November 11 marked the 50th day since the Matai’an River overflow disaster in Guangfu, Hualien, and also the first in a series of post-disaster forums hosted by Kuma Academy.

This session brought together three people who were deeply involved on the ground: Lin Li-Ching, who focused on water and electricity repairs; Yu Kai-Lun, who worked on geographic information coordination; and YuTin, who served on-site as a medical volunteer.

Building on what the three speakers shared from their own experience, I tried to organize the real conditions and challenges of the early post-disaster period around four themes: action, information, medical care, and mindset.

I. Information: Integration and Gaps in Disaster Data

When the public learned from the news or social media that the disaster zone was short on labor and supplies and decided to head out and help, the first problem they ran into was incomplete information and unclear needs.

As a Taipei native who’d relocated “east” to Hualien, Kai-Lun quickly sensed how urgent the need for information integration was. With the disaster situation changing rapidly and roads damaged, simply getting people, supplies, and heavy machinery to the right location was already an enormous challenge. Working across multiple local borough chiefs, he found that the information different units held wasn’t consistent — they often didn’t even know where each other’s resources were, what was needed, or who to coordinate with.

After settling on the area he could contribute to, Kai-Lun began collecting regional needs, and realized that it wasn’t just the borough offices that needed geographic information — every volunteer did. So a Google My Map covering passable routes, supply points, medical stations, and broad task areas became a key information hub for the disaster zone.

This kind of mapping should have been a task the government coordinated as part of disaster response, but this disaster was, once again, a reminder: when the government can’t or won’t coordinate, civilian mutual aid often supports grassroots needs better than official channels do.

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The Challenge of Mapmaking: Accuracy Matters More Than Speed

The disaster zone had two defining traits:

1. Information was hard to update (roads impassable, communications disrupted)
2. Information spread faster than people and supplies could move

So any need that got publicized, once it was widely reshared, could spiral into “5 people needed → 500 people show up” — overwhelming the site instead of helping it.

“Guangfu Superman” later eased this with task lists and pre-registration; the mapping team, meanwhile, decided to show only broad, ongoing information, avoiding over-detailing that could mislead people with outdated or incorrect guidance.

Separately, Threads played an important role as an information channel during the disaster, but also caused confusion of various scales because information wasn’t verified:

— volunteers heading to unsafe or no-longer-needed locations

— false information interfering with military, police, and fire department operations

— volunteers heading to a task location with anxious hearts, only to find the trip was for nothing

Because of this, Kai-Lun’s team adopted a principle of “only updating from trusted sources” — trading away some immediacy in favor of accuracy. In particular, frontline reconnaissance data came from scout Yutou (Tseng Ching-Yu), which kept the map highly reliable.

The map worked as a relief tool because the team kept collecting volunteer feedback and adjusting how information was presented around actual user needs — combined with the team’s own high mobility, emotional stability, and strong empathy, which let them keep the map functioning even in chaotic conditions.

II. Action: Support, Organization, and Task-Building in the Disaster Zone

Compared to information integration, Lin Li-Ching shared, from his own organization’s hands-on experience, how “action” needs to be built in a disaster zone.

He emphasized that for an organization entering a disaster zone, the most important thing isn’t jumping straight into construction work — it’s establishing tasks and objectives first.

In a disaster requiring large-scale support, the first priority is repairing and activating major public facilities — churches, schools, temples — turning them into supply stations, shelters, and command posts. A large staging point is the main artery of a disaster zone — it can hold volunteers, store supplies, park vehicles, and function as an information and command hub. Without a staging point, a large influx of manpower and supplies just becomes a burden.

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Forward Reconnaissance: The “Triage” of Disaster Relief

Even though his team’s focus was water and electricity repair, “scouting” isn’t exclusive to that specialty. A reconnaissance team with the relevant expertise enters the disaster zone first, completes an assessment, and only then does the command center dispatch teams — this is the foundation of every task.

Li-Ching’s team built a standardized reporting format:

• A close-up shot of the damage plus a wide outdoor shot
• House number plus electrical panel
• Two directional landmark photos

A small, specialized advance team functions like the triage officer in a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) system, rapidly grading needs so the command center can allocate resources effectively.

The same reconnaissance model showed up in other teams too: heavy equipment dispatch (Yutou, Momo), and the Ganghu Civil Defense Team’s interior/structural damage surveys — all following the same pattern of “assess first, dispatch second.”

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Clear Tasks Make Action Effective

Li-Ching pointed out that whether a team can add real value in a disaster zone depends on whether its tasks are clear and executable. Unplanned enthusiasm and a flood of volunteers, however well-intentioned, often consume more resources than they contribute if there’s no division of labor or command structure.

He also observed that the real bottleneck in a disaster zone is often not manpower, but a shortage of materials and tools. Without materials, a team can’t build anything — and the ability to fund those materials determines how broad and how sustained a team’s support for the disaster zone can be.

Li-Ching’s two associations already handle tasks closely related to disaster relief in normal times, which meant they could organize and deploy immediately when the disaster hit. This is a reminder for every civilian group: training and coordination in ordinary times is what determines whether you can actually be effective when disaster strikes.

III. Medical: Harm and System Strain in the Disaster Zone

A large-scale disaster is essentially a stress test of a nation’s medical resilience. From the 921 earthquake, Typhoon Morakot, the Kaohsiung gas explosion, the Formosa Fun Coast fire, the Weiguan building collapse, and the Taroko Express derailment, to this flood in Guangfu — Taiwan has built up mutual-aid capacity through crisis after crisis, but the medical system still faces structural problems.

1. Insufficient medical capacity: evacuation times spiked

According to YuTin, Guangfu originally had just one ambulance. After the disaster, with borrowed units and military support, that rose to six at most — still not nearly enough to handle the flow of nearly 20,000 volunteers in the disaster zone.

Evacuation transport times jumped from a Hualien average of 8.54 minutes to over 40 minutes. When medical resources are scarce, it becomes critical for frontline medical staff to be able to judge which patients actually need transport.

2. Most post-disaster patients were volunteers, not disaster victims

Many volunteers suffered occupational and environmental injuries, including:

• Falls resulting in fractures, swelling, deformity
• Punctured shoe soles, electric shock
• Large-area allergic reactions, eczema
• Heat injury (which improved once mandatory midday rest breaks were enforced)

There were also two cases of pesticide poisoning, a reminder for volunteers not to touch unidentified containers.

3. Regulations became an obstacle to medical mobility

The disaster zone most urgently needed medical staff able to support across regions, but regulations mean that doctors volunteering outside their registered region can face fines, or even the risk of having their license revoked. As a result, the site had to rely on EMT volunteers to provide basic care, severely limiting the medical capacity actually available.

Sourcing medical supplies was also constrained by regulation: the public wanted to donate but didn’t know what to buy, so volunteers often had to supply their own materials. The Charitable Donations Solicitation Act exists to prevent fraud, but it also regularly creates a situation where “people willing to give money have nowhere to give it, and people willing to give their labor end up paying out of pocket.”

4. Political factors limited professional support

Under the Disaster Prevention and Protection Act and the Emergency Medical Care Act, Taiwan maintains Disaster Medical Assistance Teams. But per the same regulations, these teams can only be deployed if the local government actively requests support. For local governments, making that request is effectively an admission of insufficient capacity — and that carries political pressure.

When “face” outweighs professionalism, the state and neighboring counties may be ready to help, but can’t step in smoothly.

IV. Real-World Challenges and Problems

This flood in Guangfu exposed a number of long-standing structural problems that get magnified by a large-scale disaster. Challenges around resources, organization, regulation, and operating models are all intertwined — meaning civilian power, though strong, often can’t operate at full effectiveness at the moments that matter most.

1. Money: The most real, and most sensitive, post-disaster problem

Civilian donations were enthusiastic, but the disaster zone didn’t just need “items” — it needed complete solutions that actually solved problems.

For example, someone donated gas stoves and water heaters, but no one covered the cost of the gas canisters, refill fees, or piping materials needed to install them. Plenty of volunteers were willing to put in the labor, but how much work actually got done often came down to how much material was on hand — and behind materials is a question of funding and sponsorship.

Under Taiwan’s charitable framework, many small support associations, despite being highly flexible, struggle to raise supplies or funds at scale because of strict fundraising regulations. And people who want to donate often hesitate because they can’t find a channel they trust that can act immediately.

2. Management: Chaos and a Vacuum After the Volunteer Surge

In this disaster, volunteer manpower far exceeded what the disaster zone could absorb. Yet organizations were reluctant to manage them, and it was genuinely hard to do so — that turned out to be the biggest problem.

Large organizations like Tzu Chi and churches have well-developed systems, but they can’t directly command a large number of “non-member” volunteers — partly because of governance risk and accountability, and partly because the volunteers themselves aren’t necessarily willing to be folded into a formal system. The result was a flood of “spontaneous volunteers” on-site, without task assignment or tiered management, wasting effort and even creating new confusion.

On top of that, different professional organizations have different working habits, making cross-team collaboration difficult; supply management also became chaotic without a unified standard, at times even leading to supplies piling up unused.

3. Law: An Invisible Ceiling on Medical, Engineering, and Fundraising Capacity

The law is both protection and limitation.

• Medical volunteers supporting across regions risk being flagged for “illegal practice,” discouraging the very professionals who could actually help.
• Civilian construction teams repairing the disaster zone also have to navigate licensing, insurance, and workplace-safety liability issues.
• Donations and supply drives are governed by the Charitable Donations Solicitation Act, which burdens small associations with financial transparency and fundraising-legality requirements that make it hard to scale up support quickly.

These systems make sense in normal times, but during a disaster they often become key obstacles to civilian mutual aid.

4. Activation of Support: Central and Out-of-County Professional Teams Struggle to Step In

Resources like Disaster Medical Assistance Teams and out-of-county professional teams exist, but they can only be activated if the local government actively requests support. Yet local governments are often reluctant, for reasons of “face,” to admit their own capacity is insufficient. As a result, even when the central government and neighboring counties are ready, professional support can’t smoothly get involved.

Together, these problems suppress both the efficiency of post-disaster recovery and the effectiveness of civilian mutual aid.

Mindset: The Psychological Preparation and Attitude of Volunteers

Beyond institutional and structural challenges, a volunteer’s own “mindset” is key to whether a disaster site can operate safely and effectively. What the speakers shared painted a picture of the psychological preparation disaster-zone volunteers need, and why certain teams manage to keep a steady rhythm and deliver stable support even amid chaos.

1. Take care of yourself first — so you can take care of others

A disaster zone is a harsh environment, physically and emotionally exhausting. Volunteers need to understand:

Pulling back when you can’t go on, resting when you’re not okay — that’s responsibility, not retreat.

Only when you’re stable yourself can your actions last.

2. High initiative and observation

There’s no standard procedure in a disaster zone, and no one who will always be there to tell you what to do next.

The ability to observe, adjust, and fill in the gaps on your own is what separates a good volunteer from a chaotic one.

3. Understand your own limits

Volunteers don’t need to be all-capable. Knowing your own range of ability, and doing only the work you can safely handle, actually makes the whole operation run more effectively.

Do what you can to your fullest, and know when to let go of what you can’t.

4. Empathy: Starting from the user’s perspective

Kai-Lun especially emphasized that empathy is the most important foundation for information integration.

A volunteer’s task isn’t to “meet every need,” but to distill limited resources down to the most important, most urgent, most needed information.

5. Don’t cling to personal contribution — aim to “eliminate the need for your own existence”

This is standard NGO mindset:

If your presence is no longer necessary, it means the disaster zone is closer to recovery.

Withdrawing, merging, and handing off when necessary are all signs of a mature team.

6. A familiar, trusted team

The environment is complex and changes moment to moment — only a team you know well, with good mutual understanding, can keep a task from being derailed by emotion or misunderstanding.

7. Deliver correct information, even if it offends people

There’s no room in a disaster zone for ambiguous information.

If wrong information could put someone in danger, it has to be corrected, even if that means causing offense.

8. Small teams, high efficiency: open discussion, but the leader must be able to decide instantly

The traits of a high-performing team:

• Open to discussion
• Open to communication
• But when it comes to on-the-ground judgment calls, the leader can make an instant decision and own the outcome

Clear decisions make for fast action.

9. No one should be left behind

Volunteers, residents, out-of-town teams — everyone is part of the disaster zone.

Everyone’s psychological state, experience, and safety deserve consideration.

Conclusion

Beyond their regular preparation work, government agencies, civilian groups, and the self-trained civil defense teams that emerged after the mass recall movement all need to seriously examine and learn from large-scale disasters like this one — so they can respond better the next time an unforeseen disaster strikes.