Red Cross Blogs

Posts tagged ‘emergency response’

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I think I’m probably in the same boat as most people when I say that starting a new job can be a wee bit daunting. But for most of us on our first day in a new job we’re unlikely to be faced with the mammoth challenge of ensuring your nation recovers from its most devastating disaster in half a century – so spare a thought for Sebastián Piñera as he begins his new job as president of Chile.

It’s been almost two weeks since the earthquake and tsunami in Chile and there have been more than 200 subsequent aftershocks which continue to shake damaged buildings and infrastructure.

The number of people thought to have died has been fluctuating but government figures from 7 March report the loss of 528 lives.

Although the Chilean government has restored electricity and water in many regions, the people in the hardest hit areas are still facing big challenges to get access to these basic services. The reopening of some of the country’s main thoroughfares has begun in a government-sponsored effort to ensure connections between regions.

The Chilean Red Cross has been responding to the emergency since day one. Volunteers and staff, with support from other Red Cross National Societies, such as Spain and Japan, are active in the hardest hit regions of Maule and Biobío.

Initial assessments to identify the humanitarian needs show that health services, emergency and transitional shelter, and water and sanitation continue to be high priorities.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has launched an appeal for £8.5 million to help people recover over the next year. This includes:

•    emergency supplies for 75,000 people
•    water and sanitation for up to 10,000 households
•    emergency and/or transitional shelter for 50,000 people
•    preventative community-based health care for at least 90,000 people.

So far, the British Red Cross appeal has raised £165,000 and the money is being used to support the Chilean Red Cross emergency response operation.

Images © IFRC

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If someone gashed their arm, I’m guessing you probably wouldn’t stuff jam into the wound. And yet every year, lots of people apply butter – yes, that yellow creamy stuff you put on bread – onto burn injuries.

In terms of bonkers first aid behaviour, it’s right up there with blood-letting and ducking someone to see if they’re infected by evil spirits. And yet, incredibly, it’s still quite a popular first aid myth.

You know when you lavish the Lurpak on a toasted crumpet and all the butter bubbles and melts and starts seeping in? Well, that’s exactly what happens when you do the same to someone’s skin. It can be really damaging – and excruciating to get off again (especially if they’re also trying to spoon out all that jam from your gashed arm).

Office worker Michael Brown recently helped a workmate who had scalded her arm with piping hot tea. Thanks to his Red Cross training at work, he knew exactly what to do: run her arm under cold running water then cover the affected area to prevent infection. However, he was slightly taken aback by how helpless – even clueless – most people around him seemed.

He recalled: “It was alarming that most of my colleagues, who were understandably distressed, wanted to soak her arm in warm water [which would not cool the injury as required] and didn’t want the burn to be covered.”

When the woman was later treated for a second degree burn at hospital, the doctors said Michael’s speedy first aid actions had really helped, but without him things could easily have gone the other way.

As he put it: “This is another classic example of people thinking they should do the opposite of what should actually be done.”

Incidentally, while researching this blog I came across a website about medieval first aid. It makes for scary reading, as the following extract shows: “Some cures – such as one that involved bathing in water in which blind puppies had been boiled to death – defy modern explanation.” Ouch.

Unsurprisingly, it concludes: “Medieval medicine had a low success rate.”

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Woohoooooo would have believed it? Red Cross volunteers were recently put on standby at the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre when it was feared a super-scary show might cause people to take a funny turn.

Ghost Stories, which ‘contains moments of extreme shock and tension’, had them screaming in the aisles so much the Red Cross was brought in as a precaution. Suddenly, punters expecting to encounter things that go bump in the night instead found themselves bumping into volunteers carrying first aid kits and wearing bright yellow, hi-vis vests – in itself not altogether a calming sight.

Hilariously, having all those first aiders stomping around actually spooked some theatregoers even more. Ruth Brooke told the Liverpool Echo: “I asked the lady beside me what she was doing in uniform. She told me she’d been placed in the audience in case anybody needed medical treatment as the show was quite frightening.

“Her saying that actually made me feel more nervous and apprehensive.” Er, quite.

Still, having the volunteers there did mean quick help would be at hand if anyone needed resuscitation, shock or heart attack treatment.

The theatre’s spokesman happily stirred up the paranoia even further, saying: “We strongly advised those of a nervous disposition to think very seriously before attending this show, and felt it appropriate to enlist the aid of the Red Cross during the first few performances.”

Whether he also thought it had been a great wheeze to drum up some free publicity for the show, he didn’t say.

But it all shows that Red Cross volunteers are undaunted by any request. Wherever they think there may be a reasonable chance of people facing danger, they’ll step in. Come rain, snow, crowds, floods – and even, it now turns out, ghosts – you can always count on them.

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Cathy Ayer is part of a British Red Cross team in Haiti helping improve sanitation for earthquake survivors. She sent back this story on some of the more unusual ways they’ve found to make toilets fun.

Clowns. Funny guys that fall over a lot. Baggy pants. Little tricycles. Honking. More likely to be found in a circus than a camp for earthquake affected people. That was my experience of clowns until this morning when I attended a Red Cross hygiene promotion session in Automeca camp in Port Au Prince.

Automeca camp is currently home to approximately 10,000 people, densely populated in the centre of town with ramshshackle shelters squeezed tightly together. The British Red Cross sanitation team has been working in this camp for over 4 weeks for people made homeless by the earthquake. We have erected latrines and hand washing facilities so that people now have a safe and secure place to go to the loo. We have also undertaken a large hygiene promotion campaign with the residents of the camp. Hygiene promotion is all about delivering essential messages on how to maintain good hygiene to keep you and your family healthy, such as correct use of latrines, hand washing and storage of water. These things are absolutely vital…but is talking about going to the toilet sexy?

This is why hygiene promoters have to be extremely creative. They have to get the key messages out in such a way that it is interesting, engaging, clear, easily understood and makes people want to tell their friends and practice good hygiene. Today I saw Red Cross volunteers conducting a hygiene promotion session using glitter on people’s hands to demonstrate how harmful bacteria can be spread from person to person if they don’t wash their hands. They taught the people songs about why hygiene is good and everyone joined in singing and clapping their hands!

I then wandered over in to the centre of Automeca camp for the main attraction…the clowns! Liz, our hygiene promoter had found a group of local, professional performers, living in another camp in Port Au Prince, who have a clown act and she asked if they would join us to speak to the people in Automeca to promote hygiene. I was not sure what to expect…red noses? make up? Twirling bow ties? Instead I found something much more hilarious. A young guy dressed as an old man complete with white beard, an old man dressed as a baby (man size nappy included) and a scruffy clown with comedy breeches.

Hundreds of people gathered to see what was going to happen with these odd individuals. They had a loud speaker, and the girls in the group explained to the audience that they were here with the Red Cross to give them important information on health and hygiene, then the guys launched in to their fast paced comedy Creole routine. The “baby clown” spoke in a high pitched baby voice and had the crowd in hysterical laughter! The old man scolded the baby for not knowing how to use a latrine properly and instead invited the audience to contribute ideas on how it should be done properly. Members of the audience were pulled in to the act and everyone participated in agreeing what was good hygiene and what wasn’t.

Empowering people with the knowledge to keep themselves healthy in very difficult circumstances in these camps is very rewarding but what really touched me was the reaction of the kids to the clowns. Thousands of kids live in these camps across Haiti. Many will have lost parents and guardians, all are vulnerable and the trauma they experienced during the earthquake and since is hard to imagine. A group of hygiene promoting clowns is not going to take away all that trauma but if they can make them smile and laugh and perhaps forget their situation for a short time, it is a wonderful thing.

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Apparently, when they talk about ‘dangerous dogs’ in America, they’re having a completely different conversation.

In a blaze of publicity, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy statement announcing that the tubular-shaped hot dog can present a ‘major choking hazard’ for young children. You don’t say.

Not content with stating the obvious and dissing the dog, the AAP has also put many other foods – including peanuts, whole grapes, raw carrots and apples – in the dock as ‘high-risk foods’ for unsupervised children.

Their suggestion is to ‘redesign’ the hot dog so it will be less likely to present a danger. However, this has met with short shrift from Janet Riley, President of the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. (And how cool a job title is that? It’s only a short skip away from Chief of Cheese Waffles or Emperor of Doughnuts.)

Barely hiding her contempt, chipolata champion Janet retorted: “As a mother who fed my own toddlers cylindrical foods – like grapes, bananas, hot dogs and carrots – I ‘redesigned’ them in my kitchen by cutting them with a paring knife until my children were old enough to manage on their own.”

But all this ire and sausage-flinging points towards a very sombre fact: thousands of parents and carers wouldn’t have a clue what to do if a young child or baby started choking. In such a scenario, it’s only a matter of minutes before permanent brain damage and death occur – and too many children die each year in these circumstances.

However, the good news is that it’s very easy to get clued up on what to do. Visit our choking tips webpage or special children’s first aid website – or, even better, go the whole hog and sign up for a first aid training course. And once you done that, treat yourself to a hot dog. But be careful.

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People can have a heart attack anywhere – and that’s why you’ll find defibrillators in all kinds of publicly used venues these days: shopping malls, sports clubs, brothels. Hang on, brothels?

Well, yes. In Switzerland, sex workers at several brothels are being trained to use defibrillators in order to prevent clients with heart problems dying on them. The move follows a recent spate of incidents – some fatal – where mainly elderly customers found the services on offer a little too demanding.

Heart attacks have now claimed several customers in the Lugano area, and local health experts are backing the move to stock defibrillators in sex clubs and brothels. And as one brothel owner put it: “Having customers die on us isn’t exactly good publicity.”

Modern defibrillators are relatively quick and easy for the lay person to use, and in an emergency can mean the difference between life and death. Having said that, there’s nothing better than knowing what to do if someone has a heart attack.

As a Red Cross writer, I come across literally scores of stories every year where someone having just a little first aid knowledge ends up saving someone’s life. So why not sign up for a first aid course or even just get some tips online? One day you might be might glad you did.

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You’ve seen the pictures on the news: men and women wearing the red cross as they dig survivors out of earthquake rubble. Haitian Red Cross volunteers working alongside experts from around the world to build latrines and sanitation systems.

But there’s someone else the Red Cross does that can be difficult to show in a news story. After disasters, we help families get back in touch with each other.

Imagine all the ways you communicate with your family – email, phone, text, instant message. Now imagine all those systems were down, or busy because everyone else was using them, too. Imagine your computer and phones were buried under several feet of rubble. What would you do?

From our founding 150 years ago, reconnecting families has been one of the most important ways we help conflict and disaster survivors.

In the case of the Haiti earthquake, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) set up a website where survivors could register themselves as safe and well. Families look at the names on the Family Links website in the hopes their loved ones will be there. Volunteers from the Haitian Red Cross have been walking through camps registering people and helping them call family members.

This video shows how it works and ends with one of the most heart-warming images I’ve seen come out of the disaster.

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Alastair Burnett, our recovery manger, just sent this candid account of what he’s been seeing in Haiti:

So it is 0530 and I am in my tent in the Red Cross base camp close to the airport in Port au Prince. I wouldn’t ideally be up at this time, but the noises of the aircraft taking off, the noises from others within the tent and the heat means that once you are awake at this time, there is no going back to sleep.

I arrived here from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Flying over Port-au-Prince was fascinating. In must have been a very striking looking city even before the earthquake, with hills to the back and the sea to the front, but flying in what strikes you is the clearly massive destruction many parts of this city has experienced. This was further compounded over the course of my first day as I visited camp after camp of internally displaced people (IDP). Discussing with colleagues, and many of us have seen a lot of areas of destruction whether that be in Africa, Asia or Europe, we all agreed that none of us have seen anything like this. The only way to really describe it is to think back to old black and white footage of cities like Berlin and Dresden at the end of the Second World War. This city looks as though it has had a war fought through it.

The Red Cross has a camp, in the grounds of what was destined to be the Hilton Hotel, close to the airport. The shell of the Hilton building is now our offices. Don’t get me wrong, there is no breakfast in bed here – it is a concrete shell with no windows or proper floors, functioning sanitation, water or power. However, people have done a great job getting this area operational and it is now home to over 250 Red Cross staff from across the world, ranging from doctors and nurses to logisticians and water engineers. There are two canteens, toilet and shower blocks and wireless internet access.  Scores of tents are neatly arranged around the concrete structure. It is far from 5 star but it provides safe and secure location for people to work from, which of course is so important in these situations. The camp empties out during the day but begins to fill up again from 1800 as it begins to get dark and the curfew that we apply to staff comes into force.

I spent yesterday with one of the sanitation engineers the British Red Cross has provided to the relief operation. He was carrying out a survey of some of the camps in which people have gathered, there are about 800 of them now ranging in size from a few hundred people to tens of thousands.  The situation in these camps is terrible. People lack adequate materials for shelter and for some people their shelter consists of little more than a bed sheet strung over a piece of string. Some of the lucky few have received some tarpaulin, which provides greater protection from the sun and the rain, as well as a better degree of privacy, and an even smaller minority a tent, although these are relatively few and far between, for a range of reasons.

The work of the Red Cross is largely evident in the water it is providing to these camps, a huge amount has clearly been done in this area. We are currently trucking in large amounts of water on a daily basis and, through the emergency water facilities we have brought into the country, providing about a million litres of water a day to these camps. We have also provided some basic household items for people (cooking sets, soap etc) as well as some sanitation facilities.

The sanitation situation is very poor.  In many places people simply have no where to go to the toilet. Some camps have a small hole in the ground that needs to be shared by hundreds of people.  Other camps, some in the grounds of schools or colleges, may have one toilet but these rapidly become blocked and unusable. Piles of rubbish can be seen around these camps, as well as growing amounts of standing water.

The rainy season will start in a couple of months, and we have to see how we can do more to address some of these immediate issues. I came here with shelter in mind as a priority. In fact I was wrong, it is the sanitation needs that are the greatest, although everything here at the moment is urgent.

Without improved sanitation there is a high risk of the outbreak of disease in the densely packed camps people are living in. Cholera in particular could spread very quickly. One camp I went to today had eight toilets for 2,000 people. But of course for many people those facilities are inaccessible as they are located on just one side of the camp. There are many issues to consider in regard to location of toilets – not just health and hygiene, but also protection for women and children if such facilities are not easily available. People have a good understanding of basic hygiene issues – you can see that around you when you walk around – but lack the hardware to be able to put that into practice, and again, you can see that when you walk around. So – toilets, and lots more of them, as soon as possible.

Waste management also needs to be addressed – piles of waste attract rats. Rats spread disease.  We have to look at how peoples waste can be better managed and work with the communities to help them on that. Again, many people understand that and have asked us for the tools to enable them to improve their current squalid living environments.

Vector control is also an issue – ensuring there are no pools of standing water is pretty much the number one thing in this to stop mosquitoes breeding. In a country where malaria and dengue fever is endemic we have to work with the communities to minimise the risk of major outbreaks.

Shelter here will be a nightmare. People are displaced in a number of different ways. I went to one location where many houses are still standing but there are just thousands of people camped in the road outside their homes as they do not want to return inside. Others are camped by the ruins of their homes in small groups. Others, gathering in their hundreds, in the grounds of churches or schools. The big camps, containing up to 10,000 people are located in former parks or other public spaces. Some people who fled the city in search of work are now returning and new camps of people are springing up all the time. People’s shelters are very basic and back to back – there is no security, there is no privacy and there is no dignity for the occupants. The risk of fire is huge and the space so cramped it is hard to think of ways to improve the conditions. For people who have endured years of political and social unrest, as well as in many cases chronic poverty I personally feel they deserve better. Despite the challenges this country has faced, and its poor image to the outside world, many of these people still maintain a level of pride in themselves that they should not be allowed to lose. It may be one of the most important things to help them through the years to come, and rebuilding their lives will take years.

Well, it is getting light and I have things to do. I will write more when I get a chance later.

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