Search terms used: Mostly I've been reading the actual website of the Japanese Red Cross, but I can't seem to find the kind of detail I need
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Not quite analogous (not red cross, and not japanese) but I worked Air Search and Rescue for close to 10 years and took part in the initial response wave for both the Boxing Day Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.
In both cases my first hint was the news. For the Tsunami I recall a stereo-typically "hollywood" moment of being in a bar in Hong Kong, seeing the news story pop up, and literally thinking "well looks like the vacation is canceled". Checked in with command, and was told to get my ass to the pier pronto.
To answer your questions...
We got there maybe 48 to 56 hours after the wave hit and the Red Cross and other NGOs started to show up a day or two after we did. TBH my reccolection of that time is a bit of a mess I was working long hours and running on a adrenaline, coffee, greasy sandwiches and not much else. Sleep was for the weak.
For Katrina the gap was a bit tighter because we were later, that said the gulf coast still had a fair amount of it's own Fire-Rescue services going NTM the Coasties out of Mobile and Pensecola. When we rolled into Ache there was literally nothing. The local Emergency Services had been blasted right along with everyone else. The fire station was on fire.
Alerts were by phone and pager, something along the lines of a message saying "come to work, now"
Organization would depend for a major city I imagine that there would be a rep from the state department or department of the interior to handle that shit. me I'm just a stretcher monkey, that goes above my pay-grade.
Danger! Danger is one of those odd things, strictly speaking every SAR unit and most NGOs I've worked with have a designated "On Scene Commander" (OSC) whose job it is to ride heard on the often sleep deprived and heavily caffeinated helicopter pilots, field medics, and other worker bees. Generally speaking, the OSC has the final say when it comes to things like safety but he may have more or less authority depending on the situation and how heavily those higher up the chain are riding his or her ass.
Not sure what you mean by "zones" in this case but usually there will be specified areas of responsibility and a given unit or organization will be assigned to it. Can't really speak to the as my own situation was unique. Our helicopter basically became the "Banda Ache Cab Co." In NOLA we'd occasionally pull people off rooftops if we saw someone trying to flag us down but as a general rule stuck to evacing critical cases to less hard hit areas inland or in Florida.
Not sure what you mean by "codes" either there are standard international and NATO procedures for coordinating SAR efforts but those apply mainly to government and military personnel such as my self. If you're looking for things like general slang, terminology and the like, you will have to be more specific.
Wow, thank you, that's a lot of stuff I didn't know about! I usually deal with preventative first aid on festivals and such, not first aid in emergency situations, so while I'm theoretically trained to react, I don't have the practical knowledge
My experience is with national Red Cross societies, not the IFRC as such, and the city in question is definitely large enough to have its own local Red Cross division, so I'm hoping that people would be on the scene in a few hours at the latest (the city isn't inaccessible or anything - it's facing an impending disaster that could still be avoided, but no one's really putting any money on that, so they're not taking any risks. They have about twelve hours to evacuate the whole place, which very probably won't be enough). The city is definitely going to need more than just the Red Cross, though.
AS for zones, from what I learned we have a red zone, the actual disaster area, where only people in metaphorical (or literal, if need be) hazmat suits enter (army, fire brigade, definitely not us). The orange zone has an advance medical post on the perimeter of the red zone, where victims are gathered, triaged and treated for the most urgent injuries. Victims are sent off to hospitals after passing through that post. (There's also the green zone, which, logically, is a safe zone). Once again, all of this is based on Belgian Red Cross procedures, so I don't know how accurate this is on an international level.
The codes are really throwing me for a loop. Apart from the NATO alphabet and some of the standard radio communication codes, I'm not really sure what to look for. One code I tried looking for was 'Romeo Rood' (Romeo Red), but that one is used when we need to evacuate when disaster strikes in a place where we were already present (for example, a dangerous storm breaks out during a festival where we were already providing first aid, and it's too dangerous to stay.)
Thanks again for all the information! It's definitely giving me a clearer idea of the situation.
In both cases my first hint was the news. For the Tsunami I recall a stereo-typically "hollywood" moment of being in a bar in Hong Kong, seeing the news story pop up, and literally thinking "well looks like the vacation is canceled". Checked in with command, and was told to get my ass to the pier pronto.
To answer your questions...
We got there maybe 48 to 56 hours after the wave hit and the Red Cross and other NGOs started to show up a day or two after we did. TBH my reccolection of that time is a bit of a mess I was working long hours and running on a adrenaline, coffee, greasy sandwiches and not much else. Sleep was for the weak.
For Katrina the gap was a bit tighter because we were later, that said the gulf coast still had a fair amount of it's own Fire-Rescue services going NTM the Coasties out of Mobile and Pensecola. When we rolled into Ache there was literally nothing. The local Emergency Services had been blasted right along with everyone else. The fire station was on fire.
Alerts were by phone and pager, something along the lines of a message saying "come to work, now"
Organization would depend for a major city I imagine that there would be a rep from the state department or department of the interior to handle that shit. me I'm just a stretcher monkey, that goes above my pay-grade.
Danger! Danger is one of those odd things, strictly speaking every SAR unit and most NGOs I've worked with have a designated "On Scene Commander" (OSC) whose job it is to ride heard on the often sleep deprived and heavily caffeinated helicopter pilots, field medics, and other worker bees. Generally speaking, the OSC has the final say when it comes to things like safety but he may have more or less authority depending on the situation and how heavily those higher up the chain are riding his or her ass.
Not sure what you mean by "zones" in this case but usually there will be specified areas of responsibility and a given unit or organization will be assigned to it. Can't really speak to the as my own situation was unique. Our helicopter basically became the "Banda Ache Cab Co." In NOLA we'd occasionally pull people off rooftops if we saw someone trying to flag us down but as a general rule stuck to evacing critical cases to less hard hit areas inland or in Florida.
Not sure what you mean by "codes" either there are standard international and NATO procedures for coordinating SAR efforts but those apply mainly to government and military personnel such as my self. If you're looking for things like general slang, terminology and the like, you will have to be more specific.
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My experience is with national Red Cross societies, not the IFRC as such, and the city in question is definitely large enough to have its own local Red Cross division, so I'm hoping that people would be on the scene in a few hours at the latest (the city isn't inaccessible or anything - it's facing an impending disaster that could still be avoided, but no one's really putting any money on that, so they're not taking any risks. They have about twelve hours to evacuate the whole place, which very probably won't be enough). The city is definitely going to need more than just the Red Cross, though.
AS for zones, from what I learned we have a red zone, the actual disaster area, where only people in metaphorical (or literal, if need be) hazmat suits enter (army, fire brigade, definitely not us). The orange zone has an advance medical post on the perimeter of the red zone, where victims are gathered, triaged and treated for the most urgent injuries. Victims are sent off to hospitals after passing through that post.
(There's also the green zone, which, logically, is a safe zone). Once again, all of this is based on Belgian Red Cross procedures, so I don't know how accurate this is on an international level.
The codes are really throwing me for a loop. Apart from the NATO alphabet and some of the standard radio communication codes, I'm not really sure what to look for. One code I tried looking for was 'Romeo Rood' (Romeo Red), but that one is used when we need to evacuate when disaster strikes in a place where we were already present (for example, a dangerous storm breaks out during a festival where we were already providing first aid, and it's too dangerous to stay.)
Thanks again for all the information! It's definitely giving me a clearer idea of the situation.
Reply
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