When the Ma’ata’an dammed lake in Hualien breached, quite a few people from the Ganghu Civil Defense Team went to the scene.
After that, many went and got their EMT certifications. Even before that, many already had their Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps licenses.

After coming back, discussing with senior members, we realized that what often held us back was the current legal framework’s insufficient imagination for extreme situations.
Medical personnel operating across jurisdictions is a violation of medical regulations.
Medical personnel providing emergency treatment or working on-site without local government authorization could, at worst, have their medical licenses revoked.
Never mind how government and civilians should collaborate — we’re already stuck at this first step.

Taiwan has never had a particularly active discussion about where civil defense belongs within the legal framework.
This is something that truly needs to be pushed. That’s also why we organize lectures on civil defense and the law.

But beyond the gaps in regulation, there’s another issue — one within the civil defense community itself.

You may have heard a certain narrative in the civil defense community: the government is passive about integrating civilian capabilities, doesn’t value civilian power, restricts public participation, allocates resources unevenly. In short, working with the government means hitting walls everywhere and not being taken seriously.
When this narrative is repeated long enough, it becomes a posture — I’m ready, but the government hasn’t embraced me.

As civil defense personnel, are we really ready?

Imagine this:
A disaster has struck, and the official in charge has a hundred — even tens of thousands — of people claiming they can help.
How is that official supposed to know who’s capable and who isn’t?

That’s exactly what the scene in Hualien was like.
Everyone thought they were capable, but nobody knew whether you actually were.
Most of the people who showed up on-site didn’t even have a Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps certification. Some had never even heard of it.

The Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps certification has spread widely, and that’s a good thing. It should be the bare minimum — a certification everyone truly ought to have.
But it’s an individual credential. It doesn’t belong to any organization.

So the next question comes immediately: when someone says they’ll be team leader, among everyone else, who’s going with them? Do you know them? Are you willing to follow their lead?
If not, are you going to be team leader? Will the others listen to you?
A group of unaffiliated individuals, even if every single one has a certification, cannot become a team on 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 waiting Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps holder?

For the government to hand off tasks, it needs an organization that can accept missions, report back, judge whether it has the capacity to complete them, confirm that tasks are being properly executed, and manage personnel safety.
If you hand a scene over to any single individual and give them ten thousand people, but those ten thousand have no organizational structure, no team — then ten thousand people are really no different from a dozen or so.
Sometimes we feel organizations are redundant, bureaucratic. But organization is necessary most of the time.
After all, as civil defense groups — or as people who want to contribute to civil defense — we’re supposed to solve problems and improve situations, not create problems.

This all sounds tedious, but that’s what the real scene is like.
A while back, civilian civil defense groups kept talking about T-CERT, and this is exactly why.
What it adds beyond individual certification is structure, personnel management, professional training, and standardized equipment.
When a group of people has gone through a certain level of training, and they’re confident in their own safety and their team’s safety — that’s when you can assign a specific task in a specific area to that squad or group.

This kind of government-civilian collaboration already exists in Taiwan.
Tzu Chi, Mustard Seed Mission, World Vision, Dharma Drum Mountain — these foundations, charities, and religious organizations are already collaborating with the government as organizations.
In urban resilience exercises, the government works extensively with these religious organizations and foundations, practicing together for various scenarios.

So rather than constantly telling government agencies, “Open your doors, I want to contribute, let me contribute,”
maybe the more important question is:
What did Tzu Chi do to earn the government’s trust?
What did the Presbyterian Church do to earn the government’s trust?
And 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 around and ask: 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 on-site, then at least let’s not become one of the problems.
A group of enthusiastic volunteers with no structure, no reporting mechanism, and no one managing safety arrives on-site, and the official in charge has to divert attention to manage them, take care of them.

People in the civil defense community are full of passion.
But passion paired with wisdom — that matters a great deal.

Getting your Disaster Relief Volunteer Corps certification is only the first step. After that, find a team. Go from being an individual to being part of an organization.
Through thorough learning and training, know what you can do and what you shouldn’t do.
Know how to be responsible for your own safety. Don’t become a burden on the scene.
Then — and only then — go to the scene with your team. Accept the mission. Complete it. Withdraw.