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I Downloaded an App. Suddenly, I was a Rescue Dispatcher. (houstonchronicle.com)
Holly Hartman, a journalism teacher for 22 years, writes an incredible story: After watching nonstop coverage of the hurricane and the incredible rescues that were taking place, I got in bed at 10:30 on Tuesday night. I had been glued to the TV for days. I read an article about the Cajun Navy and the thousands of selfless volunteers who have shown up to this city en masse. The article explained they were using a walkie-talkie-type app called Zello to communicate with each other, locate victims, get directions, etc. I downloaded the app, found the Cajun Navy channel and started listening. I was completely enthralled. Voice after voice after voice coming though my phone in the dark, some asking for help, some saying they were on their way. Most of the transmissions I was hearing when I first tuned in were from Houston, but within 30 minutes or so, calls started coming in from Port Arthur and Orange. Harvey had moved east from Houston and was pummeling East Texas. Call after call from citizens saying they were trapped in their houses and needed boat rescue. None of the volunteer rescuers had made it to that area from Houston, but as soon as the calls started coming in, they were moving out, driving as fast as they could into the middle of Harvey.
Being a decent human being is challenging. So just keep practicing, you will get there.
Not always. Plenty of times people who are not prepared can make a situation worse.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Nothing so helpful as an untrained stranger coming into an unfamiliar situation holding a lethal weapon, pumped up on the excitement of justice and at any second likely to be startled out of their wits.
Think of the big headlines where someone unsure about a situation calls the police and an innocent person gets shot as part of a misunderstanding. Amplify that by a couple orders of magnitude and you have what crowd sourced police 'help' would look like.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I can help you, since I saw Hurricane Harvey first-hand. Most people who were saved by these "cajun navy" volunteers did not know that their neighborhoods would become disaster areas. There was no precedent for 53" of rain, or the dams in the reservoirs to have to be opened unleashing millions of gallons of water into neighborhoods that had never flooded before.
Second, evacuation was simply not an option. Houston has a metro-area population of 6.5 million people. The last time they tried to evacuate ahead of a storm, many more people died trying to evacuate than died in Hurricane Harvey. Most people really can't conceive of the sheer size of Houston. It's vast, and the area affected by catastrophic flooding was huge. We moved out of Houston after the flood on the first day there were roads open leaving town (Aug 31) and there were still so many people trying to evacuate ahead of the still-rising flood waters that it took a full day of driving to get from Midtown, where we lived, to the city limits. We only got as far as College Station by late that night.
Houston is a city that has grown without planning, without human reason. The "freedom" that Texans value so highly and brag about so much for certain members of Texas society is a guarantee that when something really bad happens, a lot more people will suffer than if they'd had, you know, zoning laws.
Remember, Texas is a state where the most celebrated, the most revered, and the most re-enacted military battle is one in which every single Texan was slaughtered. Disaster is in their blood (along with toxic substances from the many chemical plants, refineries and fracking rigs).
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd say the GP AC has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for human life by dismissing everyone who didn't evacuate as "stupid" without any attempt to understand whether they actually had the ability to evacuate.
The viral photo of the seniors at a flooded assisted living center are a good example of what's wrong with that logic. None of those people had the ability to evacuate themselves, but you and the GP are both dismissing them as "stupid" and not worthy of being rescued without any regard for the situation they found themselves in.
There is nothing decent or humane about your comments here. You should both be ashamed of yourselves.
That is very different. Things like police auxiliaries and CERT/NERT where citizens are identified, credentialed and given training to help out with a limited range of common needs is great idea! As far as disaster preparedness and response goes.
Having people download an app to play cop for a day in the way downloading uber lets you play cab driver is a different proposition entirely and sounds a lot more problematic to me.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Amateur radio operators provide life-saving emergency communications (EMCOMM) during a natural disaster. But the first rule that is emphasized to hams who participate in EMCOMM is this:
"Don't become part of the problem. You are there to assist, not become a victim or act as a first responder."
Houston is a city that has grown without planning, without human reason.
To be fair to Houston, and while I'm sure it is pretty bad, I don't think you'll find any large or even small city in the world which took "get entire population to go somewhere else on the same day" into account when they designed the transport system.
Most cities can't handle workers going home in the afternoon. "Well planned" cities only just scrape past this barrier.
The self reliance was always a myth. Unless you moved straight into the heart of completely untamed "Indian Country" and built a cabin and livelihood with your own two hands. In which case you were probably killed or chased of very quickly by the natives as an illegal invader, as word had already spread from the East Coast as to exactly what sort of demons the Europeans always proved themselves to be.
In reality that much-loved independence was always backed by a network of friends, family, neighbors, etc. that pulled together as a community to help out those who fell on hard times. Or you just died when bad luck hit. That happened too. But as populations grew, those personal bonds broke down - there's no such think as a tight-knit community of millions. Or even tens of thousands. And so the support that community provided must now be provided by larger, more faceless mechanisms (which certainly have their own problems).
As for intelligence - America has had a strong anti-intellectual bent from its inception "nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." " -- Isaac Asimov
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What's the connection?
Are you delusional or are you lying? Here is the 2016's budget, for example:
To be more wrong than you are, one would've have to claim, the Moon is made of cheese...
Moreover, unlike any charity, maintaining capable military is, actually, a government's responsibility explicitly written in the Constitution while everything else is wrong:
TFA is exactly about people helping others — saving their lives. So, you are wrong once again... How do you function day to day — or do you have a minder or something?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm in Houston. I saw what happened.
As for flooding, there are areas of town that often flood. Those living there are prepared and are used to it. But with Harvey, many areas of town flooded that had not flooded before. These were the areas where the rescues and Cajun Navy were most evident and needed. While I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find someone or some obscure report somewhere that predicted this would happen, it was mostly unexpected. Thus the mayor recommended people not to evacuate. We've done the evacuation thing before...it did not turn out well. Yes, there were instances of stupid but by far the problems and urgent needs were not unreasonable. What is really amazing, however, is how many volunteers have come to the aid. And, now nearly two weeks later, as the rebuilding goes on, there is still a huge amount of volunteering from the unharmed helping the harmed.
So, to all you folks that have that sanctimonious smarter-than-everone opinions...you didn't live it, and you didn't walk in our shoes. And reading all the click-bait, breathless stories in the world, will not make you knowledgeable.