Structuring international disaster co-operation
Published: 01 September, 2006
Thomas Peter, Deputy Chief, Field Co-ordination Support Section of the Emergency Services Branch for OCHA (Office of the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs) of the United Nations in Geneva, feels that very many countries that are affected by a disaster do not know what rescue teams can deliver, a problem made worse by language issues. It is his task on a daily basis to combat this problem and find solutions acceptable to every party involved.
UNDAC (United Nations Disaster Assistance Co-ordination) establishes a co-ordination centre in the affected area. These co-ordination centres agree a communication exchange and workflow procedure with the US’s National Authority.
Thomas Peter explains: “It doesn’t matter whether they attend or chair meetings jointly, whether they have a daily report or exchange reports many times a day. We have to make sure that any team that comes in gets a new assignment or will get redirected in the most efficient way to a new location. Also, if they require logistic support we make sure there are procedures to get fuel or transport to go to remote areas.”
The UNDAC team is also there to overcome a logistics bottleneck, such as the one that recurred in Pakistan. According to Thomas you “sometimes have to fight to get relief out there where it is needed.”
The other task of the UNDAC team is to make sure that all information management is co-ordinated in the sense that there is an area where the assessment of teams can take place. This has to happen to avoid disaster areas being wrongly assessed for resources and relief.
INSARAG guidelines
The onsite co-ordination centre is called the OSOCC (Onsite Operations Co-ordination Centre). Most international rescue teams actually adopt this as a policy.
“The first thing they do when they arrive is look for the OSOCC,” Thomas explains. “There is a lot of willingness to co-operate within the international community. The whole UNDAC, OSOCC and the way international search and rescue teams work together is all written down within the INSARAG guidelines (International Search and Rescue Advisory Group).”
This platform is made up from international disaster response organisations and disaster prone countries and it has existed since the early 1990s. The organisation has come up with guidelines to ensure quality control of the deployment of international teams.
“For instance, if you are not self-sufficient during deployment, let’s say when you come without food and water, then you might as well stay home. The capacity out there is huge and that is just what our main activity comprises of to raise awareness among responders and channel this into structured response.”
Teams which are responding have to take into account what is already available at the scene and structure their response accordingly.
Very often requests for assistance which emerge very vague. Everyone sends out similar resources, such as field hospitals.
For example, with the Bam earthquake in Iran it was obvious there were too many field hospitals at the scene. Apart from that, government policy was to evacuate everyone to big hospitals spread all over Iran. Within two days they managed to evacuate 8,000 patients. Logistically, this was an amazing effort from the Iranian government. In Algeria in 2003, there were also too many field hospitals and too many search and rescue teams.
“I think this is caused by the fact that most of these organisations consist of volunteers. Understandably enough, you prepare your whole life to help, so as a team you have the mindset to dedicate your capacity.”
Thomas sees the other cause of this problem in the fact that many of these organisations are NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations), which depend on donations. They need to show that they are ‘useful’ to their benefactors and the public.
UNDAC has had several requests from NGO teams and in particular fire brigade teams which want to set up another search and rescue team. UNDAC’s official policy is not to create more teams, but to channel the existing capacity in the right direction.
Command post exercises
Local disaster management authorities, which usually have a much better overview of the disaster situation, often don’t have any say in what sort of assistance is needed. These decisions are often made within the national government.
This is another reason why Thomas calls for a more structured approach.
“Once you have the concept set up, there is still a long way to go in maintaining the system in the sense of training and repetitive training, but we have come up with a plan which is very cost-effective. We call them Command Post Exercises, which we run in disaster prone countries.
“We involve the immigration and custom authorities of airports, the real disaster manager of the country and international disaster assistance and relief teams represented by just the team managers. It is a small group of 50 to a 100 people. After that we run a whole sequence in two days, going through from the request to the arrival of international teams, allocation assignment, information management, joint planning and organising. It is a very dynamic scenario, but completely virtual.
“We have maps, but we don’t move around. It is compressed in time and extremely efficient, every critical step has been thoroughly practised in the two days before the simulation.”
Disaster response organisations create a scenario on the night before the exercise based on scientific risk analysis. The next morning participants get briefed with the knowledge available and the exercise kicks off.
He adds that this approach simulates a real disaster in that nobody knows all details of what is happening and at that same time they are dealing with foreign teams arriving at the airport. Strategic decisions have to be made on the spot.
The key point in this strategy is to sensitise all people involved with the issues associated with a disaster as well as the central government which is the steering factor behind the whole organisation. Currently UNDAC is working in China with the Asia Pacific part of INSARAG. Although the organisation is divided in three parts, OCHA also invites teams from other regions to make sure that there is cross-region co-operation for greater realism.
Other countries where they are currently training or have been training are Slovenia, Tunisia and Algeria, the latter two are holding a joint exercise for the North Africa/ Middle East section of INSARAG.
Humanitarian partnership
There is one more tool in UNDACs range of instruments, Thomas explains.
“Several countries in northern Europe have set up a network, the International Humanitarian Partnership, which is a partnership that sets up a co-ordination structure in the field. If UNDAC requests equipment (vehicles, communication, equipment, internet facilities etc.) for an onsite response centre, this partnership delivers all of it a day later. They are organised in support modules, which can mean for instance that computer experts set up a communications tent with all the necessary facilities. This is now also adopted for INSARAG’s Asia Pacific region,” he concludes.
