While our campaigns will never get to the intensity of the coverage the Tsunami there is lots of interesting ground experience to tease out of Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book .
I have been waiting to look this over and see how the ad hoc teams came together and kept things going. I look forward to reading more like this...
Armed only with a satellite phone hooked up to a car battery, the information delegate’s main functions were to brief colleagues in Geneva and Delhi and give interviews to the international media. For over a week, the Red Cross featured almost daily on CNN, BBC and other major news outlets. This level of visibility sent a clear signal to the donor community that they were on the ground getting the job done.
Good communication in a disaster zone depends on many factors. Rapid access to the disaster zone, professional human resource capacity and readily available communications technology are among them.
The latest communications technology should be integral to a humanitarian organisations emergency response toolkit. Whether it’s an earthquake in the mountains of Afghanistan or flooding in Somalia, a satellite phone is an essential piece of equipment to maintain contact with the outside world where conventional communication isn’t possible. Combine a satellite phone with a laptop, digital camera and digital video camera, and a humanitarian agency can become a news provider from anywhere in the world. Web stories and blogs can be posted on agency web sites, and digital photos and raw video footage can easily be made accessible...
Some of the hearest lessons in the world were learned in the days following the disaster. I am really glad that they have worked hard to document what they went thru for the rest of us.
