Tuesday, September 12, 2017

One disaster, many areas devastated, multiple states affected

Dear reader,

as described in 2015 in the aftermath of the Nepal Earthquake disaster, where the disaster affected mainly (not exclusively, because India & Tibet in a much lesser degree have also been affected) just one country - Nepal - had to cope with massive, widespread destruction of whole communities, infrastructure and a resulting massive loss of life.

In 2015 it was described what other dangers are our there waiting to happen any day in the future, since natural disaster will always happen, whether humans like it or not, whether we tend to forget previous disasters affecting mankind or not. It's as sure as every morning the sun comes up in any corner of our home planet, only the timing, the scale and the areas affected are not known today. Concerning the latter we can say that certain areas are much more prone to disasters than others since we know about the tectonics responsible for the big earthquakes and we also know the location of volcanoes and we do know that tropical cyclones happen - well in the tropical zone near the equator.

The biggest problem are not those repeating patterns of disasters,
Hurricane Irma, September 2017

Hurricane Irma (2017)


Disaster threat meet alliance: 
pic source:Wikipedia


but a nasty human habit of memory loss (it seems) and ignorance. Maybe evolution intended our human brains to better forget things in order not to get crazy or making wise decisions not to settle down on the slopes of a volcano. As maybe a wise strategy of past ages it was to simply not to worry about anything since humans couldn't do much about it anyway, we now live in the 21st century providing us for a range of tools to address the dangers we will certainly face again and again.

In 2015 it was described that the scale of a disaster could range from 1 to 5, measured in the loss of human life and the impact on affected communities. Concerning loss of life the hurricane Irma was perhaps "just" level 1, but concerning communities affected more like 2-3. Natural disasters don't care about states' borders and not about jurisdiction. They only happen and all people who happen to be in that area are affected in exactly the same way. Whether they are locals and perhaps live in more primitive buildings or tourists being accommodated in a local luxury hotel. As the tourists perhaps enjoy the better structural integrity of a modern hotel, they are also affected by non existent electricity, water, food supplies and communication in order to call for help from "the outside world" in the aftermath of a disaster event. Regarding loss of communication and experiencing a sudden,unwanted time warp into the dark ages a blogpost was recently released.  

When a disaster strikes it's not the time to discuss the effects of global warming or how better prevention strategies might have prevented this or that effect of such a disastrous event. It's rather the time to plan, no ideally to execute, a 'war plan' worked out much earlier, an appropriate response to the disaster on the ground. Often assets available to civilian authorities aren't insufficient for such events or another big problem is cacophony rather than central command and authority which comes along with military leadership. One example of a sudden to the better comes to mind regarding hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans and elsewhere in Louisiana:

Army General Recalls Katrina Aftermath [Washington Post, Sept 7th 2006] 

The military in general and NATO alliance in particular does that kind of planning (and also rehearsing by regular maneuvers) for a living - it's their profession, and this expertise could be used also for the logistical challenge of extracting tourists from disaster areas.
Not only when there are many wounded a fast response within a few hours can make the difference between living or dying of those patients, but as we could just see in the small island communities of Sint Martin/Sint Maarten or also hundreds of years ago during the catastrophe that struck Lisboa/Lisbon (Portugal), a breakdown of civil society can rapidly bring the 'rule of thug' where only a few hours earlier the rule of law was upheld.

Hurricane Irma demonstrated what a 'trekking disaster' could do to many areas we humans call states. It started to wreak havoc in the most South-Western small Island nations and it ended in the South-Eastern part of the USA. Although the state of Florida managed to escape a massive loss of life the effects of Irma still make an unprecedented impact on the whole region:

It happened before and it will happen again. Strong earthquakes will affect a wide area around the epicenter. Near oceans they can produce a tsunami which can affect areas thousands of kilometers away. Hurricanes/Cyclones can maintain significant strength and every landmass in their path can be reduced to rubble. So planning for such an 'wide area event' would make sense and it also would make sense to scrap the idea that NGOs can cope with the aftermath of the most violent mass casualty events which affect hundreds, if not thousands of square kilometers, maybe divided by vast oceans. Not even the Army of one states could handle the appropriated response to such an event, only the combination of resources can respond in a matter of hours.

Every time such a disaster happens there are people who get angry with 'mother nature', some loons in the USA have even used their guns to shoot Hurricane Irma. First step must be to recognize that such disasters can't be prevent, many can't even be predicted (earthquake) and also not stopped like some non experts repeatedly propose to use hydrogen bombs to destroy deadly hurricanes like Irma. Listen to hurricane experts like Ryan Maue who know how much energy those weather phenomena absorb and learn to accept those forces of nature and concentrate on limiting their impact on human society. Human complacency, ignorance and weak memory kill not the natural disaster itself. Imagine an earthquake M 8.6 happening without any housing or mountains, just people standing in an open field. They will just fall down, maybe get some bruises, but there will be almost certainly no fatalities. Simple measures could reduce the impact of a catastrophic event significantly. Could mean the difference between life and death, between an inconvenience and mass casualties.

It starts with simple things like the knowledge we all have that there vacation destinations available for mass tourism from Europe, North America, Japan and now also China which are located in danger zones prone to earthquakes and/or tropical storms. It's not important what nationality they have, how rich their home countries are because during a catastrophic event they all are in the same boat or better distributed on several boats called hotels / holiday camps or however their housing in a foreign country is called. There are sometimes hundreds of such potential death traps in such areas with each housing a few to several hundred or thousand tourists (often families with children) and there are also many locals who work for their guests. All trapped and given what happened in the recent past - many times when the local/national power grid fails communication also goes down. Either communication equipment fails "just" because of the ab absence of regular AC power, or even worse: when cell towers suffer structural damage as well and landlines, often mounted on simple wooden poles in such areas, also get permanently disrupted. If this only happens on a small scale a repair would be possible within hours, but not when whole countries or provinces are affected, since the resources in material and man power are limited. So effectively even when those hotel buildings manage to survive an earthquake or heavy wind or even inundation they are cut-off from the outside world which means their home countries, families and friends at home. Without the possibility of using communications to ask for medical care, food and water supplies, evacuation the impact on  the hotel and its inhabitants at the time the disaster struck will be much more severe than with a backup emergency system which can be used within minutes the regular means of communications are rendered useless.

Both, countries that host tourists (and often depend to a high degree on tourism) and countries where the tourists come from could do a lot more to prevent such situations get out of control again. The country that hosts all those hotels/ accommodations could force them by law to have backup systems for power at least with the capacity to uphold simple communications for X number of days. The EU could for instance force tour operators to just add hotels to their holiday catalogues which have such
'emergency kits' in place. One handheld satellite phone with a certain amount (1000$ ?) of prepaid fees would be the minimum in order to be instantly able to dial the outside world and request assistance. Regular drills should be done in order to let hotel staff get a certain routine in using such equipment as well as to test the gear and the satellite connection.
Depending on the size of such housing complexes for tourists some additional requirements such as the ability to set up a high speed VSAT link or using a BGAN device for Internet based communication which could also send photos/videos to the rescue centers in order to get a better picture of the damage scale.

Tourist accommodations which will not cooperate must be banned from future bookings, or at least consumers should be able to make that informed decision themselves when a mandatory label also for security (besides the X star '*****' rating system for comfort) is required.
Something like: "This place is has certified disaster resilience" or
One star '*' for the ability to communicate after a catastrophic impact on local infrastructure
Two stars '**' for certified structural resilience against earthquakes up to magnitude XX.X, wind speeds of X00 km/h and flooding up to X meters
Three stars '***' for previous two categories & own backup power supply which can handle all the usual needs of the hotel when grid power is available (for X days)

All those relatively simple measures which even don't costs tons of money could prevent the 'usual chaos' taking place after such events. It could keep the people affected by the disaster calm as well as those family members, friends and also members of embassies and foreign ministries which frantically trying to get a clear picture of what happened and try to organize a medevac or just a regular evacuation of many people at once. Often when all the usual extraction points - ports and airports - are damaged, nor usable for many days or even be completely destroyed (during earthquakes even the runways can get severely damaged so that no flights are possible even when there's a backup flight control system in place.

Nepal Earthquake: Kathmandu Airport Closes Damaged Runway to Big Planes [NBC, May 3rd 2015]

Ports can get blocked by sunken vessels or cranes for unloading goods can be destroyed by high winds or piers several damaged by earthquakes and tsunamis. It's not exactly rocket science to figure out the possible structural damage to buildings and infrastructure, since there's lots of previous examples of such impacts. It would be recommended to have such worst case scenarios in mind when planning for emergency aid as well as for evacuations without relying on the usually available infrastructure. The planning should be for a wider area without airports, ports available and should consider alternative locations for maritime or airborne operations. Who prepares for such scenarios ? The military, which also have the right assets for landing operations in war zones!

When a damage is spread over a wide area and/or mass casualties have to be treated , fed and evacuated who else than a large military alliance than e.g. NATO can put all the necessary assets in place

(requires also strategic airlift capabilities and sometimes also aircraft carriers providing a helicopter shuttle to/from coast)

Philippines 2013

USA 2017 

 [Miami Herald, Sept 12 2017]
in a relatively short time. It requires a close coordination between national foreign ministries with NATO as one of the few, if not the only one, entities on the planet which can handle a giant logistic challenge when one or more entry points to one country or whole region are destroyed. The alliance has a wide range of special aircrafts, Navy vessels, but also vehicles which are designed to transport troops and material to any place where it's needed. (details: see Wiki links at the bottom of this page) EZR covered many major disasters since 2011 and concludes: it's still basically left to chance(!) what exactly will happen immediately after such an event occurs. It's about jurisdictions, national responsibilities for their own citizens and a myriad of officials involved in rescue & relief, in search & rescue operations and in damage assessment. Some bureaucratic hurdles often apply that need to be lowered first before aid can enter a country. It's perhaps unbelievable, but sometimes aid deliveries get stuck on borders, because national customs insist on collecting import duties, while further inland people are dying or at least starving or are forced to live under horrible conditions (Nepal 2015). Or some developed countries offer special airlift capacities and for domestic political reasons the government of that heavily damaged country refuse helicopters from country A while offers of country B are welcomed and there's still a dramatic shortage of airlift capacity (roads and bridges destroyed, many population centers on hill where landslides blocked road access (Nepal 2015)

Irma 2017:
  • France and the Netherlands are continuing to evacuate people from Saint-Martin island, including EU citizens, but the process is long. Several Member States (CZ, BE, RO, DE, MT, PG, ES, SE, HU, DK) reported having citizens (five to ten) still facing a very difficult situation on Saint-Martin island and British Virgin Islands. 
  • Germany requested support through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to send a consular assistance team to Florida for the benefit of German and EU citizens. In addition, Portugal confirmed that it will charter a plane to Guadeloupe on 13 September to repatriate its citizens (seats are available for other EU nationals).
       source: European Commission: ECHO-Flash [Sept 13th 2017]

Unnecessary delays happen, multiple states increase their foreign office activities and try to charter aircraft or arrange other means of transport for their citizens. So as it happened many times in such disaster areas when some lucky ones with the 'right' passport of country A, people who have been refused to board that same airplane will remain in miserable conditions and get angry why they couldn't be flown out as well (plus their relatives and friends back home). A myriad of phone calls, e-mails, social media messages between various parties (in a time where communication networks are down or capacity is very limited)
is exchanged and many medical supplies used also for stranded tourists could have been saved or used for the local population if evacuation would have been more organized and quicker.

Some impressions of current disaster St.Martin/Maarten:
In general it would be possible to plan ahead of catastrophes, to negotiate procedures for aid deliveries and extraction of tourists in such an event, so when disaster strikes a plan for e.g. Nepal, Caribbean+USA, Philippines, India, Indian Ocean region (2004 tsunami) can be activated and at least the most ineffective bureaucratic hurdles are gone from the beginning and all alternative access routes into and out of a region can be opened immediately. NATO could have worked out a procedure with every country which want to participate in such an 'extraction program' well before the next catastrophe happens somewhere at some time in the future.


Hubs with mass shelters could be planned in advance and installation of temporary housing as well as e.g. consular offices for every country involved in the program could begin immediately. The gathering point doesn't have to be on an open field, but tents or other shelters could set up in the vicinity of airports after all regular places like hotels are fully booked. Shuttle service from disaster area to airlift hub back to Northern American, European or Asian destinations after the rescued people saw the embassy staff. So this doesn't have to happen in a disaster zone and strain their scarce resources for the local population which of course also suffers and can't be flown out. An evacuation 'without questions asked' to a hub outside the disaster zone would speed up things significantly and the bidirectional traffic (evacuees:out and aid:in) will stop and would also benefit the delivery of aid to the needy.


It's either that, or there will be a certain amount of chaos every single time another calamity happens. Not all of them will be limited to less than hundred dead and a few wounded. Now is the time to think about this reoccurring pattern again and perhaps procedures will be fully worked out and ready to be activated before the next 'big one' strikes. When it strikes it's likely to hit one of the countries without an own large military force to cope with such an event, like it happened recently with one small island of Sint Martin/SintMaarten. French and Dutch troops helped to organize evacuation of tourists and bringing in the needed supplies for the local population.(see tweets with attached pictures)  

Politicians have to consider that they also 'look good' when everything in the wake of such a catastrophe is well organized and voters will get the impression of governmental competence. Our armed forces' image will also profit from smoothly running evacuation operations, so everyone involved in such an operation, but most of all the victims do profit from a well organized NATO response to 'threats of nature'. If other countries besides those with NATO membership wish to join this 'global extraction and support scheme' it will also help to reduce tensions in the world in the spirit of a unified global response to threats far bigger than petty human rivalries. In the wake of epic disaster we all face in the future we are all in the same boat and the well-being of their citizens should be priority of all governments regardless of political/ideological differences.


P.S.
Regarding the aftermath of hurricane Irma and given the level of destruction as far as monitoring events from abroad allows, it can be said that evacuations are rather well organized by various governments. They're doing what they can, and fortunately there are not that many wounded like e.g. in the Nepal earthquake event where many people were buried under the rubble of buildings or have been affected by landslides. Although this time people in the affected areas have been relatively lucky a much quicker extraction (as suggest: by the superb capabilities of NATO) from the extended disaster zone is preferred.

related articles
Appropriate response to calamities with mass casualties [EZR, May 2015]
Nepal earthquake: assessment of airlift capacity in Nepal's central region [EZR, May 2015]
Puinruimen en 2,5 miljard dollar vinden voor herstel Sint-Maarten [Caribisch Netwerk, Sep 12 2017]

 some useful links:
unique military assets/capabilities
Strategic Airlift Capability [Wikipedia]
Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy [Wikipedia]
BoeingC-17 Globemaster_III [Wikipedia]
Airbus A400M Atlas [Wikipedia]
Lockheed C-130 Hercules [Wikipedia]
Airbus A310 MRTT [Wikipedia]
Airbus A330 MRTT [Wikipedia]
Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey [Wikipedia]
HMS Queen Elizabeth [Wikipedia]
Helicopter carrier [Wikipedia]
HMS Ocean [Wikipedia]
French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle [Wikipedia]
Supercarrier [Wikipedia]
List of active Royal Marines military watercraft [Wikipedia]
Armoured vehicle-launched bridge [Wikipedia]

Disaster response [Wikipedia]
NATO
Member states of NATO [Wikipedia]


History of airfield repairs,creation from scratch
1892nd Engineer Aviation Battalion (United States) [Wikipedia]
US Army Engineers building a major Airfield on Saipan [CritialPast.com,video b/w]
Engineers of the Southwest Pacific, 1941-1945, Vol. 1 [University of Texas libraries]
(several maps showing the construction of airfields on several islands]

 History of NATO forces playing a crucial role in rescue & relief operations
Several neighbouring countries sent soldiers to assist in searching for bodies and rescuing people. The U.S. Army sent helicopters from Germany to rescue people from rooftops
       source: North Sea flood of 1953 [Wikipedia]

For those still anxiously awaiting rescue, help finally arrived on Monday 2nd February. Large scale relief came with the help and support of neighbouring countries (some of which had also been affected by the flood) including Belgium, France and England who sent military personnel to assist in search and rescue operations. Canada and the US also provided much needed urgent assistance, including helicopters to aid the enormous evacuation operation that was underway.

source: The Dutch Flood Disaster of 1953 [Holland at home]

 North Sea flood of 1962 [Wikipedia]
Die große Rettungsaktion [NDR, Feb 16 2012]

Mar. 03, 1962 - NATO General Secretary visits Hamburg [alamy.com]

Hilfseinsätze der Bundeswehr der letzten Jahre [bundeswehr.de]
(summary of aid missions of the Bundeswehr (German Army))






Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)