Last night, the makers behind an upcoming documentary called Inside Disaster launched a powerful tool that allows each of us the opportunity to experience the Haiti earthquake from the perspective of those involved, including aid workers, journalists and the Haitian survivors.
It’s a web tool that acts like a “simulator” – and it plays out much like one of those choose your own adventure books that some of us will remember reading when we were children.
The “adventure” I took brought me down a path like this:
I choose to be a journalist in Haiti faced with several options on how to handle various situations that arise as I look for a story to report on.
In one case, the situation begins at a food distribution site where thousands of Haitians line up for food rations. 
Chaos starts and a woman is knocked over in the crowd. The simulator then asks me:
Do you:
A) Drop your camera and help her?
B) Keep shooting film? The world needs to know this story. You’re a journalist and your job is to record what’s happening, however, awful, and not interfere.
For the sake of this game, I went with my gut and choose option A.
By doing so, I was able to bring the woman to a site where Red Cross aid workers responded to revive her. The simulator then tells me: “You saved the woman’s life, but lost your story. Go back and film the event like a journalist.”
The moral dilemma of journalists faced with many incidents in which they had to decide to inject themselves into the stories, or merely observe in order to report the story – is indeed a reflection of the tales told by many journalists who were in Haiti.
Every si
ngle one of the images in each “adventure” is the real thing. It is video captured for the documentary, Inside Disaster. Film-makers were there immediately after the quake and captured the destruction in real-time; our own Canadian Red Crosser J.P. Taschereau is interviewed in the film as his team of Red Cross aid workers work around the clock to help Haitians.
Some of the images in this video game are down-right disturbing. But, the images are the reality of what Haitians faced.
Hats off go to Inside Disaster for finding a creative, moving way to engage Canadians and help keep the plight of Haitians at the top of our minds.
Click here to see a trailer for Inside Disaster.
Check out Inside Disaster on Facebook.
Or see their photos on Flickr.