I hope they will share the data somehow! Wouldn't necessarily be as
easy as it sounds.
Most (if not all) the news departments of the major TV networks and
national cable news have some setup for this. I'm cynical enough to
believe they have a dual motive . . . gaining Public Goodwill by
offering a Public Service and gaining traffic from hits on their web
sites to utilize it.
In the U.S., the American Red Cross (the U.S. member organization of the
ICRC) has a special relationship with the U.S. Government and operates
under a Congressional Charter. One of their chartered activities is
relief aid for natural disasters in coordination with FEMA. At the
national level, there are specific services provided by the ARC under
provisions of the Stafford Act (Major Disaster declarations fall under
this act) and in the National Response Plan under the Homeland Security
Act (Incident of National Significance declarations execute the National
Response Plan). Among these is helping reunite displaced family members
with each other. The database . . . although it's accessed on the ICRC
site . . . is part of that service performed by the ARC for the U.S.
Government. State and local chapters of the ARC work with state and
local governments providing similar types of services for them during
lesser events. One of the more interesting of the local services is
helping provide temporary emergency housing for people whose homes are
uninhabitable following a fire (the fire department usually calls them
for the victims).
The ARC's original Congressional Charter was granted in 1900, was
modified in 1905, and the 1905 charter has been amended on numerous
occaions since then. Those amendments tie the ARC in with the Stafford
Act, FEMA and the Homeland Security Act's National Response Plan. The
ARC also acts as agent of the U.S. Government to carry out some of the
government's obligations under the Geneva Conventions (IIRC, a few of
the amendments relate to that as well).
-- John Lind
Brian Swale wrote:
>
> Interesting that nobody in the Open Source community alerted them to the
> International Red Cross site (signifies that they did not know of it), that
> there
> is no USA government central website to co-ordinate these matters (one
> would expect that surely), and the preacher who is setting up scores of
> refuges in at least two states, and who asked for this help which he got, was
> not aware of the Red Cross site ( and presumably, considering the state of
> the refuge creator's finances) has not had any assistance from the Red
> Cross. Sounds as though he has never had any contact with the Red Cross.
> On the other hand, they are well aware of the many bogus "help" sites out
> there as they give warning about them As a practiced internet searcher, I
> would expect the Red Cross site to show up in any search that pulls in
> bogus sites.
>
> I wonder if they will exchange links. I'll bet not.
>
> Brian
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