Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on Japan Aid: Help for the Well-Prepared

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/15/what-aid-makes-sense-for-japan/prepared-but-still-in-need

by zach • 15 years ago

107 69 15 years ago

charlief4• 15 years ago

At your discretion, how did you land this Patrick? Perhaps this can be better answered on your blog, but did the NYT contact you after coming across your article?

Original article submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319629

Natsu• 15 years ago

He commented earlier on HN that lots of people from the news media had been contacting him. Here's a link to what he said:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2330783

charlief4• 15 years ago

Thank you. I still hope Patrick responds because I wanted to hear the specific story. In what you linked, I imagine he was referring to reporters in information-hunting mode.

patio113• 15 years ago

I didn't "land" this -- I didn't seek it and don't particularly want it. Folks in the media in several English-speaking countries abroad have been contacting me repeatedly for the last couple of days, and when contacted I try to say "Yes, I would be happy to do that" with the goal of improving the reporting available in English and averting panic.

As to why I'm suddenly several reporters go-to guy for this? The biggest reason is that I speak English and am accessible. They know about me because my blog post on Sunday got widely distributed abroad. (I suspect many of them follow Jimmy Wales, who retweeted it.) My blog has working contact information on it. Also, since the media are pack animals, as soon as anybody quoted me then I was a Certified Expert (TM) and so everybody else should quote me, too.

They really should be talking with the guy I talked about in my blog post who actually pushed the button to turn on the warning system at our clients out east. (Someone at the company found I had mentioned them and passed the word around. He sent me a message saying that reading it gave him hope and pride in trying circumstances. I would trade a hundred thousand angry emails from people for that.) Or they could talk to any city office in Japan and ask "So, what is SOP for this sort of thing?"

Either of those would be better choices than me. But, again, they don't speak English and they're not in reporters' Rolodexes. Through a quirk set of circumstances, I am. So when they call and ask "How much should we be panicking?" I say "Don't panic." (A radio station wanted my opinion on the likelihood of them getting poisoned by radioactivity from Fukushima half a globe away. I'm not a nuclear engineer. Of course I immediately said "I am not a nuclear engineer, but to put your listeners at ease, that will not happen." It's the right answer. It probably shouldn't be coming from me, but someone should say it, loudly.)

Vivtek• 15 years ago

Boy, the commenters there don't seem to agree with him much.

dpapathanasiou• 15 years ago

Neither does Yuhei Sato, who is the governor of Fukushima prefecture:

"Mr Sato said centres already housing people who had been moved from their homes near the plant did not have enough hot meals and basic necessities such as fuel and medical supplies. "We're lacking everything," he said."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12763273

nialo• 15 years ago

These are not necessarily contradictory. Fukushima can quite easily be lacking all of those things because they're stuck on the wrong side of Japan, where more people who don't know how to fix roads or speak Japanese won't help. Similarly, adding more supplies to the piles on the wrong side of the country won't help either.

The point here is that the bottleneck is distribution of things that already exist, not getting them to Japan in the first place.

jarek• 15 years ago

You can truck those in from Arkansas, right?

logicalmind• 15 years ago

Are Patrick's observations a literal case of survivor bias?

uxp• 15 years ago

Patrick also lives 400 km outside of Tokyo, which is then 300 km to the center of Fukushima Prefecture, which is then 80 km away from Miyagi, where the tsunami did the most damage.

Thats almost 500 miles (750ish km). He may have felt an earthquake, and a strong one at that, but he did not survive a natural disaster and he certainly is not in the middle of a nuclear disaster. From his perspective, everything is perfectly fine.

On August 30th 2005, I moved from Pennsylvania back to my hometown in the West. Hurricane Katrina hit that previous night, and despite the gas bill costing a bit more than I had originally budgeted, as long as I kept the news radio down I was none the wiser as to anything going on down there as I crawled across the country.

Patrick, as much as the HN Japanese guy he is, is in the same position I was. He life is a little inconvenienced and it sounds like he is a little busy doing whatever his disaster/emergency related Salaryman job does. That said, I like his perspective, and I think it helps up understand that all of Japan is not sinking or melting. The parts that are though do need our help, and I think it would be good of him to distinguish between where he is being just fine and the North area that certainly is not doing well, even if the situation up there is under control.

bad_user2• 15 years ago

First comment in the article is disturbing:

One of my wife's relatives is working with those made homeless in her hometown of Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, which was destroyed by the tsunami. She and many other workers along the coast would not agree with your assessment. The Western media have made the Fukushima nuclear plant the most salient aspect of this tragedy, not least because of the politics and economics of the King Kong vs Godzilla battle being waged by the US coal and nuclear power industries, and other sorts of political battles in Europe. The need for humanitarian aid remains huge. Moreover, this is something most Americans actually can provide -- unlike advice on stopping nuclear meltdowns.

donw7• 15 years ago

This. This this this.

You know who's fleeing the 'impending nuclear holocaust'? The foreigners who get all of their news from English-language media.

One of my coworkers flew back to NYC because he was so worried about radiation exposure. You get exposed to more radiation by taking a twelve-hour flight than you would by camping in a pup tent in the mountains overlooking the reactor complex.

The Japanese news is full of experts, explanations, and zero panic. The foreign news is full of propaganda. Makes me sick.

nandemo• 15 years ago

I think the main point of the comment bad_user quoted is not the same you're making here.

That said, I do feel that the Japanese Tokyoites are calmer about the nuclear thing. Anecdotally, more than half of my foreign friends and acquaintances have fled or are planning to flee Tokyo (mostly to elsewhere in Japan, some abroad), but nearly all my Japanese friends have stay put.

It's not all about the news, though. While I share your perception that English-language media is being way more sensationalist about it, it's not the case that all my foreign friends get all their news from English-language media. Some of them speak Japanese, and some have Japanese spouses, but are still fleeing. Other possible factors: foreigners have less roots here, have more options to flee, and more incentive to leave (family is abroad, etc). So the total perceived "cost" to flee is lower.

Locke16892• 15 years ago

If the problem is broken infrastructure, how can Americans "actually provide" that? Giving money, etc, will be useful once transportation and communication infrastructure is back online, but isn't Patrick's comment based around the fact that the thing Japan most needs is expertise in rebuilding and maintaining infrastructure? While Japan certainly has world class engineers, isn't it possible that they're a little overworked at the moment and could use US expertise as well?

donw7• 15 years ago

Exactly. Japan needs the Army Corps of Engineers, not a mountain of blankets.

edw519• 15 years ago

Weird reading comments with 10 year old technology. All you can do is "Recommend", "Report as inappropriate", or add you own comment without knowing where it will fall in the thread. Replying to someone else is basically useless.

Maybe I'm spoiled by Hacker News, but without the give and take of healthy debate, it's hard to learn much.

But then again, maybe that's the point.

bad_user2• 15 years ago

So, I know that the Japanese are well prepared for earthquakes - I watched documentaries on Discovery about it :)

But my God, this earthquake went off the charts. Then 500 other earthquakes of magnitude 5 to 7 happened. Every one of those earthquakes would have been a problem in my city, as we've got plenty of old buildings.

So it's really hard for me to believe that the Japanese are so well prepared. I also saw pictures of survivers and of various affected areas and the situation is rather not good.

The thing I admire Japanese for right now - they don't complain much and they don't go creating more mayhem on the streets.

But that doesn't mean they don't need help, and if I were in Patrick's shoes, I would be careful about stating such things - maybe because of this article, some poor neighborhood / city that has been badly affected won't receive help in due time, as public opinion does tend to have crazy effects like that.

sovande2• 15 years ago

I'm starting to get feed up about patio11 and the all's well attitude and "we'll manage, thank you very much". The last head-count is seventeen thousand dead and rising. It is obvious that all is _not_ well and that people in the affected areas need help and fast.

bioh42_22• 15 years ago

Japan has a population of ~ 300 million and is one of the most advanced and wealthiest nations on Earth.

I am sure those affected need help but what makes you think others can provide help better/faster then Japan itself can?

Perhaps the US navy has lifting capacity that Japan could use, but what else?

hollerith• 15 years ago

>Japan has a population of ~ 300 million

127 million according to Wikipedia.

kqr2• 15 years ago

Actually, the population of Japan is about 127 million.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+japan

alphaoverlord• 15 years ago

~300 million is the population of the US

We have 2.5x the population but 25x the landmass. That's an order of magnitude difference in population density. Now imagine a natural disaster.

blacksmythe• 15 years ago

  >> I'm starting to get feed up about patio11 and the all's well attitude and "we'll manage, thank you very much".

I don't know that he ever said that they don't need help. One thing he did say is that you are not going to BE much help if you come and don't speak Japanese.

(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318005) I appreciate the thought, but it takes $2k to bring you here, which is enough to put an out of work Japanese twenty-something on the project for a month. He's literate and can understand directions.

(note: I can attest from personal experience that people that don't speak Japanese can have difficulty getting around without assistance once they leave Tokyo)

DanielBMarkham• 15 years ago

All is not well, but Patio11 is writing a contrarian article -- an article that goes against conventional wisdom.

I am at loss to explain this in a way that does not sound callous. Just be assured that these things are perceived in a cyclic manner by the public. Right now, and for the next few months, the MSM and the mob has decided that it is time to panic, rant and rave.

That's fine. It's a terrible disaster, and our minds are ill-suited to deal with anything of this scale. My heart goes out to the Japanese and I'll do anything I can do to help. At the same time, however, it's not a very productive attitude to sit around moaning and talking about how terrible things are. Everybody doesn't have to follow the mob and feel exactly the "right" way that you or I think that they should. Conforming to some black-and-white, over-the-top view of the world is an indulgence that we can have because we are so far away. The Japanese have work to do, and that involves taking an honest look around and reminding themselves that there is a huge amount of stuff that is not broken.

I enjoy contrarian articles - both writing them and reading them -- because it reminds me how easy it is to cut corners and go from "horrible disaster" to "all is lost!" Crowds always overreact, and the media tries their damnedest to make money off of this phenomenon. Quite frankly it's digusting. I don't know what's worse, watching this disaster slowly unfold or watching the news outlets "break" news every few minutes and do their best to rehash old stories with a sense of forboding and panic. blech.

So until you live 300 miles from a disaster like that, you might want to cut Patio11 a bit of slack. Hell, even if you live in the middle of it, you might want to cut him some slack, because getting along with each other is the right thing to do. Let people deal with things in the way that they are best suited. A little more understanding and a little less attitude.

sovande2• 15 years ago

> Patio11 is writing a contrarian article -- an article that goes against conventional wisdom

Yeah patio's polemic is "cool" and all, but when the ship starts to sink after it has hit the iceberg and you still insist that all is well because "this ship cannot sink" then its not so cool anymore. The people affected need help and for them the plans obviously does not work and situated actions are called for. They need, food, shelter, medicin etc. and fast.

lmkg• 15 years ago

The question is not whether all is well, or help is needed. The question is whether or not the help that we could provide would be a net benefit, or an overall drag on the existing disaster relief system.

Help volunteering isn't free (even ignoring the cost). It requires coordination and organization of where and how to allocate resources, which must be inserted into the existing plans. It diverting supplies that could go to displaced people in order to sustain the volunteers trying to help them. In many cases, it requires training, which takes away time from the people with skills that can be immediately applied.

Patio11's contention, which I have no expert opinion about but I'm willing to take him at face-value, is that the overhead required to extract value from a volunteer off the streets is greater than the value extracted. The Japanese need more help, but people who might be interested in volunteering are ill-suited to give help. A further point implied in the title but not the article is that the military could give humanitarian aide; I would be willing to believe this, as they have their own coordination, supply, and training already in place and would therefore not be a drag on Japan's relief resources.

jbm• 15 years ago

This.

No offense Patrick, you're a great dude, but I'm somewhat put off by that attitude. It's easy to say when you are in Nagoya; do you guys even have the electricity problem in the 60hz zone of Japan?

To clarify, I am still in Tokyo, working in Yokohama at the moment, and I don't think Tokyo has a problem. (I am worried about _long term_ exposure to elevated radiation, but that is neither here nor there.) I do think the foreign media has been blowing things out of proportion (to the point where I told my mom I had relocated to Yamanashi to calm her down).

However, these irritatingly smug articles about how everything is "alright", and not to "panic" are ridiculous. I keep getting such sanctimonious messages on my Twitter feed about how nothing's wrong; I suspect quite a few are infowar soundbytes meant for American consumption. With a lack of clear, trustworthy information, it is entirely logical to assume the worst and ride out the tide while waiting for objective sources of information (geiger counters, etc..) to prove things one way or another.

I "panicked" and bought 15 kilos of rice, canned foods and lentils. (Not to mention batteries, etc..) I filled up my bathtub with water, and stored as much as I could in safe places. (I also did it before the powerplants blew.) Most likely nothing will happen and I won't have to do food shopping for another 3-6 months. However, in the odd chance that things really do go south (another earthquake, etc...), I have an improved chance of getting out alive.

I don't begrudge anyone for feeling that there is more than meets the eye at play, and for leaving. Seeing the "macho posing" on twitter and facebook is stupid; no one is more masculine because you are still here. (I'm here, but only because my company stupidly decided to keep working when its entire staff is demoralized. BTW, if anyone wants a Python/Django engineer and project manager with a B.Sc, I'm willing to relocate. ;) )

adrianwaj3• 15 years ago

I'd like to see K-MAX unmanned helicopters dropping boric acid and seawater on the reactors - or whatever is best.

"Japan nuclear crisis: radiation levels stop helicopter from dumping water." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8385559...

Unmanned K-MAX helicopter achieves airdrop milestones http://www.gizmag.com/k-max-unmanned-helicopter-milestones/1...

portman2• 15 years ago

I have great respect for Patrick, and usually agree with him, but in this case I think his conclusion is far off-mark.

Japanese citizens need our help, on a massive scale.

The government may not need any assistance, but the families and communities ravaged by the disaster have an unbounded need for aid.

I've lived in Uganda and Cambodia, two countries which get a disproportionate share of Western aid. Yet still, even with all those development dollars, a $50 gift can completely transform an individual's life. I've seen it happen.

If your house, your church, your community, and much of your extended family has been annihilated, and you're rebuilding your life from scratch, then you need our help, no matter how well-equipped your government is.

Please give, and give generously.

Lost_BiomedE• 15 years ago

The government is in a bad situation. Their finances weren't great going into the disaster. They have an aging population and have to import everything. This is going to spark an economic disaster as well.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110314-japan-persian-gulf-e...

iujyhgtfhj• 15 years ago

But enough about your own problems - how is Japan?

grasshoper• 15 years ago

I was going to donate to aid organizations to help supply food and water, but I guess I should send some nuclear engineering textbooks and maybe my old exams from Nuclear Engineering 101. That's obviously the best and only way for the average American to help, what with our expertise on these matters.

I've also included this link[1] to the wikipedia article discussing the current situation involving the threatened nuclear reactors; hopefully, this will elucidate matters for Japanese officials. Maybe someone can help with the translations.

We should also send them the most insightful reader comments from CNN.com, reddit, and YouTube.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Japanese_nuclear_incidents

angus772• 15 years ago

My deeply-ingrained image of the Ugly American get the better of me here. I actually thought you were serious until halfway through the post, and was mentally preparing a response to rip you a new asshole.

adrianwaj3• 15 years ago

Dodge tsunami charity scams http://www.atg.wa.gov/BlogPost.aspx?id=27544

donw7• 15 years ago

Japan is the third largest economy in the world.

Uganda and Cambodia don't even make it into the top hundred.

Most of those 'development dollars' never even make their way remotely close to the people in third-world countries; the graft and corruption sees to that.

I live in Tokyo, and it's pretty insulting to hear this kind of shit.

Japan can certainly use the short-term help, especially from trained rescue workers, as well as helicopter pilots (as long as they come with their own helicopter). Help is definitely appreciated.

But with or without 'our' help, Japan will recover.

The real problems here are the disruption in the supply chains. The oil refineries and stores along the east coast are all offline, and in the three hardest-hit areas, many roads are unusable. This makes it really hard to get supplies in, even though there's plenty flowing in from the rest of the country.

On the social side, Japan is a group-oriented culture, with deep ties stretching all over the country. The refugees have the entire nation behind them in rebuilding their lives, homes, and communities.

Speaking of communities, people here don't go to church. Shinto-buddhism doesn't really work that way. While there are Christians here, they're a small, and very tough, minority.

I'm probably going to eat a bunch of downvotes for this, but it's irritating as hell that everybody overseas thinks that we're either all dead, or that I'm living in a tent.

pyre2• 15 years ago

This is like saying that people in New Orleans didn't need help after Katrina just because I lived nowhere near Louisiana. Don't take your frustration at 'the West' for thinking that people in Tokyo are as hard hit as the areas to the north out on others. Just because life goes on in Tokyo does not mean that there is no crisis to the north. Your entire post comes across to me as high arrogance.

If by Shinto-buddhism, you're referring to Shin Buddhism (aka Jōdo Shinshū), then yes. People go to Temple and celebrate different holidays than Christians, but to say "people here don't go to church" is quibbling over the terms "church" vs "temple," IMO. You probably see a different side in Tokyo, b/c as I understand it a lot of people move from the country to 'the city' and don't donate back to the temples that they originated from. In a lot of ways, they are probably like non-practicing Christians or Agnostics (i.e. not going to services regularly, but maybe going on holidays, or requesting last rites on their death bed). That comes across to me as less about the religion and more about urbanization.

portman2• 15 years ago

Yes, I realize that Japan is the third largest economy in the world. But living in a wealthy nation doesn't mean that your home is magically rebuilt. (Just ask the residents of New Orleans' Ninth Ward.)

Thousands of residents of Minami Sanriku are homeless. The fact that you, in Tokyo, still have your home, is great for you, but totally irrelevant to those suffering in Minami Sanriku.

I'm very confused by posts which seem to suggest that the Japanese government can completely restore everything that was lost.

Until someone who has actually had their home and loved ones washed away tells me "please stop giving", I am going to continue. To each his own.

mc32• 15 years ago

I'm going to agree with you (portman).

I think it's obvious that hopping on a plane and thinking one will be of any use on the ground is grossly misguided. Yes. Absolutely.

However to dismiss aid saying "we're a rich country, we can handle it" sounds strange. On average, the country is rich, yes. On the ground, each one of the people huddled in shelters is not rich (wealthy). These are people who will not have jobs for some time to come. The government itself is massively in debt (over 200% of GDP).

So, to assume the voice for the whole country, especially the devastated areas, while seated in a comfy 2DK in Tokyo rings a little hollow. A bit like the emperor going on TV _days_ after the event and pretty much just saying, I'm with you, persevere, we're all suffering, look, I'm even forgoing the convenience of electricity for two hours a day (what? what? what does that even mean?)

I'd say give aid organizations which can help in the affected areas. People are going to be displaced for a _long_ time, they will need food, medicines, supplies, etc. This is not going to be over in a month. Money will be needed to help these people survive while they sort their lives out.

In addition, Japan being a country of relatively old people, there are quite a few who have no relatives. Or the relatives live very far away and cannot help.

I know you're proud of Japan. I would hope all foreigners in every country would adopt their new homeland they way you have. Still, I think you should drop the pride a little and understand the gravity of the situation with a little more humility.

robg• 15 years ago

Crazy to put a face to the handle. It's what I love about old school forums like this. The identity is a token.

charlief4• 15 years ago

Many Americans are wondering what we can do to help. It's natural to want to send money, food, blankets and the like to the survivors. But for now, what may be most urgently needed is all possible assistance and expertise in bringing the situation at the nuclear facilities under control.

I don't know what benefit there is in prioritizing what is more-urgent and less-urgent. These efforts are not mutually-exclusive, let us provide both. What good is it to generalize the utility of an option to the entire scope of the disaster. Let's try to deal with each sub-problem individually.

jfager4• 15 years ago

How many people in the world are actually qualified to offer any useful help on the Japan nuclear situation? Does anyone really think that they're just sitting around doing nothing right now?

I don't care how organized and prepared the Japanese are - they need help right now. Even before the disaster, they relied on imports for food and fuel. Large portions of their economy are now offline, and hundreds of thousands of people are displaced. Even if Japan has the will and resources to deal with all of this on their own, if the rest of us are willing and eager to chip in to help, why should they?

It's not like your donation is going to a Real American Hero who will personally swoop down into Tokyo and start wrapping every Japanese person they come across in a blanket and dousing them with a bottle of water. That money is going to be spent how it was spent here in the US after Katrina: yes, it will help feed people who need feeding in the short term, but it will also keep people in temporary homes until they can rebuild or relocate, pay for school clothes and supplies for kids whose families lost everything, provide grant money to help kickstart businesses in the affected areas once cleanup is done, etc, etc, etc.

So, no, sorry. I'm still sending money.

HSO• 15 years ago

oops, sorry, meant to upvote, not downvote you! +1

charlief4• 15 years ago

up-voted on your behalf!

donw7• 15 years ago

Please don't send any Real American Heroes to Tokyo. We're fine. Send them up north where they're needed.

jfager4• 15 years ago

I think you missed my point.

rewind• 15 years ago

Ignore anyone who says they don't need cash. It's nonsense. Just turn your TV on for two minutes. We should be opening our wallets as much for Japan right now as we've done for any country facing this sort of crisis in the past.

orangecat• 15 years ago

It's just not clear to me how more cash will help. It seems that the major problems involve the logistics of getting rescuers and supplies to people who need them, and money isn't the limiting factor there. GiveWell seems to agree: http://blog.givewell.org/2011/03/15/update-on-how-to-help-ja...

mattm• 15 years ago

If you're not aware, Japan's broadcaster NHK has an English-translated broadcast - http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ or http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

I would suggest watching it to get a Japanese view on things.

Watching it yesterday, people in the disaster area and around the power plant were pleading for help as they are running dangerously low on supplies. Many of the interviewees were criticizing the government on their inability to get supplies to them. People in the 30km radius were complaining that they couldn't get any truck drivers that were willing to enter the area. Also keep in mind that this is the north of Japan. It is below freezing and has been snowing.

mathrawka• 15 years ago

I always look forward to his blog posts, but I think he needs to stop talking about something he is not very aware about.

Yes, Japan is well prepared for disasters, but that does not mean it doesn't need help. The preparation for a disaster mainly involves saving lives, not helping people get back to their way of living.

What is the best way to help out? I wish I knew, but sending money for relief efforts seems to be a good way.

Honestly, I'm fuming about his remarks and believe he is causing more trouble the more he speaks.

uptown• 15 years ago

The thing I don't get about Patrick's opinion is that in his initial write-up he compares his personal danger and proximity to the disaster zone with "someone ringing up Mayor Daley [the mayor of Chicago] during Katrina and saying “My God man, that’s terrible — how are you coping?”"

Well, if his argument was that distance separates him from being able to relate to the problems on the ground, why should anybody look to him for guidance on how to provide aid?

patio113• 15 years ago

My consolidated response:

1) Shortages in Fukushima, etc, are not caused by lack of food or money. Japan has plenty of food and money. Japan has a temporary logistics problem with getting food to particular refugee sites, because of a number of issues, most critically that the infrastructure for delivering gas in the east got a severe monkey-wrench thrown into it and it is difficult to truck in enough to do distribution. With specific reference to Fukushima, the widening of the exclusion zone caused refugees to have to be moved twice is as many days, which also caused some issues.

The three closest ports for receiving refined gas got shut down by the tsunami　(along with most local refinery capacity), so it has been getting transported by road from the other side of the country, and that has been hampered by damage to certain roads. One of those ports will be brought online today. As that situation gets better, the shortage of supplies for refugees will ease very rapidly. They're working very hard on that right now. Aid will not speed that process: any charity chosen at random is not better at doing gas delivery than Japanese gas companies, and no part of the relief efforts is blocking on lack of money.

2) Panic is not helping anyone, and foreign panic is feedback looping right now, particularly in the foreign communities. The only reason I have talked to the media at all is to stress the importance of them not panicking and not provoking panic.

3) I respect enormously people's desire to help, but satisfying desire to help is a very different thing from actually helping. The second is very important, the first not so much.

I was on a program on the BBC the other day. Another guest was a foreign aid worker from an organization I will not name. Host: "Where are you?" Him: "Not quite sure, north of Tokyo. The map is in Japanese." When asked about their plans for doing counseling, he said that they would find somebody locally who speaks English, because in his experience at X disasters across the world there is always somebody, and do counseling through the interpreter. One could be forgiven for difficulty in finding the value of his organization's assistance at the moment.

The US military's response has been invaluable -- choppers are very helpful right now, and have been saving lives. If you don't come packing your own distribution network designed to function parallel to the civilian ones, your ability to convert any amount of desire into hot meals at a school in eastern Japan is very limited right now.

After the immediate situation is addressed, Miyagi, Iwate, and the like will have large reconstruction efforts. Japan has the political will and resources to handle this.

A note: It is a very fluid situation. My blog post was written on Sunday, 3.5 days ago. The NYT asked me for a condensed version 2.5 days ago. Please keep in mind, when you're hearing from anybody (including me), you're hearing something which was true X amount of time ago in a situation evolving very rapidly.

rms• 15 years ago

Thank you for the unbelievably sane perspective on disaster relief.

For anyone that is motivated to give charitable dollars by this disaster, consider that there is likely a more efficient charity as far as maximizing lives saved per dollar, such as Village Reach. http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/villager...

adrianwaj3• 15 years ago

"satisfying desire to help is a very different thing from actually helping"

..reminds me of the Israel/Territories human disaster where any help is actually a hindrance because one side basically doesn't accept the other side's existence to begin with. Thus, (to me) the apparent problems are not the real problems.

Natural disaster relief is straightforward: you're helping or you're not. Unlike the Israel/Territories disaster, the end points are agreeable with a fairly clear path apparent: evacuation, medical, life-support, clearance, reconstruction, learning/prevention. Humans can do this, but also trying to win or avert a war at the same time is a lot harder. Any tips?

blrgeek• 15 years ago

Please post this as a reply on the blog too! This has much more detail & sense than the original blog post.

And even in India, after the Tsunami, the problem was not so much as having aid/materials, as having the transport to get the materials to the right place, and building temporary accommodation fast enough for the displaced people.

jfager4• 15 years ago

Randomly jumping on a flight into Japan to wander around asking people in English if they need help is obviously stupid. But that's not just stupid for Japan, that's stupid for pretty much everywhere. Pointing out its stupidity isn't useful - people who would do that aren't listening to you anyways - so why conflate that sort of behavior with simple, non-disruptive, non-panic-inducing actions like donating money to the Red Cross? Or why contrast it with requests like "send nuclear expertise and helicopters", which everyone who meaningfully could and would is already doing?

After Katrina, Japan donated $200k to the US Red Cross, made $1m worth of supplies available, and private donations from Japanese companies and individuals went over $13m. The US certainly wasn't short of food or money, so why did they bother?

A $50 donation to the Red Cross will potentially help. Earmark it for their general fund, and if they really don't need it for Japan, they'll spend it somewhere else. This is such a bizarre thing to have to defend.

patio113• 15 years ago

they'll spend it somewhere else

"Spend it somewhere else" was exactly what I wrote in my blog post, but when the New York Times says "We can give you three hundred words" then Priority #1 is "Don't Panic" and Priority #Left_On_Cutting_Room_Floor is explaining to people how relief organizations actually operate.

forza• 15 years ago

"Please keep in mind, when you're hearing from anybody (including me), you're hearing something which was true X amount of time ago in a situation evolving very rapidly."

Under these conditions I think it's better to just refer people to the good/right sources of information. Everyone wanting there 15 minutes by jumping to conclusions seem to be a big part of the problem.

teyc• 15 years ago

There is much to be done, I'm only not sure how.

Even though Japan has enough resources, to borrow a phrase from Alan Kay, help is there but it is unevenly distributed.

When Brisbane got flooded earlier this year, there were a lot of friends and strangers who came around and volunteered their time to help my parents clean up. There were also people who volunteered their weekends to clean up street by street. Some people donated buses to ferry volunteers around, others trucks to carry waste to the dump.

One guy made sandwiches and gave them out to everyone on the street until power came back on about a week later.

The biggest problems a couple of weeks post-flood faced were:

1. electricity

2. heating

3. food refrigeration

4. cooking equipment

5. washing clothes

The minor ones were:

1. table for eating, writing

2. boxes to store clothes

Even if people are insured, insurance claims took about 8 weeks. (I just got my cheque last week for some minor flood damage). Then there is the long wait for builders to get started.

In the meantime, the supply chain is completely broken. Bakers don't have flour, people don't have work. Survivors are idle and need work to take their mind off their predicament, but these people will need to be organised and mobilized.

For areas that are not affected by flood, it was still another month before milk started reappearing on shelfs. I remembered that vegetables were difficult to come by, and my parents were thinking of making bean sprouts.

Even though I'm sure Japan can stand on its own, it is nice to have people help out because it helps you to realize you are not on your own, and a lot of people care about you.

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on Japan Aid: Help for the Well-Prepared

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