Hurricane Katrina - my year (Part 3)

Perhaps this entry should be titled, “Hurricane Katrina and experiences with bureaucracy”. Every person affected by hurricane Katrina and its aftermath has horror stories to tell about their dealings with bureaucracy. We found that with the Disastersearch site, even the helpers ran into brick walls of red tape.

When the site launched, we had two unique features that were offered through private areas of the site, secured from the rest of the world. Those who saw our first press releases would have seen this comment:

Other features of the web site include a private section designed for triage personnel. People had lost their medical records and we were seeing situations where triage doctors were prescribing medication with no way of alerting other medical personnel of the treatment. We saw a need for temporary records which could only be accessed by medical staff, so we created it.Disastersearch Press Release

Now, although we received support from doctors and from the heads of some medical professional organisations, we could not get past the red tape to allow any triage personnel to use the medical records system. We understood the difficulties of intermittent WAP cellphone access and the demands on the time of the medical personnel on the ground in the affected areas, but we also knew that people were receiving inappropriate treatment due solely to a lack of any records-keeping. This became even more apparent when evacuations started following the hurricane. People were being treated at one location, then treated again at their destination. Traumatised people are not necessarily able to recall exactly what drugs they have been given, nor can they be relied on to remember the names of any treatments they were on previously.

So, the software development that went into setting up this medical temporary records system was a waste of time. It was not used and to the best of our knowledge, there is still no system to allow triage personnel to keep notes and make them available to other medical personnel during an emergency.

Privacy and data security is always a concern for any of us. We realised this and realised that as a private website, there would be concerns. However, we had developed the software, it was tested and ready to be used and we didn’t much care whether it was used on our site or somewhere else. In all the discussions we had with medical professionals and in the messages sent to State Medical Examiners Offices, we offered the software to them for their use. We have still, to this day, not had anyone from a SME respond to our offers. The triage system was removed from the site.

Another area set up was a morgue section. Many people had been forced to leave the bodies of their loved ones behind when they were transported out. We set up a database that was designed to be accessed through the back by morgue staff and the State Medical Examiners officers. This database collected personal details that could not be accessed from the visitor side of the site, with the only frontend access being for people who wished to register personal, identifying details of their loved ones. Details such as the location of where the body was last seen, clothes, any other possessions with the body, physical features, etc were added to the database. Photographs were included. Many people knew their loved ones had died, so were not searching for a live missing person. Yet, again, not one person from a state morgue or from a State Medical Examiners Office ever responded to our calls or emails. Morgues do not go out hunting for living relatives when they have not managed to identify the deceased. We had people registered in our database who gave every bit of information they could to assist with identification, and who left their own contact details. Yet, the authorities just ignored this. To this day, there are still a number of unidentified bodies. Would our system have helped reunite families with their deceased? Well, it worked for two families so we can only presume it would have helped more.

Finally (although I could rant a lot more about the red tape we encountered and which we are still working our way through), we ran into an unexpected problem. Did you know that US government websites do not accept email from non-US IP addresses? I learned the hard way. No contact form access through local, state or Federal websites, no emails able to get through, so although our server is in the United States and my email was sent from our mail server there, my New Zealand IP address prevented me from being able to contact officials in the US directly. Of course, we found a way around that but it meant that we wasted precious time simply because government authorities don’t appear to want any communications from outside the United States.

This is the third in my series about my experiences in working to help people affected by hurricane Katrina. Disastersearch.org is still working today and is an ongoing resource set up to assist in the event of emergency. The problems with bureaucracy are continuing.