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What does all of this have to do with Data and Analytics? Well, it feels fair to say very few of us have ever lived through the types of disruptive and uncertain events occurring this year. In this context, I began to consider my observations of how many organizations are reacting to the current crises. I see a number of lessons from the travesty at Mann Gulch that may help us navigate the metaphorical flames chasing us today.
On their way up to the ridge that ultimately saved their lives, the only two other survivors, Rumsey and Sallee, passed a number of other crew. In one case, Rumsey had to physically take the large shovel out of a man's hands and set it aside. They couldn't convince another exhausted team member to remove his hefty backpack and follow them. These men had trained extensively with these tools. They understood them and their value to survival under normal circumstances but in that particular situation, the tools acted more like anchors, weighing them down into the flames.
With their leader setting new fires and apparently standing still, the survivors recalled that the remaining men quit working together, running wildly trying to escape the flames. But Rumsey and Sallee stayed together, encouraging each other. At one point, Rumsey physically pulled Sallee up a hill when the younger and exhausted man became hopeless. There has been a lot written about value of teamwork. Now more than ever it is important to stretch beyond our own experience and understanding. Listening, understanding, trusting, and working together is a universal law of survival.
When I got back to my room yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to find my face covered in black soot. My eyes still stung from the smoke and my cheeks felt slightly stiff from so many tears drying on them under the intense heat of fire. I put down my camera, which had been damaged by either smoke or heat, and took off my blackened Nomex jacket, which smelled strongly of burnt palmetto. I had participated in my first controlled burn.
After a lot of running around gathering radios, helmets, tools, trucks, etc., I climbed aboard an old military truck and rode out to our burn site. Once everyone was set up, Dr. Pruett, our burn boss, lit the first blackline with a drip torch.
To light these blacklines, we walk along the downwind border of the unit, creating a line of fire with a drip torch. Drip torches are like heavy metal watering cans, but instead of drizzling water they drizzle a mix of diesel and gasoline that passes over a flame. The result is a can that spits fire when you tilt it downwards. Pretty cool.
After we had finished making the blackline, we got to sit back and watch the real show: the headfire. This is when we set a fire on the upwind side. As the wind pushes the fire towards the blackline it grows in size and intensity. We watched and listened in awe as a wall of flame that sounded like a windstorm slowly crept towards us.
Thisextraordinary political moment in Sudan was a crucial turning point in therevolution which had started on December 18, 2018, when civilians beganprotesting for an end to 30 years of dictatorship. The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), alongwith other security forces, had attacked multiple protest sites, causing deathsand injuries. On April 6, 2019, civilians protested at al-Qiyada, and respondedto attacks by security forces who used tear gas and crowd-control weapons bycreating a public sit-in camp there. Following violent attacks on civiliansfrom April 6 to 10, President Omar al-Bashir stepped down on April 11. Theprotesters remained at the sit-in to demand civilian rule. Security forcesattacked protesters on multiple occasions in early and late May, but thecivilian communities that had formed within the sit-in persevered. After April11, many civilian groups raised tents and chose to live communally within thesit-in area. Participants recalled that the evenings in the sit-in area werefull of social and political activities, and that this experience led to apowerful shared vision of a civilian-led Sudan in which freedom, peace, andjustice would be available for all.
For this report,a PHR clinician-investigator conducted semi-structured interviews and briefstructured clinical evaluations based on the Istanbul Protocol[15] in Khartoum betweenAugust 23 and November 9, 2019 with 30 survivors and witnesses to the June 3violence, of whom four were women and 26 were men. These included 21pro-democracy protesters, and health workers working in a wide range of healthsectors: four physicians, one pharmacist trained as a medic, one medicalcoordinator, one volunteer, and one psychologist.
In many cases,perpetrators identified themselves to their victims as belonging to the RapidSupport Forces (RSF), a then-paramilitary group now incorporated into the SudanArmed Forces (SAF).[16] This report documents thenature of the injuries resulting from events on June 3, as well as patterns inthe testimony and medical evidence that support allegations of a systematic,widespread attack. While more data may be necessary to generalize knowledgeabout the intentionality and purpose of the attack, this investigationcontributes to the public record of violence carried out against civilians onJune 3.
This reportindicates that Sudanese authorities had in the days prior to the June 3violence purposefully pre-positioned large numbers of security forces in andaround the sit-in site, particularly in late May, in what appeared to be partof coordinated pre-attack planning. Interviewees who participated in the sit-infrom April 6 through the end of May noted that security forces who hadinteracted peacefully with protesters were withdrawn in the weeks prior to theJune 3 attack and replaced with forces that were openly hostile to protesters,including many with accents and features identified as belonging to theRizeigat tribe from the Sudanese region of Darfur, long known for its participation in the Janjaweed militia, which in 2013was formed into the RSF. Those forces were armed with weapons including tear gas,whips, batons, sticks, pieces of pipe, and firearms, including Kalashnikovassault rifles.
The June 3assault continued a pattern of attacks by Sudanese security forces on healthcare providers, institutions, and patients, as well as the blocking of accessto care at surrounding hospitals. Relevant RSF violations against healthworkers and health infrastructure included the imposition of siege-likeconditions on health facilities, restricting ambulances and other vehicles fromtransporting injured protesters to health care facilities, and beating orshooting health care workers, patients, or visitors who tried to enter or leavehealth care facilities on foot.
Fifteen-year-old Nassir[21] often attended the protests when he was not working. On the morning of June 3, he was at the sit-in, where he sustained a gunshot wound behind the left ear. Nassir was admitted to Dar el-Elaj Hospital at 6 a.m. on June 3; the medical staff did not expect him to survive. Although it was difficult because of the ongoing violence, the staff located a neurosurgeon to remove the bullet from his brain.
Thisreport focuses on the significant human rights violations against civiliansthat occurred in Sudan on June 3, 2019 during a large-scale attack bygovernment security forces on the site of a pro-democracy sit-in in centralKhartoum. An interdisciplinary team conducted English and Arabic open-sourceinvestigation and extensive field-based interviews using established methods,including those informed by medical-legal assessments of injuries. While clearpatterns and key events can be established based on the data collected, thedata does not permit a forensic reconstruction of the June 3 attacks. Rather,this report demonstrates the need for further in-depth investigations withinSudan by the Sudanese legal and human rights communities, or international bodies such as the United Nations orthe African Union.
Thereport focuses on violations within the sit-in area that occurred on June 3because of the high number of severe injuries and deaths reported in thatlocation. However, these incidents make up only a portion of the violationsthat occurred during this period in Sudan. Other serious violations occurredacross the country as security forces cracked down brutally on demonstrationsin Kordofan, Darfur, and Blue Nile States.
PHR obtained a list of 71 mortuary admissions relatedto the events from June 3, 2019 through June 6, 2019 in Khartoum, Sudan.[41]The data included name (where known), age, and cause of death. The locations ofthese deaths and the contexts in which they occurred were not provided. Thedata corroborated reports of extrajudicial killings, as detailed below.
The sample size and purposive sampling methodology wasintended to explore the range of injuries, establishing the geographic,temporal, and legal scope and scale of the abuse, and to gather physicalevidence of reported human rights violations. This report was not designed toprovide prevalence of specific types of injuries, or of exposure to violence.To our knowledge, there are no reliable estimates of how many people wereinjured during these events, and death estimates vary. Our analysis of themortuary admissions report was limited by a lack of contextual detail and theunavailability of information about the number ofdeaths in months in which no violence allegedly took place.
A number of practical constraints may have affectedthe findings. We attempted to interview an equal number of women and men;however, PHR was able to interview only four female respondents with relevantexperience. Although some observers estimate that the gender composition ofparticipants at the sit-in was roughly equal,[43]the chain sampling may have led to introductions to more men than women. Theteam did not interview anyone who directly experienced sexual violence. Thismay have been be due to security concerns, religious taboos in thisconservative predominantly Muslim country, cultural constraints, and stigma attachedto sexual violence. As a result, both male and female rape survivors may beunderrepresented in this group. While investigators asked about psychologicalsymptoms, formal psychological assessments were not performed. Finally, wefocused our interviews on incidents that occurred only on June 3, potentiallylimiting our knowledge of other human rights violations that may have occurredon other dates.
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