Service after disasters recognised by Red Cross
FOR the past 21 years, Douglas Clark has been ready to jet off at a moment’s notice to assist with the aftermath of the world’s worst disasters.
The Dunedin man received the rare honour of a Red Cross honorary life membership last week, in appreciation of his decades of service over 67 missions for the humanitarian organisation.
Mr Clark (74) remains an oncall disaster response delegate, but he said he now serves in more of an advisory role. He described his work as several jobs rolled into one: accountant, logistician, teamleader and procurement specialist.
When the Red Cross got word of a disaster, it was up to Mr Clark to assist with wrangling the equipment, staff and funding required to deal with the aftermath. He would then travel to the affected area as one of the first on the frontlines to help with the cleanup.
One disaster looms large in his memories of the job: the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on Boxing Day 2004.
‘‘That was my big one.’’
Mr Clark was one of the first responders on the ground in Sri Lanka after the devastating tsunami. He said it was an ‘‘unbelievable challenge’’, as the length of Sri Lankan coastline affected was comparable to the distance of coastline between Picton and Invercargill. Hundreds of thousands of survivors languished in more than 600 makeshift camps without enough water, food or shelter.
Mr Clark remembered finding a finelycut rose on the ground in the southern city of Galle, one of the worst hit areas in the tsunami, and asking his guide where it had come from.
‘‘He said ‘there had been a wedding here’.
‘‘This wedding party was completely wiped out.’’
He still had the rose.
Mr Clark said one of the most rewarding parts of the job was developing training courses for Red Cross societies in the Pacific, which had made them more selfsufficient and less reliant on help from the New Zealand Red Cross.
Red Cross national and international disaster management officer Andrew McKie, Mr Clark’s longtime boss and friend, paid tribute to his years of service, and his willingness to drop everything at a moment’s notice.
‘‘He always had a bag packed.’’