OPR Outside the US?

[VBrestorer]

I was just wondering -- has OPR ever done a 'copy run' outside of the United States?  As I recall it, Hurricane Katrina virtually destroying New Orleans was the stimulus that got OPR started, and it has, of course, covered other disaster areas since then, but I don't recall one ever being outside of the US.  I know we don't own a monopoly on natural disasters.  Would/could OPR do one outside of the US if needed?

Any thoughts on the subject?

Larry

[Mhayes]

Larry,

We have been in touch with those outside the United States, an example being flooding in Australia. We can offer advice and try to get them in contact with some of our members in the area. What we can't do is offer direct help like we do disaster here and the reason being the requirements of our not for profit status, which means we operate within the U.S.

Dave or Angela could give you a better explanation on what OPR can and cannot do. I wish sometime in the future we could have branches in other parts of the world that offer help when disaster strikes. We have so many volunteers outside of the United States that it would be wonderful to see their countries receive help.

Margie

[Dave]

Larry,

The short answer is that OPR is not set up as an international non-profit agency. We pretty much fly by the seat of our pants, but the hope is one day to set the organization up to act on an official global scale.

For now, we've been able to respond in a limited capacity to victims of disaster in other countries by having local volunteers perform the copy runs and then upload the damaged images into the OPR system. I say limited because we haven't had any large scale copyruns outside of the U.S.

For OPR to work globally, we need a lot more money and a full-time staff of administrators.

Dave

[VBrestorer]

Dave and Margie;

    Thanks for the information; that's interesting.  Of course, if ever OPR does go global, I might volunteer to help with a copy run to, say, Australia or Europe or South America or ....
    And thanks for your efforts to do whatever you can to help out our international buddies.

Larry

[Ausimax]

Hi Larry,


I am afraid that the main reason that this hasn't happened outside the US is Apathy. Twice in the wake of disasters here in Australia I tried to get something going without any success.

Following the destruction of Innisfail Queensland on March 20 2006, by Category 5 Cyclone "Larry'' (your namesake?) I contacted all the local news media in the surrounding district informing them of the work OPR was doing and trying to get them to publish information about how to conserve damaged photos for restoration and suggesting that local papers would have the equipment needed to copy damaged photos, and that we may be able to get them uploaded and restored by OPR.

I also contacted every photographic club/society in the surrounding areas giving them the same info and asking if they could help with this process.

Out of all this I received one reply from a photographic club, who said they would raise the matter at their next meeting - I never heard from them again!

I the mean time I had communicated with Dave and discovered that there were potential problems for OPR in taking on work from outside the US.

On January 21 2008 major flooding struck the town of Emerald and district, this was so major that it flooded 2 extremely large open cut coal mines, before they even had an opportunity to remove the mining equipment, it took more than a year to get them pumped out and the equipment repaired to become operational again.

Again I mounted my white charger and rode to the rescue! :funny: I contacted the local Shire Council, all the local media with info on how to preserve damaged photos & documents for future restoration and asking them to publish the info for their local residents so all the photos would not get trashed in the clean up. Once again I received no reply, though something may have been published, as a local photographer contacted OPR and was going to do the collection and upload to OPR, though to my knowledge that never happened.

At the same time I was a member of the largest photographic forum in Australia, so I posted in the forum seeking help to try and set up a similar organization to OPR in Australia, the post generated two replies, one from the owner of the forum offering the use of his facilities, (even though he had just taken over the operation and was trying to update the site) and a reply from another member offering her support, both were already members of OPR!

With so little support forthcoming, we had no option but to abandon the idea. So that is the sad story of why OPR or a like organization does not operate in Australia. :-[

Even if we were able to use the resources of OPR for doing the restorations, the physical work of collecting and copying would have to be done locally, ergo, requiring some sort of local organization. OPR could not afford to travel abroad to do the copy runs.

Max