and federal aid. Result: At least 118 dead and $500 million in damage, which bankrupted the new state. Lessons Learned: The power of nature. The need for volunteers and outside aid when an event destroys your ability to respond. A good crisis plan assumes that you will have fewer official responders and have to make use of volunteers. Happenstance the Exxon Valdez oil spill happened exactly 25 years later.

... an effective disaster response will accommodate not only the needs of those directly affected (the victims) but also the needs of those indirectly affected (victims relatives, friends, acquaintances and careers). ... [I]t is no longer acceptable that the effectiveness of a disaster response be judged only on such criteria as whether or not the perpetrators are caught, whether or not professional negligence is proved, or how quickly normal service is restored. A comprehensive and holistic assessment requires that a disaster response also be judged on whether those indirectly affected are treated humanely, sensitively and with equanimity
Scarman Centre for the Study of Public Order

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an ounce of prevention

chapter 11: victims

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