Don't Be Civil Defense's Giant Baby
TC Lee | Chairman of CDAT, Founder of the Ganghu Civil Defense Team
When the Mataian barrier lake in Hualien breached, quite a few people from Ganghu went to the scene.
Afterward, many went to get their EMT certifications. Before that, many already had their Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps certifications.
After coming back, we talked with senior members and realized that what often holds us back is the current legal framework’s inability to imagine extreme situations.
Medical personnel practicing across jurisdictions violates medical regulations.
Without local government authorization, medical professionals who provide emergency care on site could face license revocation at worst.
Never mind how government and civilians are supposed to collaborate — this one step alone is already a wall.
The discussion about where civil defense should sit within Taiwan’s legal framework has never been particularly active.
This is something that genuinely needs to be pushed. That’s why we organized a talk on civil defense and the law.
But beyond the legal gaps, there’s another issue — one that belongs to the civil defense community itself.
You’ve probably heard this kind of talk in civil defense circles: the government is passive about integrating civilian capacity, doesn’t value civilian power, restricts public participation, distributes resources unevenly. In short, every attempt to work with the government hits a wall, and we’re not taken seriously.
When this narrative goes on long enough, it becomes a posture — I’m ready, but the government hasn’t embraced me.
As civil defense personnel, are we really ready?
Think about it.
A disaster has happened, and a hundred — or even tens of thousands of — people show up claiming they can help.
How is the official in charge supposed to know who’s capable and who’s not?
That was the scene in Hualien.
Everyone thought they could handle it, but nobody knew if you actually could.
Most of the people who showed up didn’t even have Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps certification. Some had never heard of it.
The Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps program has spread widely, and that’s a good thing. It should be the bare minimum — a certification everyone truly ought to have.
But a Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps is an individual credential. It doesn’t belong to any team.
So the next question comes immediately: when someone says they want to be team leader, who among the rest is going to follow them? Do you know them? Are you willing to take their orders?
If not, are you going to be team leader? Will others listen to you?
A group of unaffiliated individuals, no matter how many certifications they hold, cannot turn into a functioning unit at a disaster site.
And how is the official in charge supposed to carve up a chaotic scene into clear tasks and assign them to each individual Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps waiting for a mission?
What the government needs before it can hand off tasks is an organization — one that can accept missions, report back, assess whether it has the capacity to complete them, confirm tasks are properly executed, and manage the safety of its own personnel.
Give any one person ten thousand volunteers with no organizational structure, no teams, and those ten thousand people are effectively no different from a dozen or two.
Sometimes we feel organizations are redundant, bureaucratic. But most of the time, they’re necessary.
After all, as civil defense groups — or as people who want to contribute to civil defense — we’re here to solve problems and improve things, not create more problems.
This all sounds tedious, but that’s what the field is like.
Civilian civil defense groups have been talking about T-CERT for a while now, and this is exactly why.
What it adds beyond individual certifications is structure, personnel management, specialized training, and standardized equipment.
When a group of people have gone through a certain level of training and are confident in both their own safety and their team’s safety, only then can you entrust a specific area and a specific task to that squad or group.
This kind of government-civilian collaboration already exists in Taiwan.
Tzu Chi, the Mustard Seed Mission, World Vision, Dharma Drum Mountain — these foundations, charities, and religious organizations are already working with the government as organizations.
In urban resilience exercises, the government works extensively with these religious groups and foundations, practicing together for various scenarios.
So rather than constantly telling government agencies, “Open your doors, I want to contribute, let me contribute,”
the better question might be:
What did Tzu Chi do to earn the government’s trust?
What did the Presbyterian Church do to earn the government’s trust?
What are we still missing?
I don’t fully trust the government, and I don’t think the government is always right.
But we also need to turn the question back on ourselves: why hasn’t our team achieved that yet? What should we be learning, what should we be taking on?
Our goal is not participation, and it’s not visibility.
If we can’t help solve problems at the scene, then at the very least, don’t become a problem.
A group of enthusiastic volunteers with no structure, no reporting mechanism, and no one managing safety show up at a site, and the official in charge has to divert attention just to manage and look after them.
People in civil defense circles are passionate.
But passion paired with wisdom — that matters a great deal.
Getting your Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps certification is just the first step. After that, find a team and turn yourself from an individual into someone within a structure.
Through thorough learning and training, know what you can do and what you shouldn’t,
know how to take responsibility for your own safety and not become a burden on the scene,
and then — with your team — go to the field, accept the mission, complete it, withdraw.