\u201cMaximum sustained winds were 185 mph at the time. This is tied for the strongest Atlantic hurricane landfall on record with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThe Great Abaco Island, near Marsh Harbour, was destroyed in most houses, churches, and others. This was the result of Dorian\u2019s sitting on top of Bahama islands for several days.<\/p>\n
At present, there are thousands of Bahamians without any food, water or shelter. After more than 8 days without any help, the refugees were invited (sort of) to come to Florida. Some landed in Florida and made it out of the plane. Others were unceremoniously turned around and returned to Bahama.<\/p>\n
Back to the Future<\/b><\/p>\n
Back in my first disaster job, a wizened Red Cross director took a few of us to a bar to offer some help and understanding in our work. Specifically, he was tired of his being asked every five minutes to tell the newbies what to do next.<\/p>\n
After we got the first round down, our leader said this: \u201cTo get going better, there are three things you need to do: Put up the flag, put on the coffee, and (as needed) call for help.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, you have to make people aware of who you are and what you do (the Red Cross flag helps). Refreshments provide the comfort of warmth and familiarity amid a chaotic situation \u2013 helpful as a client begins to fill out paperwork, for example. And if the client is too shaken, direct him or her to one of your colleagues who might have more time.<\/p>\n
The point is that disaster relief organizations have encountered similar challenges before, and they know a bit more about how to proceed than the clients who faced destruction \u2013 not too much more, but enough to help.<\/p>\n
Closing Thought<\/b><\/p>\n
We deal with lots of new technologies to help reduce danger and cost. But it is more critical to deal with the human element in the worst of times.<\/p>\n
Read the original article at Insurance-Canada.ca <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in the mid-1970s, I accepted a job at the Red Cross as a disaster manager, which included planning, executing, responding, and mitigating results to help people recover after natural catastrophes. Each event had...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}