Disaster

…there is a moving and powerful human response to disaster – the need to do something. And there is an equally poignant reaction – to freeze, and to be overwhelmed by what has just happened. All week both have been happening in and around Kashmir, amongst those of us who are linked to the place but who are not there at the moment.

This scene of disaster, The Kashmir Valley, is a place of lakes and mountains, and now it is underwater, great swathes of it drowned by floods caused by excessive rain.

This is a place that can claim the label of victim more readily than most. If it is not being fought over, the earth shudders and swallows up lives, or the skies open, the rivers burst their banks, and whatever little has been clawed back in progress is swallowed back beneath water and mud.

So, it is very human to wail, to raise fists to black skies and rage at God, Allah, gods, the devil. Take your pick, any rage will do. The apparent randomness of natural disaster renders us helpless in the face of its capacity to destroy, to crush all our frail human endeavours to nothing.

And our ability to survive spins us through a range of reactions. Here are some:

• Shock and awe—though most of us are too afraid to admit to the second part of this, the moment when the absolute power of nature smashes all before it.
• Fear—for ourselves, and for those we love.
• Paralysis—the physical and mental freeze when we feel incapable in the face of something so huge.
• Rage—as we seek out someone or something to blame. Governments and big business usually get it, and often rightly so, but they also give us convenient scapegoats to distract us from taking any personal responsibility as consumers, users of the raw materials—in this case the paper, wood and trees, that once held the sides of mountains in place.
• Action—the need to do something immediately, regardless of whether we are qualified, or with only partial information. The need to do something distracts us from the rest in the list above.
• Despair—as we realise that any individual action can have no effect in the face of such enormity.

And then, very slowly, the brilliance of the human condition takes over, enabling us to adapt, and to begin to find balance again. But this balance is very dependant on several vital things:

• Recognising that unless we take care of ourselves we can be no use. To ‘burn out’ is an act of pointless martyrdom. I know this is harsh but it is also true. A conflation of all of the above, from shock and awe, to despair, pushes people to their outer limits. There is no point in ignoring the signs that we have reached those limits. It just means one less person capable of useful action.
• Knowing those limits, and not trying to turns ourselves into medics, hydro-meteorologists, engineers, epidemiologists, et al in 24 hours flat (I am obviously referring to a flood situation). Our greatest asset is what we can already do well.
• Saving our energy for the battles that matter and not wasting time, breath or mental and physical energy on the inevitabilities of emergency service and aid failure and co-ordination, corruption, political co-option (unfortunately this particular list is too long to reel off comprehensively)
• Listening to the advice of those who have experience and putting reasonable trust in them to do their work, in the knowledge that they are under extreme pressure. They will never be able to perform to the level that we would hope or want, but that they are far better prepared for the job in hand than we are.

Another thing happens as we get worn down by the adrenaline-fuelled need for action, the sleepless nights of worry, and the sense of hopelessness in the face of the devastation—we look for heroes to inspire us as we flag. And up they pop, shouting from the rooftops, their powerful and persuasive words drawing us to them, these makers of white noise. Many of them really do believe that they are being motivated by good, but the truth is that many of them are driven by a sort of disaster-sanctified form of self-promotion.

The heroes to watch for are the ones who appear from within the devastated places, or who come in from the outside, moving quietly amongst the wrecked and the wreckage, propping up, digging, rebuilding, reassuring, leading by example. Yet they work in a way that makes most of those they are supporting believe that they are doing the rebuilding themselves, that they are rising from the wreckage, phoenix-like and on their own terms. And when these heroes see that their work is done, they move on quietly, so silently that those they have rescued barely notice they have left.

I am keenly aware of how smug a lot of this may seem. I have either done, felt, or fallen apart under the weight of everything that I have described. I hope by passing this on that the same will not happen to others. That is all.