
The Cajun Navy and the Vigilante Future of Disaster Relief - ycombonator
https://www.gq.com/story/cajun-navy-and-the-future-of-vigilante-disaster-relief
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jandrewrogers
Disaster relief has been self-organized among local volunteers in many parts
of the US for a long time, it is almost a cultural tradition. I would make the
point that it is encouraged in part because it is anti-fragile; the people
that live in an area often have better information and communication/resource
networks, and can react faster, than the more centralized disaster management
the government provides. Especially in the early stages, it provides a more
thorough and robust response because it is so well distributed.

I've lived through a few major natural disasters around the country. These ad
hoc disaster organizations materialized out of the community and were
effective every single time. The government will often step aside, and just
act in a supporting role if the volunteers have a good ground organization. In
one case where I was volunteering, we came up with a shopping list of things
we could use immediately to mitigate the major problems, and the state
government rooted through warehouses, found what we needed in other parts of
the state, helicoptered it in, and just gave it to us to use as we saw fit. We
had a plan and an ability to execute it much more quickly than the official
agencies.

(As an aside, during my first major natural disaster, I discovered that union
regulations limit the hours the government workers onsite can put in, the
conditions they can operate in, and the kinds of things they can do without
regard for if those things need to be done given the nature of the disaster.
These volunteer organizations are unhindered by such rules and will work their
ass off, whatever is necessary. Letting these volunteers run a lot of the
relief efforts and supporting them instead taking point is a way for the
government to work around its own structural lack of urgency.)

~~~
Spooky23
Where did you see that?

I’ve been involved in a few disasters, including in places with strong unions.
Never saw that happen.

~~~
jandrewrogers
California, in the 1990s. I thought it was surreal at the time, but I had more
pressing concerns since I personally had life and property on the line; I was
a victim trapped in the disaster area, doing what I could. There was a lot of
stopping and starting work, and they had supervisors flying in to make sure
everyone was following whatever their workplace SOP was. There was a memorable
1 hour work stoppage because someone complained that (in all seriousness) the
tasks were not equitably distributed across genders -- the lead supervisor on
site deftly squashed that but it kind of blew my mind that it took precedent
over the task at hand. I have a lot of great "wtf?" stories from that
experience.

Don't take it as anti-union, they just had a lot of rules and processes that
made them relatively unproductive under the circumstances. There were 30-40 of
us working together, an ad hoc organization of volunteers, working 16-hour
shifts with almost no breaks that essentially did the bulk of the disaster
mitigation work. It made for poor optics with the locals; they saw a bunch of
ragtag out-of-towners trapped in the disaster with them working their asses
off while the government employees stood around drinking coffee half the time.
I understand how that happens but it wasn't a good look. And this is why
communities love their volunteer disaster response. (And full credit to the
local community, they took fantastic care of us the best they could.)

~~~
Spooky23
That’s unbelievable. I’ve spent most of my work in New York.

I’ve seen my share of work to rule bullshit, but never anything like that. I
cannot fathom what a toxic shitshow that agency must be.

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rmason
America has a tradition of volunteers helping out in a disaster. I really
disliked them being referred to as vigilantes in the headline. To me that
implies that they're taking the law into their hands to get revenge. They see
overwhelming need and are volunteering to assist local authorities, not to
supersede or oppose them.

~~~
muzz
“I had to beat the hell out of the nursing-home director” and "Do what you
have to do... We’ll deal with the consequences later" sound like vigilantism
to me

~~~
microcolonel
No, what he did had legal authority. Use of force against threats to life (and
that is what it was deemed by officials both during and after the fact) is one
of the _natural rights_ the U.S. is officially constituted to protect.

Cowardice is not a civic duty, nor a virtue. Use of force by civilians in
perceived service of the law is often justified. Going out looking for a fight
is one thing, serving the public is another.

Ideally, the law can be upheld without force; when force is required to uphold
the law, we could ideally rely on peace officers to be ready, willing, and
able to take on that burden; but in the end, it is the responsibility of
society as a whole to uphold the law and prevent suffering.

When force is necessary, and when peace officers aren't around, a person who
uses the necessary degree of force to rescue old people from a drone who would
rather watch them wade naked in their own faeces until they go hypothermic or
fall ill, than violate a workplace policy is not a _vigilante_ , but an
_upstanding citizen_.

It's natural to scrutinize and question the motivations of somebody who has
used force, but it is a disservice to us all to hold common people to a
_higher_ standard of conduct than the police.

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muzz
You didn't cite any statue; your use of "constituted" was as a regular verb ie
not referring to the capital-c Consitution. Therefore, your comment appears to
be an opinion

~~~
reactor4
statute

~~~
fleitz
It's always hilarious when the grammar nazi has a spelling mistake in his
grammar nazi post.

~~~
jimmywanger
To be honest, it's a spelling mistake, not a grammar mistake.

The misspelling of a word does not destroy the sentence structure.

~~~
reactor4
No it doesn't destroy the sentence structure but it does destroy his argument,
especially given that the "mistake" he was pointing out was very far fetched
and not really a mistake at all.

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akadien
During the 2016 floods in the Baton Rouge area, I was part of this effort.
Flooding disasters are fog of war. Victims are psychologically paralyzed with
disbelief and loss, and there are others who prey on them. It's part of our
Southern culture to help one another and get things done. If the CN helps
protect the vulnerable while evacuating and saving lives, so be it. You can't
sit around and wait for help that never arrives.

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eccbits
This is not totally new as many places have volunteer fire departments - this
extends the concept.

~~~
viraptor
How is it organised in the US? In Australia/Vic while the are volunteer
firefighters, they're working with the state organisation and are being put on
the same level/block as the career ones in the structure:
[http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/our-
structure/](http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/our-structure/)

~~~
megaman22
Where I grew up, there are no professional firefighters; it's all volunteer,
just something people did as a hobby, basically. I think they might elect
their own chief and officers, or it might be on the public ballot, with the
dog catcher and other town positions. Usually, there's nobody on duty at the
station, so when a call comes in from the 911 dispatch at county or wherever,
their pagers or cellphones go off and they leave work to rush to the station,
gear up, and go out.

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sliverstorm
I'm glad to hear they are organizing _after_ the disasters, for the next one.
It's easy to jump in, in the thick of it. But the training, preparation &
organization can't be faked on the fly, and it's critical to getting the best
outcomes.

If you've got the appetite, learn about ICS/NIMS. They are built on a history
of mistakes & missteps due to weak organization. NIMS in particular was
commissioned after preventable errors in interagency operations trapped &
killed firefighters in the towers in 2001.

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rdl
I'd love to see the government (or just some kind of NGO) hand out radios and
some kind of specific-to-this-community application to people who own boats or
other specialty equipment. If there were an easier way to organize, they could
be even more effective. Use GIS to let them do site surveys and maybe respond
to low-risk rescues, letting professionals/government do the highest risk.
Right now there are coordination issues.

(The other thing I'd like to see, which is done in some areas, is turning gas
stations into disaster fortified base stations -- they have fuel tankage
already, add generators to pump when the grid is down, and maybe store a
connex or two full of bottled water and other disaster supplies on property,
or in an underground tank type thing (which they already need to have
installed for fuel, so whenever they upgrade from single to double wall or
whatever, dig one extra vault). Putting a cell tower onsite, and maybe some
kind of satcom backhaul, and some kind of data network which could work even
in isolated mode, would help in situations like Puerto Rico. The incremental
cost of funding this with tax money would be far lower than building up other
community response sites.

~~~
akadien
The interesting thing is we self-organized. If you had a flat bottom boat and
a truck, you helped your family first. Then there were twice as many people
asking for help. It was easy to help because so many people needed help. I
think technology would have been in the way, to be honest.

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jaunkst
The truth is when it comes to life or death situations you cannot always wait
for an official response to the incident. Especially in large scale disasters
where the local government is not capable or disabled from responding with the
speed or scale that is demanded to save lives.

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redshirt
You know, if the us federal government can’t get its stuff together, why not?
It’s not a bad thing.

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swayvil
A member of the Cajun navy would be quite justified in taking the cost of
boat, gas, safety equipment, etc out of any taxes owed to the government.
Seeing as how he is doing their job and all.

~~~
lb1lf
That may be a bit of a stretch, but a per diem covering at least your running
expenses would be reasonable.

While it appears there's room for improvement in US disaster response
services, we should keep in mind that any major emergency is basically Nature
pulling a DoS attack on us; it would be unreasonable to expect the government
to be everywhere immediately. (Which, basically,is why they should reimburse
private citizens coming in to help.)

~~~
closeparen
We're not talking about the end-times here. Hurricanes, tornadoes,
earthquakes, and wildfires are routine events with hundreds to thousands of
prior examples. It's not at all unreasonable to expect organizations that are
chartered to deal with them to be pretty good at it by now.

"Will there be an organized response to a disaster?" is right up there with
"Do murders get routinely and professionally investigated?" in terms of
whether or not we are living in a civilization.

Aiming no higher than reimbursing the ad-hoc vigilante efforts is such a dark
worldview.

~~~
connorelsea
The recent flooding associated with the cajun navy is not a routine event. It
was regarded as a "500 year flood." Local rivers (Amite River) that rarely
have a problem with capacity overflowed into nearby cities (Baton Rouge,
Denham Springs, etc.) Houses on land that did not require flood insurance were
filled with water to the roof-level.

Not Normal:
[https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/08/16/louisiana-f...](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/08/16/louisiana-
flooding-stack/assets/images/590191904-1254.jpg)

Video of devastation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZSXGin-
zNA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZSXGin-zNA)

Law enforcement would have been prepared to handle normal-scale hurricanes,
flooding, etc. (They do) but were not prepared to handle this kind of uncommon
disaster. And even though the disaster was unforeseen, the government still
helped some - my parents were removed from their house via Coast Guard. (But
many more in the same area were removed by locals with boats)

I do agree that it makes sense to reimburse cajun navy participants in some
way but I'm not sure how

