Gathering disaster tips

Press, 17 November 1987, Page 9

Gathering disaster tips

The Los Angeles earthquake and the English ferry disaster may help provide future disaster training in New Zealand. The director of the Canterbury Red Cross Society, Mr Ken Ward, will be investigating the role of the Red Cross in the two events when he takes up a Churchill Fellowship next year. Mr Ward, who joined the Red Cross Society three years ago, said it had concerned him that in its attempts to keep its volunteers interested and active the society had lost its “disaster orientation.” “To keep people motivated all sorts of other programmes have been developed to give people things to do, but it concerns me that if a major disaster occurred, where thousands of volunteers were needed, we’d have considerable problems,” he said. Small disasters such as the Oxford fires gave volunteers some idea of what to expect, but excluding the emergency relief teams, the society did not have a big pool of people trained for disaster. Mr Ward will visit Red Cross centres in America, Canada, Britain, Switzerland and Belgium.

“In Zeebrugge when the British ferry sank, the Belgium Red Cross were at the scene in 20 minutes, which indicated to me that they have a very effective organisation that we could learn from,” Mr Ward said. In Switzerland, at the League of Red Cross Societies in Geneva, he hopes to study methods to deal with disasters in snow. An avalanche at the Mount Hutt ski-field when there were 3000 skies on the slopes should be something the Red Cross is prepared for, he said. “Because it’s never happened we haven’t thought about what special problems would arise. The rescue teams on the mountain do a very good job but an avalanche with 3000 people involved would be a totally different type of disaster.” In Los Angeles he will meet Red Cross teams who were involved in recent earthquake relief. He will take up his fellowship in May next year and will spend just over a month visiting different centres. On his return he will write a report and conMjct seminars on disaster relief.