Structuring collapse response – the new international disaster series
Published: 01 April, 2006
The release of people from collapsed structures is heavily dependent on the organisation at the disaster scene. Ann-Marie Knegt discussed the issues USAR teams face with OCHA’s rescue expert Chief Thomas Peter and Dutch USAR team leader Rob Brons in the light of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.
Thomas Peter is regarded as a celebrity within USAR circles. There is no USAR team leader within the INSARAG response network who has not spoken to Thomas. Based in the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Thomas is the Deputy Chief, Field Coordination Support Section of the Emergency Services Branch for OCHA. He is a man on an important mission, his work is to optimise the UN’s response to major emergencies. The quantity of relief offered is not a problem, he says. However, the bringing the right response at the right time and place proves more challenging.
“FCSS covers a range of activities that are all focussed on preparing tools facilitated for international coordination. The best known of these tools is the UNDAG team for all United Nations disaster assistance coordination. We call it our rapid response capacity,” Thomas tells F&R. OCHA sends these teams out when a request from comes in from an affected country or a UN coordinator in one of those countries, the FCSS can activate the UNDAG system within a few hours.
“The UNDAG team consists of people all around the world who are constantly on standby. It is a fairly elaborate process in the sense that member countries of the UNDAG system, have to subscribe to the support of this system, meaning they have to provide available funding, to provide people and to release people if we need them. On the other hand, they have to make sure they have the necessary backup and team members have to make sure that they can leave on short notice.” The UNDAG team is organised from a roster of some 200 experts around the world. OCHA doesn’t train these people as disaster manager, they are already in that line of work. When FCSS receives the request, it identifies the need and then the organisation sends out an alert – the people who are available reply.
Thomas illustrates the situation with an example. “If you are a search and rescue team and you arrive in Pakistan. You are likely to have many questions. Where is the affected area? Who is in charge? Which relief action is already taking place? The UNDAG team briefs the team about all these issues at the airport.” We can say that UNDAG is the bridge between the relief teams and the national authorities. Governments might have a wealth of information, but are not prepared to share this with the international response community in an easy way. The task of UNDAG is to make governments aware of the right procedures and also make them integrate these in their international disaster plan. Thomas comments: “It is very difficult during the middle of disaster, when people are very busy, to start a briefing process to international relief teams if this is not in line with their official immigration policy. This is our challenge and we cannot say that just being a UN country opens all doors. There is much work and a huge amount of negotiation going in these situations and this is not always as effective as we would want.”
He indicates that the same problems apply in the affected areas. The team arrives and they need to know where their skills can be used most effectively. Not every country, Thomas says, understands the capacities that a team from abroad can offer. “They have no idea what for instance a Swedish water purification team or either a British heavy rescue team can deliver and apart from that there is a language barrier.”
When the alarm comes through:
Rob Brons is Task Force leader of the Dutch USAR team as well as Commander of the The Hague Fire Department. When he and his heavy search and rescue team were deployed to Pakistan last year, he was faced with the exact situation Thomas Peter describes.
“We received an alarm by virtual OSOCH - the messaging service set up by OCHA. This means that somewhere in the world a major disaster took place. I log on to the computer system and look at what is known about the incident. I evaluate if there is room for a possible deployment of our capacities. Consequently, I report that I am aware of the incident and indicate the status of preparedness of our team and our capacities. In Geneva they will then know what the Dutch team can offer and that they can consider. The same goes for the other 38 UNDAG member countries,” Rob reports. He adds that the organisation of the world’s USAR teams is still politically sensitive and that it is not structured, as FCSS would ideally want. As we are speaking, an international qualification of USAR teams is taking place, which divides teams in light medium and heavy, depending on the variety of capacities a team can offer. ‘Heavy’ meaning as multi-disciplinary as possible, you have your own doctor, for example. ‘Medium’ means just search and rescue and ‘light’ means relief workers.
“This classification process asks for much diplomacy, because countries are shown in a vulnerable manner. The difficulty we found in Pakistan was the fact that they didn’t request international relief until 24 hours after. The reason for this being that we knew the scale of the disaster before the Pakistani government did.”
Absolute devastation:
As soon as possible after the request was received the Dutch team set off for Pakistan with a 62headed multi disciplinary team. Upon arrival in Islamabad the team travelled to the disaster scene after instruction from UNDAG, which supplied the team with basic information and their destination. “The route which would normally take 3 hours now took 11 hours. There were rocks on the road and it was a pitch-black night. We were the only ones travelling to the disaster. Everyone else was travelling in the opposite direction from us.”
The team arrived in Bach, where they set up base camp on a basketball pitch. They contacted the local military authorities to notify them of about 150,000 residents. It was totally destroyed. The locals were desperate and appealed to my team for help. The authorities, however, were pushing the people away from us and limited the space we were allowed to work in.” Time was running out, but they had to comply with the authority’s rules. The team then followed clues about where live victims might be. They deployed the search and rescue dogs which can sense the difference between live and dead human flesh. The dogs usually wear search cameras, which Rob finds the most effective.
When the ‘right’ spot has been decided for access the team uses heavy rescue tools to get through the concrete. In this case the team did not pull out any live victims, but something else was going on at the scene. “Three teams were on search duty and one team stayed behind. However, the local population had the impression they were a medical team. They saw that the tent was being put up for eating. They thought the tables were for a surgical use and that medical aid would be delivered on them. Our doctor happened to be a trauma expert who also gives medical advice during extrication
COLLAPSE RESPONSE:
operation theatre. Someone was sent to the local collapsed hospital and managed to get medicines from the pharmacy. The surgeon set broken bones whilst the firefighters were sawing up fences to provide splints.
“He worked for a continuous 96 hours. We had to leave then anyway, because the military couldn’t give a guarantee for the way back, because there were continuous aftershocks and the roads were getting worse and worse,” Rob concludes.
Conclusion:
The example Rob Brons described illustrates Thomas Peter’s point exactly. There is an enormous need to coordinate disaster response internationally. The countries worst affected by the disasters of this scale are usually the poorest and have governments who are often less than happy to share their shortcomings with the international rescue community. Political hurdles should be overcome to speed up international response. Before that happens we still have a long way to go.
The next issue of Fire and Rescue will continue this focus on international disaster relief.
