The Disaster Relief, Recovery, and Developmental Aid Process
I’ll be on Hugh Hewitt in a couple of minutes to talk about disaster relief. Here’s a column from early January which discusses the South Asian tsunami. It outlines the emergency response and disaster recovery process.
Lede and key grafs:
July 11, 1999: We’d just finished the morning briefing and were leaving the command tent when the earthquake struck. I was serving as deputy commander of a U.S. Army Reserve Hurricane Mitch recovery operation in southeastern Guatemala, near the city of Puerto Barrios. Overnight, a tropical depression had dumped 10 inches of rain on our base. The soggy ground shook, bricks toppled as the walls of nearby buildings swayed, and I fell to my hands and knees, landing on a wooden loading pallet. The shake seemed to last forever. I remember thinking, “I am bouncing on this damn thing like a rabbit.”
Our recovery and reconstruction aid mission quickly became an emergency relief operation. The task force commander, a reserve colonel from Dallas who is also a civil engineer, helped the Guatemalans with damage assessment. Our medical company provided emergency aid to the entire region.
The Indian Ocean mega-quake and tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, dwarf the magnitude 6.6 Guatemalan quake I experienced. There’s no comparison in casualties. The December tsunami’s death toll has reached 160,000. The Guatemalan casualties were fortunately low, with two killed and a few score injured. Hurricane Mitch, however, killed at least 20,000 when it struck in fall 1998 — a terrible natural disaster.
A thumbnail of the process:
There are arguably four types of aid: emergency, recovery, reconstruction and developmental. In the two weeks since the tsunami, we’ve seen a remarkably agile and effective display of emergency aid (medical, food, rescue) provided by the U.S. and Australian militaries and the Red Cross. Once the immediate needs are met, the recovery phase begins — reorganizing basic services, opening permanent supply routes, reuniting families. There’s a hazy line between recovery and reconstruction — but reconstruction aid intends to rebuild damaged infrastructure. Smart reconstruction aims to “rebuild better” (stronger materials, better location, etc.) to reduce the threat of future natural disasters.
Reconstruction begins to blend with developmental aid — aid designed to ultimately permit “self-development” by locals. Education and economic investment are part of a long-term developmental aid program. The Guatemalan task force I served with drilled new water wells and built new school rooms — reconstruction stretching into developmental work.
