Soccer Dad

People can be trusted

Last week there was a great miracle. A plane crashed, and all aboard survived.
In "A Hero in every Aisle seat", Baruch Fischhoff argues that the first responders who make the greatest difference in preventing such disasters from being worse, are the non-professionals at the scene who instinctively react correctly to a disaster:

Indeed, the critical first responders in almost any crisis are ordinary citizens whom fate has brought together. As Kathleen Tierney, head of the University of Colorado's Natural Hazards Center, has noted, "The vast majority of live rescues are carried out by community residents who are at the scene of disasters, not by official response agencies or outside search and rescue teams."

Where have I heard this before? Why here.
I'd also suggest that the volunteers of Zaka have filled this role. Though they are now semi-official, these volunteers realized that they got to the scene of terror attacks faster than the authorities did. So even though their initial job was to collect body parts, they started teaching their volunteers some emergency medicine. This gives these first responders a chance to stabilize, and, thus, save injured victims of terror attacks.
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Thank you for stopping by. Take a look around and hopefully you'll find something else of interest too!

Posted by SoccerDad at August 7, 2005 6:13 AM | TrackBack