Shopping at Costco yesterday -- amidst those manmade canyons/aisles of food -- I was wishing I could express-ship a pallet of food to the remote, devastated areas of Japan. Or even just one of my pantry shelves of food.

The individual stories of tragedy and hardship a week into the disaster are heartbreaking. I just now read of 30 children still sitting in their classroom, where they were when the tsunami hit, waiting for their parents to show up....

With the world's 3rd largest economy and probably the most "prepared" populace and bureaucracy, the disaster response in Japan does not seem to be living up to the expectations of the Japanese people or many international observers. Would any tabletop exercise have predicted what's happening today and how it is being handled?

I wonder if the U.S. would fare much better.

The NorCal-Oregon-Washington nightmare subduction zone scenario.... The New Madrid fault....

Americans not in the damage zones would desperately want to help. Could we, other than donating money? Authorities surely wouldn't want even well-intentioned numbers of outsiders rushing in. Damaged roadways and runways could make it impossible anyway. There is limited access to the Pacific Northwest coastline to begin with. Portland, Seattle and a host of inland towns and roads may not be in great shape, either. If the PNW or midwest were hit I'd be chomping at the bit to load up my SUV and trailer with supplies for family, friends and strangers.

Japan is showing that being outside the damage zone doesn't necessarily mean being unaffected (power shortages/blackouts, food & fuel shortages). We've had some inkling of that potential in the U.S. when hurricanes have affected refineries and pipelines.

I'd like to think America would fare better in such a disaster. But I'm less confident of that today than I would have been a week ago. And certainly less confident than before Hurricane Katrina.

Is there anything inherently different about America, Americans or our government (local-state-fed) that should give us confidence that our nation would fare better than Japan has to this point?

Or worse? (their building codes/practices apparently are superior in regard to earthquakes)

We're already seeing direct economic affect in the U.S. because of Japan's troubles, with a GM plant announcing it was shutting down next week because of a parts shortage due to disruption in the supply chain.

I'm torn on this issue.

On the one hand ... I have been tremendously impressed by the organization of the Japanese people at the local level. Many of their towns had active tsunami warning systems. As soon as those sirens went off, they actually had volunteers going door-to-door in those towns making sure that every resident was moving to higher ground. WOW!!! It didn't happen in all their towns, but the ones that achieved it really upped their survival rate. We are nowhere near that scale of efficiency ... compared to them we are asleep on our feet. I have also been impressed with how quickly their local rescue efforts got underway after the disaster, and especially impressed by the fundamental honesty of the Japanese people (no looting!!). So their ability to respond at the local level has been an enormously strong capability for them.

I do think that the USA has some awesome people and resources. And I think that comments on this thread are right that military units, and specialist groups will try to get to diaster zones very quickly. That will help. But I also think they may be shocked and overwhelmed by what they discover once they get there. If the Pacific Northwest has an 8.5-9 earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone, and this also causes a large tsunami that hits coastal towns & cities, it's going to be a huge mess. I can't imagine anybody up there could be prepared for that - the event is too rare in occurrence. Meanwhile, down here in L.A. I have been surprised by how complacent residents have become about maintaining basic food and water in their homes for emergencies. Preparation at the local level is bordering on abysmal. Californians are going to regret that BIG TIME. If Los Angeles gets a 7.0 local earthquake (Newport-Inglewood fault), followed a couple of years later by an 8.5 on the San Andreas ... it's going to be tough. But if the 7.0 and the 8.5 happen within a few days of each other, L.A. will look like the Apocalypse.

For me ... it boils down to what can be done in the first 72 hours after one of these disasters. That is when most of the survivors will be rescued. What I learned from the Japanese experience is this ... if you get a truly HUGE disaster, nearly all of the rescuing will be done by locals. Very few emergency services from outside your city will be able to get to you in time (esp. in first 48 hours).

As for nuclear emergencies ... my guess is that the US Gov't will handle them the same as possible nuclear terror incidents. The teams for those situations come from trained military units, plus special scientific teams. I don't think most of our first responders are ready to deal with radiation while they provide EMS (am I wrong about that?). For this reason, if the neighborhood was a nuclear mess, I would expect to see military vehicles on the streets ordering residents to pack up and leave. We should be prepared for that. And I don't expect any data on radiation levels - if you want those, measure them yourself.

other Pete

When you have destruction on the scale we are witnessing in Japan, it is difficult to access and work within the disaster zone, no matter how prepared you might be. I agree, local efforts are going to very important in saving lives in the initial window of opportunity.

> I wonder if the U.S. would fare much better.

No, not really. My wife and I are in an ARES organization and a CERT group, and we get training by the local fire dept. and briefings by local OES people. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I'm assured by one and all that if we get hit by a big one, we can count on no help for at least a week, be prepared to survive without help for a month.

After every overseas disaster, people ask what they can do to help. Each of those people is an individual. Young persons want to go over and _do_ something since it takes the bureaucracies too long to get there. It turns out the best thing for an individual to do is to donate cash to their favorite charity that's doing relief work.

My suggestion to people who want to go do something is to join a volunteer organization now. My wife and I volunteer with our organizations, the fire captain knows us, the cops at local towns know us because they work with us at street fairs, fund-raising runs, and so on. When we show up after a quake (assuming we're alive and uninjured), the captain knows what we can do, so he'll be able to put us to work. He knows what we can do because we've worked with him since before he was a captain. Knowing the volunteers is very important. People chose volunteers they know.

If you have a neighborhood CERT, get involved with the group; take their training. If you want, join the Red Cross as a volunteer. One of our friends flew from here to New Orleans and various other disaster zones and set up telephone banks for the Red Cross; someone else had found a location, ensured electricity, water, toilets, food, etc. The organizations know how to respond, know what the local needs are, and know how to meet those needs without getting their own people hurt or killed. The organizations know how to get their people in there with their own food, lodging, and care. That's why they take a week or so to show up - they're fielding everything they need not only to supply the needy but to supply themselves. The Salvation Army has a group of ham radio operators (SATERN) that don't need to be deployed - you can be a ham in your own home and volunteer to pass health and welfare traffic to and from the disaster scene. You can operate from the disaster area and provide local communications to disaster workers at the site.

But you have to be a trained volunteer with the organization so they know what you can do and can use you to their best interests. Volunteer now and be ready when the quake, tornado, hurricane, flood hits here in the states.

I would have to say that the US would probably fare much much worse in a similar way to the UK to the Japanese scale disaster . Infrastructure throughout the USA is quite poor as in the UK and has been designed not for resilience but the lowest common denominator of the lowest cost basis. Throw into the equation God, guns, race and politics and an equivalent disaster would be an exceptionally bad day for the UK and USA (although we don't have to worry to much about the God and guns part of the equation over here in the UK just as in Japan. )

Even the US military would be poorly equipped on the command psychological level to quickly put together a response plan despite the physical assets they have access to. The ability at the bottom of the command structure to formulate, adapt and carry out their own response plan I suspect would be quite poor. The UK military (known as the borrowers) don't have access to the same resources as the US military but we do have Staff and Sergeant Majors to keep the Officers on the right track.

Civil management of the response plan would probably be quite pitiful for both the US and the UK as well. Too many chiefs and not enough Indians with the Indians asking the Chiefs 'What the hell are you talking about' because the Chiefs basically have a poor technical or engineering background having graduated from University with a Harvard Business Management or Oxford PPE degree.

Having a UK Prime Minister (educated in PPE from Oxford University ) in the UK taking charge of a Nuclear Reactor emergency would fill me with absolute dread. For some reason the Japanese don't seem to have a problem though as the Japanese Prime Minister dons his boiler suit.

I guess we all know this - This is why we prepare (just in case)

I was a responder during Katrina. Many people asked me "why did it take so long, why was the initial response so weak?"

I replied by asking them if they knew ANYONE that was a volunteer for the Red Cross or any other similar agency. None did.

It is too late to volunteer after the event. It is sort of like volunteering to be in a professional hockey game without any training. Mostly you will just get in the way and probably get hurt. And if you are used, you will probably be doing some seemingly unimportant task far from the "action".

If you really want to help, volunteer now, get training, make a commitment to the future.

Nomad.

Japan has approximately the same area as our state of Montana, with a population almost 3.5 times that of California. About 75% of Japan is mountainous, so they only have about 36,500 sq mi of flatlands into which they have stuffed over 127 million people, so that's somewhere in the vicinity of 3500 people per sq mile.

To that add a mega earthquake, a powerful tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns, plus millions trapped in the cities, destroyed roads, buried victims, not enough equipment, not enough water, not enough food, and there are actually people who have the UNMITIGATED GALL to say Japan isn't doing enough???

AND to say that the U.S. could do better?

This must be coming from the fantasyland members of society who think if they were in the same situation, they would just pick up their families, stuff them in the 4WD, and trundle out of town, right?

It must be really, really dark and warm where some of these people have their heads!

Sue

Well said. You are absolutely right.

If you read my posts you know I'm a professional quibbler - the comments on volunteering during a disaster are spot on, but there is a reality that after a disaster, the number of spontaneous volunteers spikes, and they constitute an important reserve of ready labor for responder agencies, who rely upon volunteers. At a price of course - an organization has to divert attention from disaster response to fielding incoming volunteer requests, vetting, training them minimally for certain tasks, a whole slew of responsibilities. But on balance I think we find this diversion of resources is worth it, if you can accept certain limitations. The reality is that a spontaneous volunteer is seldom as capable or deployable as a volunteer before disaster strikes. Sending spontaneous volunteers into a disaster area is a little like combat, you hope for some skirmishes to get their feet wet (or soak their shorts as Dad put it) before a big battle - that's alot to expect. And there is another reality of spontaneous volunteers - after the disaster, and they have stopped unloading trucks, watching parking lots, emptying bed pans, maybe loading food trays, 99.5% don't continue their volunteerism with the agency who took them on. This is not to [censored] on spontaneous volunteers at all - there's something fundamentally good in people willing to stop and help others. It takes a special person who makes a commitment to volunteer ahead of disaster though - I know, I work with plenty of them day in day out.

I joke (and brag) that I can help organize food, shelter and clothing to 13,000 people, and set up disaster satellite communications to HQ in under an hour, among other things - but its no joke, I have those skills and others thanks to Red Cross training. Private plug, I have found that the Red Cross will take you wherever you want to go in terms of disaster assistance - granted, that may be to the next Katrina, or Loma Prieto, or wildfires, or midwest floods, but also to floods and fires in your own back yard, helping your literal neighbors. There's a slew of interesting work behind the front lines so to speak, in terms of language translation, logistics, fund raising, you name it. Its there in your community, consider a commitment if the volunteer urge is upon you. You may like it. And if you don't, unlike the military, you can always politely back away, no harm no foul. You would be none the worse for the training, that's for sure.