I really hope they are setting aside some funds for after care for the volunteers involved. There’s a guy I deal with locally who was one of the grassroots organizers dealing with Katrina and the experience has scarred him for life and the lack of institutional support means that he and a lot of other people who do this work are left with untreated PTSD and deep trauma. The effects don’t all show up while they have the work of the emergency to keep them focused. From what he was saying a large number of the people he worked with have attempted suicide, some successfully and none came out whole.
It can be, but given the fact that our professional first responders can be slow, or worse never show up, we’re faced with weighing the risk, because if the Red Cross can’t get to your neighborhood for a week and you don’t have clean running water, you’ll drink unclean water. Our professional systems are great at single point disasters, but still struggle with large area highly destructive events.
