"By every account the response by every responsible entity - Mayor Ballard's outstanding police and fire forces - our own Indiana State Police, the security force of the State Fair itself, emergency management personnel, was instantaneous and highly professional. It's equally important to say what I heard over and over and over again last night - that individual Hoosiers ran to the trouble, not from the trouble, by the hundreds, offering in many cases their own professional skills. I've heard it from everybody I've debriefed this morning. People rushing up, 'I'm a nurse, I'm a doctor, I'm a trained EMS responder.' But also people who simply pitched in," -Gov. DanielsYou are your own First Responder.
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12 comments:
In any crisis, there will always be those who run TOWARDS the trouble as most others are running away. THOSE people embody the Spirit of America.
ML- Indeed.
First responders are always people who are on the scene when it happens. Anyone who arrives on the scene after truthfully isn't a first responder.
Both my blog title and motto represent these facts. Even then I still had to write yet another post on the subject. Maybe it's time for a second post. It seems no matter how many times I try to explain to people that, you are the help, you are the response, you are the solution to the problem, some just never seem to get it.
I am jack's complete lack of surprise.
And kudos to the fine people of Indiana for acting as what I used to think of as Americans.
If it had happened at the Durham or Goshen Fair in Connecticut, I imagine the farmers, merchants, and machinists of those small rural towns would have acted in a similar manner.
Had it been Hsrtford, the dilletantes from Avon and Farmington would have gone all weepy and/or catatonic until the meat wagons came to take them away to the Institute Of Living, while the local denizens would have turned everything else into a recreation of New Orleans after Katrina.
Odd, having such diametric opposites in such close proximity, but such is life in a small state.
And, if the first responders in that hypothetical southern New England catastrophy were the people present, the second responders would have been the local volunteer fire departments, town Civil Defense personnel, auxiliary State Troopers, and Boy Scouts, none of which exist in the corporate welfare state. Sad.
Anyway, a serious thank you to all the good people of Indiana. You make us humble onlookers proud of you.
They will all be sued.
IANAL, but Indiana's Good Samaritan law should prevent any of the volunteer first responders from being sued.
In a Red Cross class I took in how to run a shelter I brought that up. I said that I consider the term first responder to be insulting to the unpaid people on scene who are the actual first responders. I also think it makes people believe that they are supposed to stand back and wait for the professionals.
The amazing thing is watching people run like hell from the collapsing stage and the instant it finished falling turning on a dime and running like hell back to help others.
I also think it makes people believe that they are supposed to stand back and wait for the professionals.
Which, unfortunately, is what a certain class of people (of all parties, in government, media and academia) want us to believe.
I think of the Police, Fire and EMS as air/arty support and dustoff. Great when they're available and I'm happy to let them do it all, but until "splash" or the LZ is active, I assume I'm on my own.
Dear Ed Foster,
I think the actions of the people in NYC on 9/11 (many who were from the wealthy areas of Connecticut) prove your thesis wrong. Have a little faith in your suburban and urban Nutmeggers. Katrina was a mess because the government had a chance to get involved beforehand!
Indiana - that's the "flyover country" which Hollywood and the Dems have mocked so much, isn't it? Yeah, only middle-of-the-country Bible-thumping Christianists could possibly be so unsophisticated as to actually run to trouble and offer to help. Rubes.
Sorry, gotta jet - Barry O is having a fundraiser. Ciao.
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