Organizing Disaster

By Paige Bowers/Atlanta

When disasters strike, you won't find Becky Myton handing out cans of sardines. Although the little fish pack a protein wallop, "if you give out cans of sardines and people don't like them, you're just not doing them a favor," says Myton, an emergency coordinator for the Atlanta-based aid organization CARE. "It works much better when you evaluate people's needs and then meet them."

Myton's assessment reflects a 620-page operating manual that guides relief teams through the particulars of delivering the basics to those most in need. CARE's new manual, called the Emergency Toolkit, covers everything from preparedness planning and standard procedures to protocols for disaster response and the components of an effective emergency team.

At CARE, team-building is a core requirement, not just an HR target. Teams come in two flavors: longer-lasting country teams that run ongoing programs in nearly 70 nations, and 20 emergency-response teams that can rapidly deploy to a crisis for six to eight weeks. Disaster teams are staffed with specialists in logistics, information management, government relations and other disciplines vital to any relief effort.

The idea is to limit surprises in the very situations where they are most likely to arise. "From a tactical perspective, we generally have operations that have been on the ground," says Rigoberto Giron, director of CARE's emergency and humanitarian-assistance unit. "Those workers know all the local contacts and cultural constraints, so they've got a good sense of what needs to be done and the best way to get it done." In a disaster, response teams identify the needs and the fund-raising required and then work with the country team to leverage local resources.

Armed with the Emergency Toolkit, workers go into crises with a clear sense of their role within the team and an understanding of how a given problem should be solved step-by-step. "If an I.T. shop goes down, they know how to recover it," says Patrick Solomon, CARE's senior vice president of global support services. "This manual helps prepare people so they can handle anything they might face."

And yet there's the thorny little issue of getting complete strangers to bond as a team in a stressful environment. Giron says having a team leader who can build trust quickly among the members is crucial. And rehearsal is essential for an effective response. "These teams simulate what they need to do through a lot of practice," Giron says. "That ensures they've got a consistent application of our protocols and an understanding of CARE's goals."

Most country teams can handle emergencies, but there are times when they need to call in extra specialists with health, water and sanitation expertise. So CARE taps into a global roster of its own professionals. These pros tend to be locals "who are culturally aware, can speak the language and have what it takes to operate in a given country," Giron says. For example, in 2005, CARE responded to the earthquake in Pakistan with a team from neighboring countries that was able to operate in a place that restricted the movement of women. But nearly two years ago, it did not have the same resources when its teams assessed a possible response to malnutrition in refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire. "We weren't already based in the country, so it was hard for us to assess the situation," Giron says. Aware of its limits, CARE opted out of the mission.

Like any corporation, CARE compares the expected result with the outcome. With a response strategy due a week after an emergency hits and situation reports filed daily, CARE can constantly adapt, Giron says. Soon after an operation ends, it reviews how well its team was structured and whether there were gaps in skills and systems. Says Giron: "We give that feedback to the team leader. A year later, we review the entire operation to make sure needs were met, and if they weren't, then we decide what to do." Myton, for her part, is in the field assessing CARE's current efforts in flood-ravaged Bolivia. In the disaster business, videoconferencing can't substitute for being out with your teams.