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How Not to Report on an Earthquake
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/magazine/how-not-to-report-on-an-earthquake.htmlBelieve it or not, there is life outside Baltimore. (Although I never did quite believe that growing up there.
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As of Tuesday morning, exactly three days have passed since a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook Nepal, killing thousands and leaving millions in need of help. In disaster response, the end of the first 72 hours is often considered an inflection point: the unofficial moment when the most acute phase passes, the odds of finding trapped survivors plunge and the relief effort tends to really pick up steam.
Three days into a crisis, roads and airports are often reopening, and outside responders and journalists are arriving in droves. The decisions made at this time can determine the course of the response. A misstep now can have ramifications lasting years, even decades.
I know this because I lived through a moment of just this sort five years ago, in Haiti. I was in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010, when a powerful quake rippled outward from an epicenter 15 miles from the capital. In 40 seconds, the shock waves, according to some estimates, literally decimated the population, killing 100,000 to 316,000 people in an overcrowded, overbuilt metropolitan area that was home to more than three million. Governments and aid groups mobilized cargo planes and ships, deploying thousands of soldiers, search-and-rescue teams and medical responders. I was the lone correspondent in the country’s lone full-time foreign news bureau when the quake hit, but I wasn’t on my own for long. By the 72-hour mark, hundreds of reporters — if not more — had joined me in town, beaming images and accounts of the destruction around the world...
Those engaged in the response, whether covering it or participating in it, now have to ask the questions we’ve failed to ask in the past: How exactly did the earthquake affect a given problem? What are the specific goals of the relief effort concerning it? And how will we know if they’ve been met? We don’t know for sure what will come of a relief effort in which everyone is asking those questions, because we’ve never really done it before. But for the people now struggling through their ordeal in the Himalayas, there’s no better time to try.
Three days into a crisis, roads and airports are often reopening, and outside responders and journalists are arriving in droves. The decisions made at this time can determine the course of the response. A misstep now can have ramifications lasting years, even decades.
I know this because I lived through a moment of just this sort five years ago, in Haiti. I was in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010, when a powerful quake rippled outward from an epicenter 15 miles from the capital. In 40 seconds, the shock waves, according to some estimates, literally decimated the population, killing 100,000 to 316,000 people in an overcrowded, overbuilt metropolitan area that was home to more than three million. Governments and aid groups mobilized cargo planes and ships, deploying thousands of soldiers, search-and-rescue teams and medical responders. I was the lone correspondent in the country’s lone full-time foreign news bureau when the quake hit, but I wasn’t on my own for long. By the 72-hour mark, hundreds of reporters — if not more — had joined me in town, beaming images and accounts of the destruction around the world...
Those engaged in the response, whether covering it or participating in it, now have to ask the questions we’ve failed to ask in the past: How exactly did the earthquake affect a given problem? What are the specific goals of the relief effort concerning it? And how will we know if they’ve been met? We don’t know for sure what will come of a relief effort in which everyone is asking those questions, because we’ve never really done it before. But for the people now struggling through their ordeal in the Himalayas, there’s no better time to try.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled 24/7 coverage of Baltimore.
