Homeland Security Digital Library

My university library is a federal depository, which means that the government sends us publications in various forms for us to make available to the public. But it means more than that.
For example, we have access, ONLY because we are a depository, to the Homeland Security Digital Library, which has more than 70,000 government publications on a much wider variety of topics than the name might suggest.

For example, a class is working on response to the earthquake in Haiti. I went to HSDL and searched for Haiti earthquake, limiting to publications where those words appeared in the title or summary. Here are some of the 49 responses, all full-text. Many of them have been updated numerous times.

Haiti Earthquake: Crisis and Response
2010 Haiti Earthquake and Caribbean Earthquake Risk
Guidance for Relief Workers and Others Traveling to Haiti for Earthquake Response
'Build Back Better' in Haiti: Lessons from the Indonesian Tsunami
Council Conclusions on the Earthquake in Haiti: Extraordinary Foreign Affairs Council Meeting
2010 Haiti Earthquake Pre-decision Brief: Leptospirosis

Earthquake Lessons

Loma Preita earthquake,San Francisco 1989
Originally uploaded by km6xo

Photo by km6xo.

Stumbling down my hilly street after a snowstorm today I started thinking about earthquakes. Not that I am expecting one, but all emergencies have certain things in common.

Stewart Brand created the Whole Earth Catalog and Whole Earth Review - essentially creating an empire on the concept of "Access To Tools." When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck he was in the Marina district of San Francisco. He parked his car and ran off to help - leaving all of his valuable equipment in the trunk. So much for access to tools.

Afterwards, everyone rushed to congratulate and reward heroic rescuers like Brand but, he noticed, no one asked them what they had learned from the experience.

So he did ask and the results were the best article I ever read in Whole Earth Review. I am pleased but not surprised to see that it is available on the web.

If you don't have time to read the whole article, flip to the last page where the lessons are summarized. It could save your life, or help you save someone else's. As I suggested, some of them apply to any emergency. For example:

• Give people who are trapped all the information you’ve got, and enlist their help. Treat them not as helpless victims but as an exceptionally motivated part of the rescue team.
• Most action in a disaster is imitative. Most effective leadership is by example.
• Bystanders make the convenient assumption that everything is being taken care of by the people already helping. That’s seldom accurate.
• Collect tools!