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The Cajun Navy and the Vigilante Future of Disaster Relief
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- swayvil 9y agoA member of the Cajun navy would be quite justified in taking the cost of boat, gas, safety equipment, etc out of any taxes owed to the government. Seeing as how he is doing their job and all.
- jstanley 9y agoMaybe... But such a system is open to very easy abuse. Let's say I fancy a nice 4x4 "so that I can tow people stuck in the snow in winter". Do I get to write off the cost of my 4x4 just because I tow people in snow two days a year?
- meddlin 9y agoGreat point. Not only that, but the level of disorganization during these operations is probably enough to dissuade this type of tax program.
- dawnerd 9y agoYou’d write off two days of the year, give or take depending on their calculation for depreciation and such. Now if you bought t only for that purpose and didn’t use it any other time...
- fleitz 9y agoOr... start a business, and throw some ads on the side of it...
- meddlin 9y agoAfter serving in Vidor, TX this year...I would love to see this made possible. Further, FEMA has failed Louisiana too many times, and we're fed up with it. That name has become a "swear" in this part of the country.
- chiph 9y agoHeh. Ask the people in the Carolinas what they think about FEMA. While the agency eventually provided aid, it usually arrived too late, and was too encumbered with rules and regulations.
- lb1lf 9y agoThat may be a bit of a stretch, but a per diem covering at least your running expenses would be reasonable. While it appears there's room for improvement in US disaster response services, we should keep in mind that any major emergency is basically Nature pulling a DoS attack on us; it would be unreasonable to expect the government to be everywhere immediately. (Which, basically,is why they should reimburse private citizens coming in to help.)
- labster 9y agoAs opposed to non-emergencies, where humans are pulling a DoS attack against Nature. Saw the fires cresting the hills from home this week. But what do people expect if they build a long string of homes into chaparral? The long urban-wildland boundary denies access to nature, until it is reclaimed by the fire. It sucks having lots of friends lose their homes, but those homes never should have been built in the first place. When Venturans got a chance to vote on new houses in the hills, 85% of us rejected it. And thank goodness, because 100% of those homes would be ashes by now.
- closeparen 9y agoWe're not talking about the end-times here. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and wildfires are routine events with hundreds to thousands of prior examples. It's not at all unreasonable to expect organizations that are chartered to deal with them to be pretty good at it by now. "Will there be an organized response to a disaster?" is right up there with "Do murders get routinely and professionally investigated?" in terms of whether or not we are living in a civilization. Aiming no higher than reimbursing the ad-hoc vigilante efforts is such a dark worldview.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoPart of what makes the Cajun Navy far more efficient is that it is completely separate from the government, which has to worry about things like liability, legal hiring, risk analysis, proper management and dispatching, and legislators adding unnecessary red tape. If the Cajun Navy tries to interface with the government, all of those efficiencies would be lost in order to meet regulations and standards that the government would require.
- viraptor 9y ago> which has to worry about things like liability, legal hiring, risk analysis, proper management and dispatching Apart from official hiring issues, why do you think they're free from the other ones? They're all natural things you have to deal with one more than one person is involved.
- michaelt 9y agoIf the fire department sent firefighters into danger with faulty breathing apparatus and they died because of it, you'd expect the fire department to have to compensate their families, right? But if someone joins the Cajun Navy with faulty equipment and they die because of it, you wouldn't expect the Cajun Navy to be liable for that - if indeed the Cajun Navy is even an identifiable legal entity with any assets.
- connorelsea 9y agoTrue, but also, recent disasters were "freak" ones. Flooding on this level has never really happened in these areas before. A lot of the homes destroyed didn't require flood insurance (homes in the standard flood planes / hurricane areas do require that the owner have flood insurance) When your town looks like this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZSXGin-zNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZSXGin-zNA , and the fire department is fully underwater, the locals with boats win on quick response time. (Followed by disaster-specific response teams like the coast guard, etc.)
- jtnegrotto 9y ago
- rdl 9y agoSome level of deduction for equipment/depreciation/services rendered would be appropriate, or possibly a tax credit. Another option would be donating to a charity which then compensates people for expenditures during situations like this; the challenge is doing it after the fact. However, it's not like this is the last time the CN will respond, so it could also be done prospectively. I've shown up at car accidents as a private individual and expended wool blankets (not taking one back after it's covered in blood), first aid supplies, water, etc. Maybe $300-500 lifetime total, which isn't a big deal for me, but it'd be nice to be able to get reimbursed/replaced.
- akadien 9y agoHonestly, those costs were the last thing anyone worried about. There were so many local donations of fuel, water, food, etc. Some of the folks I helped evacuate offered cash donations to cover those things, which we turned down because we didn't need it and knew they would.
- sliverstorm 9y agoI'm glad to hear they are organizing after the disasters, for the next one. It's easy to jump in, in the thick of it. But the training, preparation & organization can't be faked on the fly, and it's critical to getting the best outcomes. If you've got the appetite, learn about ICS/NIMS. They are built on a history of mistakes & missteps due to weak organization. NIMS in particular was commissioned after preventable errors in interagency operations trapped & killed firefighters in the towers in 2001.
- jwatte 9y agoCorporate policy means patients lie in overflowing latrines and can't be transported. Isn't the private health care system the best in the world?
- eccbits 9y agoThis is not totally new as many places have volunteer fire departments - this extends the concept.
- viraptor 9y agoHow is it organised in the US? In Australia/Vic while the are volunteer firefighters, they're working with the state organisation and are being put on the same level/block as the career ones in the structure: http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/our-structure/ http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/our-structure/
- cat199 9y agonot sure about any particulars in any one place but I am almost certain that this will vary by state, county and city.
- megaman22 9y agoWhere I grew up, there are no professional firefighters; it's all volunteer, just something people did as a hobby, basically. I think they might elect their own chief and officers, or it might be on the public ballot, with the dog catcher and other town positions. Usually, there's nobody on duty at the station, so when a call comes in from the 911 dispatch at county or wherever, their pagers or cellphones go off and they leave work to rush to the station, gear up, and go out.
- Spooky23 9y agoUsually paid and volunteer firefighters don’t mix well. Typically you have first responders, and a network of mutual aid for broad scope disasters. During a major disaster, state level emergency management, state police or other get involved. The level of competence and resources varies between states when it comes time for escalation.
- joe_the_user 9y agoVolunteers helping isn't new at all. What's new or what's worse, is a huge "human needs" bureaucracy which fails entirely to actually meet those human needs despite soaking up a lot of money. It varies in scale. Here in Santa Rosa, first responders actually did a good job in dealing with the fire. But in the post-fire situation, the effective emergency that those who lost their homes have at best a small chance to rebuild their lives isn't being dealt with - but then again it's just a more extreme symptom of the housing crisis, which isn't being dealt with 'cause that housing crisis is also a solution to the "how to we maintain financial markets" question. But there you have a private-public complex everywhere that's taking up a lot of resources without giving backing enough or sometimes anything.
- rmason 9y agoAmerica has a tradition of volunteers helping out in a disaster. I really disliked them being referred to as vigilantes in the headline. To me that implies that they're taking the law into their hands to get revenge. They see overwhelming need and are volunteering to assist local authorities, not to supersede or oppose them.
- snerbles 9y agoThe headline is an authoritarian dogwhistle - any action to help one's fellow man not sanctioned by your "betters" is frowned upon at best.
- kadenshep 9y agoYou're being extremely hyperbolic. An authoritarian dog whistle? That's not even a thing.
- nl 9y agoIn this case there are fights and guns being drawn. It seems a reasonable description, and the justification for those doing it seems well described. It seems quite a long way from a dogwhistle
- muzz 9y ago“I had to beat the hell out of the nursing-home director” and "Do what you have to do... We’ll deal with the consequences later" sound like vigilantism to me
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jimmywanger 9y agoI don't know what you're talking about. The nursing-home director was preventing people from reaching aid. He was just a robot following orders, and in extreme circumstances sometimes you gotta break machines to save people. Ass-beatings are not often justified, but when they are, boy they are.
- akadien 9y agoDuring the 2016 floods in the Baton Rouge area, I was part of this effort. Flooding disasters are fog of war. Victims are psychologically paralyzed with disbelief and loss, and there are others who prey on them. It's part of our Southern culture to help one another and get things done. If the CN helps protect the vulnerable while evacuating and saving lives, so be it. You can't sit around and wait for help that never arrives.
- jandrewrogers 9y agoDisaster relief has been self-organized among local volunteers in many parts of the US for a long time, it is almost a cultural tradition. I would make the point that it is encouraged in part because it is anti-fragile; the people that live in an area often have better information and communication/resource networks, and can react faster, than the more centralized disaster management the government provides. Especially in the early stages, it provides a more thorough and robust response because it is so well distributed. I've lived through a few major natural disasters around the country. These ad hoc disaster organizations materialized out of the community and were effective every single time. The government will often step aside, and just act in a supporting role if the volunteers have a good ground organization. In one case where I was volunteering, we came up with a shopping list of things we could use immediately to mitigate the major problems, and the state government rooted through warehouses, found what we needed in other parts of the state, helicoptered it in, and just gave it to us to use as we saw fit. We had a plan and an ability to execute it much more quickly than the official agencies. (As an aside, during my first major natural disaster, I discovered that union regulations limit the hours the government workers onsite can put in, the conditions they can operate in, and the kinds of things they can do without regard for if those things need to be done given the nature of the disaster. These volunteer organizations are unhindered by such rules and will work their ass off, whatever is necessary. Letting these volunteers run a lot of the relief efforts and supporting them instead taking point is a way for the government to work around its own structural lack of urgency.)
- tomohawk 9y agoVolunteer organizations are also often there much longer than the government agencies. After Katrina, the Army Corp was done in about a year, but volunteer organizations continued to work in the affected areas for much longer.
- Spooky23 9y agoWhere did you see that? I’ve been involved in a few disasters, including in places with strong unions. Never saw that happen.
- 9y ago
- jaunkst 9y agoThe truth is when it comes to life or death situations you cannot always wait for an official response to the incident. Especially in large scale disasters where the local government is not capable or disabled from responding with the speed or scale that is demanded to save lives.
- rdl 9y agoI'd love to see the government (or just some kind of NGO) hand out radios and some kind of specific-to-this-community application to people who own boats or other specialty equipment. If there were an easier way to organize, they could be even more effective. Use GIS to let them do site surveys and maybe respond to low-risk rescues, letting professionals/government do the highest risk. Right now there are coordination issues. (The other thing I'd like to see, which is done in some areas, is turning gas stations into disaster fortified base stations -- they have fuel tankage already, add generators to pump when the grid is down, and maybe store a connex or two full of bottled water and other disaster supplies on property, or in an underground tank type thing (which they already need to have installed for fuel, so whenever they upgrade from single to double wall or whatever, dig one extra vault). Putting a cell tower onsite, and maybe some kind of satcom backhaul, and some kind of data network which could work even in isolated mode, would help in situations like Puerto Rico. The incremental cost of funding this with tax money would be far lower than building up other community response sites.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- akadien 9y agoThe interesting thing is we self-organized. If you had a flat bottom boat and a truck, you helped your family first. Then there were twice as many people asking for help. It was easy to help because so many people needed help. I think technology would have been in the way, to be honest.
- redshirt 9y agoYou know, if the us federal government can’t get its stuff together, why not? It’s not a bad thing.