Islander has a history of running into conflict zones as others flee
This story was printed in the July 2024 issue of the Ocracoke Observer.
By Patty Huston-Holm
While most of the world learned with angst of the April 1 Gaza drone attack targeting and killing seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers, for one Ocracoke Island resident, the attack struck closer to home.
“I admire people like José and what they do,” said Warner Passanisi, a long-time world relief worker who knew some of those WCK workers, specifically José Andrés, WCK founder, and lamented that the Israeli Defense Forces bombed trucks that were clearly marked and approved to deliver essential food to starving people in Gaza.
“I worked alongside them in Ukraine and other war zones,” Passanisi said during WOVV and Ocracoke Observer interviews of the WCK nonprofit and its workers. “Like many who serve others, they follow their hearts. This group provides essentials in a crisis.”
Before his return to Ocracoke, Passanisi spent over 30 years as a senior relief/development manager supporting food, health, water and gender equity programs in more than 50 countries, including Ukraine, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Liberia and Macedonia. His role and that of the nonprofit, non-governmental organizations he assisted was not to take sides in conflicts but to mitigate loss of civilian lives by delivering meals, clean water, medicine and advice to prevent sickness.
When the Ebola virus epidemic erupted from 2014 to 2015 in Liberia, along with neighboring countries of Guinea and Sierra Leone, Passanisi managed a response team of 400. Controlling the contagious and deadly disease required working with religious and tribal leaders to restrict the spread through cremation vs. traditional burial ceremonies “with a lot of touching and hugging” that would cost more lives.
“Dead-body management isn’t something you hear a lot about, but it’s a necessary part of crisis management,” he said. “What piques the interest of Americans watching or listening in their armchairs is but a small piece of the thousand-fold balance of efforts and of unheard number of folks suffering.”
Passanisi, born in England of Australian parents, has a resume that is pages long of his academic credentials, his work and titles related to emergency preparedness and risk management connected to more than 24 nonprofits. He can pinpoint the most passionate, reputable organizations: WCK, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, World Vision, CARE, International Rescue Committee and the World Health Organization.
“Most of these people have seen somebody die in front of them,” he said. “There is stress with anxiety and mental-health issues with mostly nobody addressing this. It may sound exciting, but the tragedy and lingering trauma are overwhelming.”
Groups and individuals focused on politics or short-term, uninformed giving – what Passanisi calls “the bleeding hearts” – are the least helpful. For those with a reactionary response, he recommends that instead of sending items that may not be useful in an emergency, they give money to reputable organizations (like those above). On the ground, he has discovered giving resources to women, especially cash in local currency, is the “best use of it” as women can be relied upon for accountability to take care of families and communities.
“I’m an emotional, impassioned, empathetic person,” Passanisi said. “I will cry. I still cry, but I’ve tried to teach myself how not to do that so I can manage and keep things moving. Sometimes the work I did was not sexy; it was boring. But it’s necessary.”
Passanisi’s disaster-response career chose him.
The year was 1992. He was happily and passionately studying house cats living in large groups with his sights on a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Oxford in England. With a University of Birmingham degree in biological science, zoology and comparative physiology under his belt, he researched evolutionary epidemiology, cooperation and communal care in animals, primarily focused on group-living cats.
“I started out as a white guy with a backpack and passport but got caught up in a devastating famine and multi-sided war in Somalia,” he said.
Passanisi recalled connecting with the international non-governmental organization CARE and being asked if he could “manage a Somali airport in Baidoa, the ‘City of Death.’” He learned that he was good at coordinating and working under pressure with little fear despite being in an area with al-Qaeda-aligned Al-Shabab insurgents and guns everywhere.
Somalia remains the country Passanisi is most connected to with the sad realization that “little has changed with stability” over the years and several of his friends there have died. While admitting his opinion is jaded, he believes, “if you’ve been bombed once, you’ll be bombed again” and “if you’ve had a storm once, it will happen again.
“Adequately preparing for the next crisis is hugely overlooked,” he said. “Focus on predictions and readiness is lacking.”
Passanisi is pleased to be back in the “tiny house” that he and an ex-wife built and to be swimming in the Atlantic Ocean each morning. At the same time, he is acutely aware of the Ocracoke devastation from Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and is concerned for the survival of a village built on sand.
In 2024, Passanisi wonders, too, about the direction of his life. Weary from his international humanitarian labor (“with PTSD most have from the work”), he feels drawn to “exploring my artistic side,” mentoring the next generation to serve vulnerable populations and spending time with his 21-year-old son.
He’s an adjunct professor in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One course in his wheelhouse is environmental crisis management. He wants to share insights into “how to work alongside a person in need when you’re a person of privilege” and reinforce the realization that more often than not someone local can do a job as well as an expensive foreigner coming in short term from the outside.
“There are more crises today than 20 years ago,” Passanisi said. “It’s truly difficult to take it all in but workers who can are needed.”
