CULTURE | Crisis Quiz: How Would You Do in an Emergency Response?

CULTURE | Crisis Quiz: How Would You Do in an Emergency Response?

March 2011 | ARCHIVE | HB staff

Image: U.S. Navy personnel rush pallets of aid to helicopters responding to the tsunami in Japan. Official U.S. Navy Imagery, CC.

Humanitarian Bazaar Magazine

If the 2011 tsunami in Japan and the rapid political transformation of Tunisia and Egypt teach us anything it is that we should all be better prepared for emergencies! On April 14th, humanitarians around the world are welcoming the release of an updated version of the leading emergency response handbook, The Sphere Project: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response.

To help readers commiserate with the challenges faced by emergency responders (and in a break from our usual long-form literary stories, editorials, and music stories), we thought we would offer you a pop quiz to see how YOU might respond in an emergency. Answers, according to the Sphere Project, are at the bottom of the page. Get ready. Get set…

Round One:

Getting Started

1. If a thousand people flee their homes and are forced to share space in the local school building, what is your top priority to prepare for them to stay there?

(a) Water
(b) Food
(c) Bathrooms
(d) Blankets
(e) Innoculations
(f) Toys
(g) Stand-up comedy
(h) a Cafebar

2. Which is more of a health worry for humans living tightly together in a temporary shelter?

(a)Ticks
(b) Fleas
(c) Lice
(d) Rats
(e) Raccoons
(f) Dirty hands
(g) Dead bodies
(h) In-laws

3. What should one do first to ensure everyone has ample food?

(a) Bring in food from outside or
(b) See what local food and food production is available locally

4. What foods offer Vitamin C which helps with bodily immunity as well as healthy gums and teeth?

(a) Bread, garlic butter, and olive oil
(b) Broccoli, tomato, and lemon
(c) Fish, nuts, and rice; or
(d) qat, queludes, and crystal meth

5. Not enough Vitamin A causes what side effect?

(a) Night-tremors
(b) Night-blindness
(c) Knight Rider

6. How much water does a person need for normal drinking each day, in liters?

___________

7. How much water does each person need for all uses, in liters?

___________

Round Two:

Tackling the Tough Times

8. Cholera is caused by?

(a) Drinking expired soft drinks
(b) Eating bad sea food
(c) Eating and drinking an organism passed by someone not washing their hands well enough

9. What’s the primary response to diarrhea?

(a) Make bad jokes
(b) Anti-biotics
(c) Drink lots of water

10. Malaria is caused by?

(a) Swamp gas
(b) Lepers
(c) An organism that is passed around by mosquitos

11. How many calories should an average-sized person eat per day to be healthy?

(a) 500
(b) 1100
(c) 2100
(d) 50,000

12. What’s more dangerous?

(a) An open mass grave or
(b) An overused bathroom

13. What’s the minimum amount of space an individual needs for surviving in a temporary shelter?

(a) A space 2 by 2 meters (4 m2)
(b) 3 by 5 meters (15 m2)
(c) 5 by 9 meters (45 m2)
(d) 10 by 45 meters (450 m2)

14. What is non-refoulment?

(a) When one refuses to fight back after punched in the nose at a bar
(b) When someone passes gas in a public place and is then banned from that place
(c) When a government refuses to allow someone to enter a country despite their fear that they might be killed or injured if they remain in their original country
(d) When a political leader accuses another country of insulting his own

Round Three:

The Long Haul

15. Can an aid agency offer aid in exchange for political alliance on behalf of a group fighting in a war, according to the leading humanitarian code of conduct?

(a) Yes
(b) No

16. Can HIV/AIDS be transferred through breast milk?

(a) Yes
(b) No

17. Extremely skinny kids may show that there is short-term food shortage. Kids with swollen features tend to indicate enough food. What is the most common medical exception of swollen features indicating hunger?

(a) Manioc
(b) Schistosomiasis
(c) Doowa Dittiditti Dumdittidoo
(d) Kwashiorkor

18. Is it legal for governments to kill civilians if they are living near a rebel or terror group base?

(a) Yes
(b) No

19. How should one deal with trees and brush when widening a displacement settlement or making it more long-term?

(a) Cleared to protect from insects bearing disease
(b) cleared and used as fire wood
(c) retained as much as possible to provide shade, retain water, and prevent erosion of soil for the time after the settlement might be cleared

20. What is the best method of the following to prevent or reduce the risk of sexual assault among the people who have lost their homes and jobs while crammed into the emergency settlement?

(a) Have different rooms for women and men
(b) Have police or armed guards patrol the place
(c) Install an anonymous complaint box
(d) Make sure women are equally represented on any food, supply, or security committees deciding on rules and policies in the settlement
(e) Install security cameras all over the place

Wow, you got through it all. If you’re new to the field, hopefully this got you thinking in new ways about emergencies from Japan’s tsunami to New Orlean’s hurricane to Congo’s war and disparity to the Afghan War.

Of course there are many other, even bigger questions, involved in emergency response. We included here only the ones with straight forward answers. Most questions in emergency response are really debates.

If you want to take on some of these bigger questions like how humanitarians and the military should or should not cooperate in emergency response or how people can use environmental protection methods to prevent or reduce the chance of natural disaster, please see HB / HELO Magazine’s upcoming stories, join the discussion below, or send us your ideas at Humanitarianbazaar@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the quiz, now see the answers below!

Peace, love, and amplifiers!

Answers | All answers, unless otherwise indicated, are drawn from The Sphere Project.

1. (c) Bathrooms, because you’re going to have the first hours to figure out how and where people can defecate, etc, where it will not transfer disease and smell before starting to fill them up with water and food. It’s best to solve this right away, rather than to wait until all the bathrooms and then classrooms, pick-up trucks, and hallways start filling up with people’s outgoing matter.

2. (f) Dirty hands, they pass the quickest moving diseases like flu, diarrhea, and scabies.

3. (b) See what local food and food production is available locally. It costs a lot to bring food in from outside, so better check to see what’s available safe locally first. In the long run you’ll do the community and their job market better to keep spending money inside their local economy than to immediately go outside their market where they will not benefit from any income.

4. (b) Broccoli, tomato, and lemon.

5. (b) Night-blindness.

6. Each person needs at least 2.5-3 liters per day, depending on their size. More is ideal.

7. Each person needs at least 7.5-15 liters per day depending on their size. More is ideal.

8. (c) Eating and drinking an organism passed by someone not washing their hands well enough. Cholera tends to attack in Africa and Latin America most often, specifically places without clean water.

9. (c) Drinks lots of water, then see the doctor to see if antiobiotics are appropriate for the kind of diarrhea one has. Some diarrhea will be conquered by the body if one stays well hydrated. If there’s a unusual color, unusual smell, or blood, definitely the person needs to go quickly to a doctor.

10. (c) An organism that is passed around by mosquitos. This happens primarily in Africa, Asia, and Central America. There are a number of medicines which can reduce the harm caused by the malaria when it enters the body. It’s best to fight mosquitos to reduce the number of bites to begin with, especially since so few people can afford medicine.

11. (c) 2100 or a little more for an average person. That goes with good nutrition and ight kinds of calories, not all junk food of course.

12. (b) An overused bathroom is more dangerous because it can carry living organisms passed very recently by living people. Read this article for a little clarity: BBC Source.

13. (c) 5 by 9 meters or similar (45 m2). More would be ideal.

14. (c) When a government refuses to allow someone to enter a country despite their fear that they might be killed or injured if they remain in their original country.

15. (b) According to the ICRC, No.

16. (a) According to the Center for Disease Control and other institutions, yes.

17. (d) Kwashiorkor.

18. (b) No, see the 1949 Geneva Conventions and 1977 Protocols. The civilians often didn’t know the base was there and did not mean harm to the defending government.

19. (c) retained as much as possible to provide shade, retain water, and prevent erosion of soil for the time after the settlement might be cleared. See this page of theSphere guide.

20. (d) Make sure women are equally represented on any food, supplies, or security committees deciding on rules and policies in the settlement. There are a lot of dynamics to the challenge of preventing sexual assault and other gender-based violence, and experiences shows that local people know better than outsiders who came to help how best to negotiate cultural norms and personalities when protecting people in their community.

If you scored 5 or more, you are a Meritorious Newcomer. If you got 10 or more, you’re a trusted World Traveler. More than 15, and you’re definitely Pro League. Fight the good fight. And we’ll see you in the field.

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