International Review of the Red Cross: Catastrophic events

Better late than never, the Editor notes several fascinating articles in the June 2007 issue of the Review:

• Prompt and utter destruction: the Nagasaki disaster and the initial medical relief - The article takes an overall look at the initial medical relief activities in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb fell there on 9 August 1945. Although the medical facilities were instantaneously destroyed by the explosion, the surviving doctors and other medical staff did their best to help the victims. When some of the relief workers arrived at the disaster area, the level of radiation was still dangerously high. (Nobuko Margaret Kosuge)
• Humanity amid conflict, terror and catastrophe: hypothetical but possible scenarios - This article gives an understanding of the nature, scale and complexity of two hypothetical yet possible events and their potentially overwhelming impact upon health, security and socio-economic productivity. It describes a no-warning CBRNE incident and a gradual rising-tide emergency with a newly emerging infectious disease, summarising a range of likely response actions, impact and constraints, particularly for the humanitarian community. (Anthea Sanyasi)
• Lessons learned? Disasters, rapid change and globalization - Comparing the two tsunamis of Lisbon in 1775 and of Asia in 2004, the article analyses the different paradigmatic interpretations of “Western” religious and secular causality. Based on the rational concept of risk-making and risk-taking, the need to accept failures and their consequences is discussed as well as the responsibility to develop human strategies for disaster prevention and foster living conditions which may avoid large-scale suffering. (Wolf R. Dombrowsky)

All articles are available for download from the ICRC website, linked above.