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[OM] Re: OT Katrina help-site

Subject: [OM] Re: OT Katrina help-site
From: "John A. Lind" <jalind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 00:46:08 -0500
I hope they will share the data somehow!  Wouldn't necessarily be as 
easy as it sounds.

Most (if not all) the news departments of the major TV networks and 
national cable news have some setup for this.  I'm cynical enough to 
believe they have a dual motive . . . gaining Public Goodwill by 
offering a Public Service and gaining traffic from hits on their web 
sites to utilize it.

In the U.S., the American Red Cross (the U.S. member organization of the 
ICRC) has a special relationship with the U.S. Government and operates 
under a Congressional Charter.  One of their chartered activities is 
relief aid for natural disasters in coordination with FEMA.  At the 
national level, there are specific services provided by the ARC under 
provisions of the Stafford Act (Major Disaster declarations fall under 
this act) and in the National Response Plan under the Homeland Security 
Act (Incident of National Significance declarations execute the National 
Response Plan).  Among these is helping reunite displaced family members 
with each other.  The database . . . although it's accessed on the ICRC 
site . . . is part of that service performed by the ARC for the U.S. 
Government.  State and local chapters of the ARC work with state and 
local governments providing similar types of services for them during 
lesser events.  One of the more interesting of the local services is 
helping provide temporary emergency housing for people whose homes are 
uninhabitable following a fire (the fire department usually calls them 
for the victims).

The ARC's original Congressional Charter was granted in 1900, was 
modified in 1905, and the 1905 charter has been amended on numerous 
occaions since then.  Those amendments tie the ARC in with the Stafford 
Act, FEMA and the Homeland Security Act's National Response Plan.  The 
ARC also acts as agent of the U.S. Government to carry out some of the 
government's obligations under the Geneva Conventions (IIRC, a few of 
the amendments relate to that as well).

-- John Lind

Brian Swale wrote:
> 
> Interesting that nobody in the Open Source community alerted them to the 
> International Red Cross site (signifies that they did not know of it), that 
> there 
> is no USA government central website to co-ordinate these matters (one 
> would expect that surely), and the preacher who is setting  up scores of 
> refuges in at least two states, and who asked for this help which he got, was 
> not aware of the Red Cross site ( and presumably, considering the state of 
> the refuge creator's finances) has not had any assistance from the Red 
> Cross. Sounds as though he has never had any contact with the Red Cross.  
> On the other hand, they are well aware of the many bogus "help" sites out 
> there as they give warning about them  As a practiced internet searcher, I 
> would expect the Red Cross site to show up in any search that pulls in 
> bogus sites.
> 
> I wonder if they will exchange links.  I'll bet not.
> 
> Brian

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