Disaster Response

The Brethren Disaster Response Leadership Conference will take place Friday through Monday at the New Windsor Conference Center, 500 Main St., New Windsor.Nearly 100 disaster relief coordinators and directors will participate. The Rev. Patrick Mellerson, whose Orangeburg, S.C., church was destroyed by fire last year, will speak at 8 p.m. Saturday. Volunteers, including members of the local disaster response team, are rebuilding the church.Information: 635-8730.FireUnion Bridge: Firefighters assisted Frederick County at 8: 36 p.m. Sunday for a chimney fire in the 13700 block of Unionville Road.

Chris Milligan had less than two days to pack up and get himself to Port-au-Prince. "I bought some shirts, paid my bills and went," the Baltimore native says over the telephone from the Haitian capital. It was far from Milligan's first visit to a crisis zone — the U.S. Agency for International Development veteran has worked in Iraq, Zimbabwe and more than 50 other countries. Still, he says, he was struck by the devastation the January earthquake had wrought. "The scale of the destruction can't be overstated," says Milligan, 44. "It's overwhelming, even today."

Chris Milligan had less than two days to pack up and get himself to Port-au-Prince. "I bought some shirts, paid my bills and went," the Baltimore native says over the telephone from the Haitian capital. It was far from Milligan's first visit to a crisis zone — the U.S. Agency for International Development veteran has worked in Iraq, Zimbabwe and more than 50 other countries. Still, he says, he was struck by the devastation the January earthquake had wrought. "The scale of the destruction can't be overstated," says Milligan, 44. "It's overwhelming, even today."

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The faces of the Haitian disaster arrived Wednesday aboard the Navy hospital ship Comfort as a procession of earthquake victims, looking lost and scared, staggered off helicopters or strained to look up from their stretchers while corpsmen carried them below deck. There was a 20-year-old man with a shattered right leg wincing; a 47-year-old woman with her arm in a splint crying; a school bus driver, burned from the tips of his fingers to the top of his head, smiling.

WASHINGTON -- The calls went out across the nation, as Bush administration officials asked the country's most seasoned disaster response experts to consider the job of a lifetime: FEMA director. But again and again, the response over the past several months was the same: "No thanks." Unconvinced that the administration is serious about fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency or that there is enough time to get it done before President Bush's second term ends, seven of these candidates for director or another top FEMA job said in interviews that they had pulled themselves out of the running.

WASHINGTON -- Military officials reviewing the government's botched response to Hurricane Katrina are criticizing disaster planning overall, saying that relief plans lack detail on how the Pentagon and other agencies should assist local leaders in the event of a hurricane or terrorist attack. According to officials who requested anonymity, preliminary reviews by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Northern Command, the Colorado headquarters that oversees homeland security, point to shortfalls in the National Response Plan, unveiled early this year, which was designed to end the fragmented and confused disaster-relief efforts at all levels of government.

Even as aid trickled in Thursday to earthquake-ravaged Haiti - and estimates emerged of as many as 50,000 dead and countless more gravely injured - experts feared the country was on the brink of a public health disaster that could persist for months. While relief workers hoped to provide food and water and to confront the most pressing of immediate medical needs, from antibiotics to bandages, disaster response experts say what remains ahead could be equally daunting: rebuilding from scratch a public health system that was fragile at best before disaster struck.

T he faces of the Haitian disaster arrived Wednesday aboard the Navy hospital ship Comfort as a procession of earthquake victims, looking lost and scared, staggered off helicopters or strained to look up from their stretchers while corpsmen carried them below deck. There was a 20-year-old man with a shattered right leg wincing; a 47-year-old woman with her arm in a splint crying; a school bus driver, burned from the tips of his fingers to the top of his head, smiling. They came from clinics and triage centers across Haiti, beginning just after sunrise and ending at dusk, shattering the ship's military and clinical sterility with the cries and smells and blank stares of human anguish.

Even as aid trickled in Thursday to earthquake-ravaged Haiti - and estimates emerged of as many as 50,000 dead and countless more gravely injured - experts feared the country was on the brink of a public health disaster that could persist for months. While relief workers hoped to provide food and water and to confront the most pressing of immediate medical needs, from antibiotics to bandages, disaster response experts say what remains ahead could be equally daunting: rebuilding from scratch a public health system that was fragile at best before disaster struck.

Even as aid trickled in Thursday to earthquake-ravaged Haiti - and estimates emerged of as many as 50,000 dead and countless more gravely injured - experts feared the country was on the brink of a public health disaster that could persist for months. While relief workers hoped to provide food and water and to confront the most pressing of immediate medical needs, from antibiotics to bandages, disaster response experts say what remains ahead could be equally daunting: rebuilding from scratch a public health system that was fragile at best before disaster struck.

Even as aid trickled in Thursday to earthquake-ravaged Haiti - and estimates emerged of as many as 50,000 dead and countless more gravely injured - experts feared the country was on the brink of a public health disaster that could persist for months. While relief workers hoped to provide food and water and to confront the most pressing of immediate medical needs, from antibiotics to bandages, disaster response experts say what remains ahead could be equally daunting: rebuilding from scratch a public health system that was fragile at best before disaster struck.

When disaster strikes, a swift response from the private sector can be just as crucial as the government's response. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. famously sent water and other necessities after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, often before federal emergency workers arrived. And in Baltimore two years before then, amphibious Duck tour boats evacuated residents from flooded coastal areas after Hurricane Isabel. To make the most of such charitable outpourings, Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to announce Thursday the creation of a "Civic Guard" to better connect disaster victims and first responders with businesses and nonprofit organizations that might be able to help with extra manpower or resources such as shovels and medical supplies.

Quietly, and perhaps without fully realizing it, the U.S. military has begun embracing a new, wide-ranging international role that will compel it to intervene in many countries throughout the world. Yet this is a role that virtually every country would support and one that should be widely embraced here as well: the role of global first responder. The Myanmar military government's shocking and disastrous refusal of international assistance in the wake of the recent devastating cyclone has masked one broader positive development - the surprising speed at which aid, especially on the part of the U.S., was offered.