Listening to Radio 4’s BH programme this morning in the comfort of my home in East Sussex, I was drawn to an interview with an experienced member of the Red Cross talking about his experience of helping with the recovery in the flooded areas where it was reported that 43,000 people were affected by the floods.
Mike Goodhand, Head of International Logistics for British Red Cross said it was like being involved in a disaster response incident elsewhere in the world and was comparing it to other disasters across the world, in that no one had expected the scale of the flooding and the unfortunate repercussions of no electricity and water, so the shock to people was and is profound as they try to pick up the pieces of their lives and recover.
When asked who coped best with these terrible situations in his opinion, he said the elderly and the young children and that this applied to disasters wherever they were in the world, Angola, Sarajevo, or here in the UK.
The experience of coping with hardship and having to make do, often called upon the experiential and learned resilience of the elderly who may have lived through wars. The natural resilience of children, even within incredibly poverty stricken circumstances such as Angola and the Sudan, still shines through. He described how the spirit of helping each other is common to both age groups.
In his opinion, the generation that have had everything provided and suffered little general hardship, fared worse and he talked about having to engage the elderly people in Sarajevo to teach the younger couples how to make bread with the rations supplied.
He also discussed how anger is a very common symptom of shock and that the levels of both domestic and general violence rise following a disaster. In our experience of training staff supporters this is often experienced, many delegates talk about how anger helps the feeling of regaining control and focus in the face of a helpless vulnerable state.
It’s really useful to understand this and reassure people of the normality of this emotion, while helping them to find coping strategies in order not to act it out and create even more pain and hardship.
This BBC News Page talks about an on-line resource called the i-care system, developed by two Phd students since Hurricane Katrina struck in New Orleans. It is intended to provide on-line disaster support centre. It operates so people can request practical things they need and arrangements can be made to get them support they require as quickly as possible.
Our thoughts go out to all those who have been affected by the floods in the UK this July.
Radio 4 Flood line 0845 988 1188
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