> I think the most likely answer is a small town bureaucrat had to prove that he's in charge, and now they're trying to do some damage control. I listened to a

> I think the most likely answer is a small town bureaucrat had to prove that he's in charge, and now they're trying to do some damage control. I listened to a lot of reporting about a major fire in my country, and one of the things I learned was that ways of working that run like a well-oiled machine for minor and medium-sized disasters can completely fall apart in a large disaster. For example, a rescue team is dispatched to Family A, but on their way they encounter Family B who are in imminent danger, and rescue them instead. Or maybe the rescue team are from a few towns over, all the signs are fucked, and they rescue Family C from a different street and think they've got Family A. Well, if it's a medium-sized disaster you can coordinate this stuff on a whiteboard. But in a large disaster, where lots of irregular stuff is going on? Very easy for an update to get missed - then the whiteboard says Family A has a rescue team on the way, and the next free rescue team gets dispatched to Family B or C's empty home. On the other hand, the whiteboard system is what you and your team know best, it's served you well in fires in low-rise buildings etc in the past, and the middle of a major incident doesn't seem like the time to adopt a different system. I can easily understand clinging to a familiar system even when it's not working very well. So I can understand why, even when the person coordinating the response arguably should have integrated a volunteer with a helicopter, they might not have been ready to.