well, there are several points to that; first, culture is our business, & supposedly there are a lot of other "experts" out there dealing with other aspects of the clean-up
if my specialty was dams or disaster-zone logistics or whatever, i'd be happy to help out with that, but if i started poking around in something i don't know about, i'd just be in the way
which leaves the question: if we don't do something about culture, who will?
and if it doesn't matter now, trying to plan for restoring/recovering irreplaceable cultural goods, at the moment when they are in danger, what value do they, will they, or did they ever have...?
by the time anyone gets around to looking at archives, museums, collections, etc., the present humanitarian disaster will be over
but if you don't plan now, you're going to get a repeat of something like the looting in baghdad after the invasion (or "liberation" or whatever it is they call it these days)
good examples of dealing with disaster & cultural relics were the gemaelde gallerie in dresden when the elbe flooded a few years ago, and the library in weimar that burned down this spring: moving & freeze-drying stuff fast to stabilise it

> 
> I simply don't think it is appropriate for any
> recovery efforts to focus on affected cultural
> resources
> until the immediate human tragedy is dealt with.
> Planning such a recovery and working out the logisitcs
> is important, but the emphasis should be on carrying
> out people first.