Best intentions: When Disaster Relief Brings Anything but Relief
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Last Updated Sep 3, 2017 9:02 AM EDT
Many of the well-meaning articles we Americans donate in times of disaster turn out to be of no use to those in need. Sometimes, they even get in the way. That's a message relief organizations very much want us to heed. Our Cover Story is reported now by Scott Simon of NPR. (An earlier version of this story was originally broadcast on "Sunday Morning" on April 24, 2016.)
The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey reminds us all over again that when Nature grows savage and angry, Americans can get generous and kind. That's admirable. It might also be a problem.
"Generally after a disaster, people with loving intentions donate things that cannot be used in a disaster response, and in fact may actually be harmful," said Juanita Rilling, former director of the Center for International Disaster Information in Washington, D.C. "And they have no idea that they're doing it."
Rilling has spent more than a decade trying to tell well-meaning people to think before they give.
I think the author uses logos to show that you need to think before you send things that you might think are helpful but are probably not.
I believe the author is trying to inform others about the major damage that Hurricane Harvey has done to Houston. By doing this the reader could want to help out the Houston flood victims.
In 1998 Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras. More than 11,000 people died. More than a million and a half were left homeless.
Believe it or not this is also logos. As sad as this sentence is, it may seem like pathos, because it is emotional, but actually it is logos. This paragraph is using logos by providing facts, (numbers)
And Rilling got a wake-up call: "Got a call from one of our logistics experts who said that a plane full of supplies could not land, because there was clothing on the runway. It's in boxes and bales. It takes up yards of space. It can't be moved.' 'Whose clothing is it?' He said, 'Well, I don't know whose it is, but there's a high-heeled shoe, just one, and a bale of winter coats.' And I thought, winter coats? It's summer in Honduras."
Humanitarian workers call the crush of useless, often incomprehensible contributions "the second disaster."
In 2004, following the Indian Ocean tsunami, a beach in Indonesia was piled with used clothing.
There was no time for disaster workers to sort and clean old clothes. So the contributions just sat and rotted.
"This very quickly went toxic and had to be destroyed," said Rilling. "And local officials poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. And then it was out to sea."
Tons of donated clothing on the beach at Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
"So, rather than clothing somebody, it went up in flames?" asked Simon.
"Correct. The thinking is that these people have lost everything, so they must NEED everything. So people SEND everything. You know, any donation is crazy if it's not needed. People have donated prom gowns and wigs and tiger costumes and pumpkins, and frostbite cream to Rwanda, and used teabags, 'cause you can always get another cup of tea."
You may not think that sending bottles of water to devastated people seems crazy. But Rilling points out, "This water, it's about 100,000 liters, will provide drinking water for 40,000 people for one day. This amount of water to send from the United States, say, to West Africa -- and people did this -- costs about $300,000. But relief organizations with portable water purification units can produce the same amount, a 100,000 liters of water, for about $300."
In this paragraph the author is using logos. He is using logos because he is providing facts about the water, and about how many people it can help. He also talks about the costs of the water and other facts.
And then there were warm-hearted American women who wanted to send their breast milk to nursing mothers in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
"It sounds wonderful, but in the midst of a crisis it's actually one of the most challenging things," said Rebecca Gustafson, a humanitarian aid expert who has worked on the ground after many disasters.
"Breast milk doesn't stay fresh for very long. And the challenge is, what happens if you do give it to an infant who then gets sick?"
December 2012, Newtown, Connecticut: A gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Almost instantaneously, stuff start arriving.
Tens of thousands of stuffed animals, donated to the children of Newtown, Conn., following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, fill a warehouse.
Most donations were sent away.
Chris Kelsey, who worked for Newtown at the time, said they had to get a warehouse to hold all the teddy bears.
Simon asked, "Was there a need for teddy bears?"
"I think it was a nice gesture," Kelsey replied. "There was a need to do something for the kids. There was a need to make people feel better. I think the wave of stuff we got was a little overwhelming."
And how many teddy bear came to Newtown? "I think it was about 67,000," Kelsey said. "Wasn't limited to teddy bears. There was also thousands of boxes of school supplies, and thousands of boxes of toys, bicycles, sleds, clothes."
Newtown had been struck by mass murder, not a tsunami. As Kelsey said, "I think a lot of the stuff that came into the warehouse was more for the people that sent it, than it was for the people in Newtown. At least, that's the way it felt at the end."
Every child in Newtown got a few bears. The rest had to be sent away, along with the bikes and blankets.
There are times when giving things works. More than 650,000 homes were destroyed or damaged in Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Thousands of people lost everything.
Donated clothing on a basketball court following Hurricane Sandy, in the Bronx, N.Y.
Tammy Shapiro is one of the organizers of Occupy Sandy, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
"We were able to respond in a way that the big, bureaucratic agencies can't," Shapiro said.
When the hurricane struck, they had a network of activists, connected and waiting.
"Very quickly, we just stopped taking clothes," Shapiro said. Instead, they created a "relief supply" wedding registry.
"We put the items that we needed donated on that registry," said Shapiro. "And then people who wanted to donate could buy the items that were needed. I mean, a lot of what we had on the wedding registry was diapers. They needed flashlights."
Simon asked, "How transportable is your experience here, following Hurricane Sandy?"
"For me, the network is key. Who has the knowledge? Where are spaces that goods can live if there's a disaster? Who's really well-connected on their blocks?"
Juanita Rilling's album of disaster images shows shot after shot of good intentions just spoiling in warehouses, or rotting on the landscape.
"It is heartbreaking," Rilling said. "It's heartbreaking for the donor, it's heartbreaking for the relief organizations, and it's heartbreaking for survivors. This is why cash donations are so much more effective. They buy exactly what people need, when they need it.
The author uses pathos by using words “heartbreaking” to really make a point to show that it’s sad to waste all the items that people donated when and the victims of the accident don’t need it. This effects the article by showing how important to actually send things people need. It makes the readers really think about what they send next time there is an accident,and to make sure they donate something useful, like money.
"And cash donations enable relief organizations to purchase supplies locally, which ensures that they're fresh and familiar to survivors, purchased in just the right quantities, and delivered quickly. And those local purchases support the local merchants, which strengthens the local economy for the long run."
The message is that it’s better to send money than donating items.
The point that the author is trying to get across is that all of these nice things that are getting sent in for disaster relief are thoughtful, but not really all that helpful. He was saying that it would be better to send in money for those in need.
Disaster response worker Rebecca Gustafson says that most people want to donate something that is theirs: "Money sometimes doesn't feel personal enough for people. They don't feel enough of their heart and soul is in that donation, that check that they would send.
"The reality is, it's one of the most compassionate things that people can do."
Below: A PSA on disaster relief giving:
General Document Comments 0
The message is that money is better than sending other supplies. They showed that sending other supplies is not effective because a lot of the supplies rotten before it even gets to the people.
They are using pathos because they want to persuade you by making you feel bad by showing you how your donations are actually hurting rather than helping. You feel bad then want to help but in the way they are trying to tell you to.
The Message For this article is that people without out thinking send stuff that they think will help but it is really what is the easiest to send will be the best to help because of the need for materials but not the greater than need
The author’s message was that sending money is more convenient and effective than sending supplies. The author used logos to make his argument by explaining the logical reasoning behind why clothing,breast-milk,shoes etc. are not effective ways to help people in need because those items actually end up being wasted, whereas money can be used for their specific needs.
The message of the article is that sending money is more beneficial than donating items. A lot of goods sent in are wasted because they cannot be used.
The message is that sending money is better than sending donations such as clothes and toys to natural disasters. They used pathos to convey their message because it could be very upsetting to some people that their attempts to help could actually be hurting the relief efforts. An example is when mothers tried to give breast milk to nursing mothers in Haiti, but if the children got sick from that milk it would have been the relief organization and the donater’s fault.
The message of the article is that money is a better thing to donate then clothes are other items. He used pathos by showing pictures of people in the disaster surrounded by clothes and items they couldn’t really use. The pictures made people really see where those donated items go and made people see why money was a better option to donate.
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