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For a reminder of what it can be like to work in an area of total devastation after a tsunami, the Dart Centre's Trina McLellan spoke to Patrick Hamilton, an award-winning photographer with national newspaper The Australian.
Patrick Hamilton spent three stints in northern
Papua New Guinea after the July 17, 1998, 7.0 magnitude
quake that generated three tsunamis and claimed more
than 2200 lives in villages along the country’s
remote northwestern coastline near the border with
the Indonesian state of Irian Jaya.
| Patrick Hamilton's Tips for journalists covering disasters |
In the field:
• Make sure you drink plenty of water during the day
• Always try to be empathetic, resist going onto 'auto pilot'
• Stay objective (it's too easy to get carried away with the rumour mill)
• Stow your ego before you leave for the assignment
• Look after others in your team
• If you get caught on your own, just take great pictures or look for great stories |
Back in the office:
• Ensure staff in the field have a satellite phone and are kept 'in the loop' - inclusion in the daily news conference would be helpful (and let them call home when they need to)
• Ensure they have a decent survival/livability pack (esp. water purification tablets) and continue to re-supply regularly
• Ensure staff have adequate rest breaks while on the job, preferably away from the disaster location
• Provide on-the-ground logistical support of someone senior in the organisation who can cut through red tape and make things happen smoothly
• Ensure someone back home stays in touch with the families of staff members on distant engagements |
Later:
• Staff who have been on these assignments need to talk about what they experienced to someone they trust, often a peer who has been through a similar experience is helpful
• They should routinely be offered professional debriefing and supported by their peers and managers
• These staff and their families need to have official notification of an employee assistance service they can call on if necessary at any stage during or after the event |
“On a lot of different levels they will need
to be able to deal with themselves, their work and
their family while they are on-site,” Patrick
said. “But, in many ways, they will be so deadline-focused
during the day. I found I tended to want to relax
and chill out with lots
of beers at night.”
In retrospect, he said, he
felt a little disconnected
from reality. Life went on back at home and in the
office, regardless of what he’d experienced,
yet he knew only too well at the time that he had
to keep focused on the main task — delivering
images for his own paper and its national and international
affiliates.
But, he said, support for those in the field —
and their families back home while they’re away
— was critical to minimise “disconnection”.
Therefore, he said, the first priority needed to be
on survival and basic communication.
Focus on Survival
“On a practical level, apart from your usual
gear, you need a decent emergency survival pack with
things like basic rations, lots of water purification
tablets, a first aid kit, a torch, batteries, eating
utensils, good work boots and my suggestion is you
take something spiritual to read at night,”
Patrick recommended, “to help you see the bigger
picture and put things into perspective.”
Then there was sunscreen, a hat and “lots of
light, clean and easily laundered clothing that could
be washed at the end of a shift to remove grime and
the stench that’s inevitable when you do this
sort of work, it just clings to you.”
And, because medications are usually hard to come
by in disaster areas, Patrick suggested packs contain
pain relief, medicine to quell stomach upsets and
vomiting as well as something mild to take at night
to help get to sleep. “You are so wound up after
a day in the field that it’s difficult to get
to sleep and a lack of sleep only compounds your situation,”
he noted.
Finally, he said, a satellite phone was an absolute
essential.
“In that pre-digital period we didn’t
have one, but we sure could have used one to file
stories and images and to stay in touch with the office
and home.”
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| Medical staff at an Australian Army field hospital treat a tsunami survivor. |
First assigned immediately after news broke of the
tsunamis for a four-week stint, Patrick was still
working with film — a challenge in the hot,
humid and extremely remote areas he visited. His company
soon sent up a second photographer, Campbell Scott,
to the PNG capital, Port Moresby (several hundred
kilometers to the south-west), which had the facilities
to send back Patrick’s processed images for
their newspaper group to use.
Locally, based in a small town called Vanimo, Patrick
worked with a seasoned reporter, Brian Woodley, who
has since passed away.
Patrick quickly discovered that they would bear witness
to the “utter dislocation of the communities”
as he worked long, arduous days without a day off
for the entire four-week period.
The Emotional Toll
He recalled “running on pure adrenaline”
for most of the time. After the first couple of days,
he said, there was a slight lull in the output expected
of him, so he decided to go out and photograph some
of the bodies.
“But when I got out there, I just put down my
cameras and helped out instead. I helped recover bodies
because that’s what needed to be done and I
was there. Those images, which I didn’t capture
on film, still fill my brain.”
At the time, Patrick and wife Yasmin had a daughter,
Tatjana, who was only six months old.
“I was out in the Sissano Lagoon when this little
body of a baby floated past and was scooped up by
someone in a net.
“That hit me pretty hard, but I learned that
it’s important to cry, to have a release from
all the tension that builds up.”
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| Boys whose legs were amputated due to gangrene. |
But, Patrick recalled, the most supportive thing he
found while working in the tsunami region came when
he covered the Australian Army field hospital near
Wewak and met Major-General John Pearn and his team
of medical staff.
“It was the worst job I did, but ironically
the most rewarding,” he said.
“It was a good comforter to be in that ‘organised’
environment where I witnessed this team of professionals
getting on with their work, saving limbs and saving
lives. It was great to see.”
It was no doubt important for Patrick to see images
of hope and order after having seen so many dead bodies
and so much chaos and tragedy
Journalists need Support
In retrospect, he said, logistical support would
have been helpful. “Many of the people who send
us to these locations have never done this sort of
work themselves,” he said.
“We needed someone to be there for us and I
reckon they would have treated us much differently
if one of them had been there and seen what we had
to go through just to do our work.”
When it came time to pack up and head home, Patrick
said his only debriefing was with Brian Woodley, who
broke down at the Cairns Airport when he walked out
into the clean, safe North Queensland air.
“We had our own personal debriefing there and
then but we weren’t offered any formal sort
of debriefing or support upon our return to the office,”
he recalled.
“In fact, when I got back to the office I was
told I should take ‘a couple of days off and
be back at work on Monday’. They just didn’t
get it. You need time to be able to repair mind and
body.”
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| Australian Army medic John Crozi plays soccer with Abraham, one of the boys whose leg was amputated due to gangrene. |
In the end, it was a company photographer on sister publication also based in Brisbane — Bruce Long of The Courier-Mail — who realised that Patrick probably needed to talk to a counsellor to help him deal with what he'd experienced and got in touch with him.
At home, Patrick received the unquestioning support
of his wife Yasmin who, he said, listened and asked
questions about what he’d experienced, allowing
him to voice his feelings and responses.
“Of course different media organisations have
different ways of dealing with such assignments, and
with their staff in the field, but all have a duty
of care to those people’s well-being and longer
term post traumatic stress symptoms are a factor to
be considered,” he said.
“What will happen if organisations ignore that
duty of care is that, in a few years — it might
be 10 of 20 years down the track for younger staff
— if those people fall over as a result of what
they’ve experienced, their employers will face
expensive litigation because they gave inadequate
support in the beginning.
“If you want to be hard-nosed about it, it’s
a risk management thing, ultimately, although with
some organisations it will probably take government
legislation to bring in better management practices.”
After his first stint in PNG, Patrick arrived back
in his home base in Brisbane only to be sent back
for a slightly shorter period about a month later.
His final trip to the Aitape region was a year later
to do the inevitable follow-up/recovery story.
“The fact that I did go back, for me, brought
a sense of closure on the disaster,” Patrick
said.
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