Concerns about staff residence
Create a safe working environment for disaster response workers
Stress from communal living
It is sometimes necessary for disaster
response workers to prepare a tent for
themselves or to sleep in a car for a while due
to lack of available accommodation. Even
though an organization could arrange
accommodation for staff members at affected
areas, they could not prepare rooms for
individuals and had to continue communal
living, using shared rooms separated only by
men and women. One organization was able
to rent another building and proposed to
accommodate men and women in separate
buildings. However, it was women that
opposed the proposal, saying they were
worried about security if there were only
women. It is difficult to coordinate the
accommodation because each staff member
feels differently and it is also necessary to
consider various aspects including location,
indoor equipment and the capacity of the
accommodation.
Arduousness of staffs
Besides the fact that living with a group of
people causes stress, disaster response
workers who continued to live in a shared
house with a small number of people, such as
only one man and one woman, felt more
mental constraint than living in larger groups.
A female staff member from one voluntary
organization rented accommodation with a
male member of staff. She felt there was no
choice during the emergency stage, but as it
continued, experienced more difficulty.
H o w e v e r , i t t o o k t i m e t o m a k e h e r
organization understand the situation. She
laments the fact that the organization
considered the affected people, but did not
understand the arduousness of the staff.
Respecting individual ideas and feelings
It is difficult for staff members at the site to
demand a better living environment for
themselves because they put more priority on
the affected people. Under the same
conditions, each individual feels differently.
Some feel that living in group is painful
whereas some find it fun. Hierarchical
relations in the workplace sometimes make it
difficult to communicate their feelings. It is
n e c e s s a r y f o r d i s a s t e r r e s p o n s e
organizations, which dispatch staff, to have
individual hearings from each member of staff,
not from certain ones, in order that everyone
work comfortably, and to take certain
measures before particular persons feel their
working conditions to be arduous.