DISASTER OPERATION- EXPERIENCES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES

1. DISASTER OPERATION- EXPERIENCES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES Author: Aziz SASA,TA1E President TRAC TRAC ARES-Officer

2. INTRODUCTION -Turkey has experienced several big scale emergencies in the past. Although several laws and bylaws existed, Emergency Management mechanisms were not functional. -The devastating earthquakes of 1999 were a milestone in changing the attitude of the government and the population towards emergency management. Since 2000 the whole mechanism, including firefighting, is in a transition period with a remarkable engagement of voluntary organisations and the Emergency Management Agency at the Prime Ministry. This body is undertaking the whole mechanism to a revision, putting new standarts, including the structure of the Emergency Operation Centers, the routine exercizes and communication procedures. -Due to the MoU’s signed with the primary agencies, TRAC is acting as an actor, voluntary advisor and facilitator in these. TRAC’s engagement is dating back to the year 1989.

3. INTRODUCTION -The whole restructuring of the emergency management was taken very serious in all levels and this resulted in remarkable progress. -One of the most interesting development was noticed in the emergency medical field. The Ministry of Health initiated a voluntary organisation (“UMKE” -National Medical Rescue Team) which is trained especially on the rescue of victims trapped in debris. In this configuration, UMKE might be unique in the world. -The other development was the growing engagement in disasters abroad. After the 1999 earthquakes, where rescue teams from abroad were a dominating factor, Turkey became an international actor in rescue work. Turkish teams contributed in Athens, Taiwan, El Salvador, Iran, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Pakistan-besides some excersizes such as NATO CPEMEX-04 in Bulgaria. -TRAC was official part of the deployments to CPEMEX-04, Iran and Pakistan, being responsible of communications. The observation in these events were very similar to the ones noticed in the domestic events. To our opinion, these observations should be analyzed.

4. Problems common to Big-Scale Emergencies • As experienced in the vast majority of such events, in-site coordination is a big problem. This is caused by two main factors. • The first one is the difference of approach between the local officials and the incoming foreign agencies, mostly resulting from cultural and organisational differences. Language barriers may contribute to this problem. However, this problem usually lessens after quite a short “warm-up time”. • The bigger and lasting problem is communications. Commercial frequencies might be occupied by the local agencies, making them unusable for the foreign agencies. With the usually big number of incoming agencies which use different frequencies, it becomes impossible for the coordinating agency to control and coordinate the activities in the field-especially if there is not a communicator in its ranks. This can have dramatic consequences as experienced in Pakistan. UMKE, being the only specialized medical team in Muzaffarabad, could not be notified about a victim rescued by another foreign team. The young individual being saved from the debris-visually looking unharmed, suddenly died 24 hours later as a result of the so called “crash syndrom” which is told to be a dominant problem in these kind of cases.

5. Problems common to Big-Scale Emergencies • This problem was observed also during all events in Turkey-especially in the August 1999 (Marmara) Earthquake which devastated a large area . All rescue teams, especially the foreign groups, operated completely without any coordination with the local authorities. As a result of this, in some collapsed buildings several rescue groups could be seen acting in mere rivalty to each other whereas in other buildings not far away people were seeking for help desperately. This chaos was mainly caused by the lack of communications. This hampered the overall effiency of the rescue activities significantly. • Having learned from these experiences, TRAC interwieved all foreign rescue groups at their arrival in Istanbul Airport after the November 1999 earthquke, compiled a database containing their working frequencies, notified the teams about the coordination frequencies in the disaster area (which were amateur frequencies) and forwarded the database periodically to the Emergency Operation Center in the affected area. This way, a much better coordination could be obtained. This action of TRAC was quoted by British Civil Defense as “unique and an example of best practice in the last 30 years of rescue work”.

6. Problems common to Big-Scale Emergencies • In the aftermath of big-scale disasters, UN plays a key role of co-ordination if the affected country calls for international aid. UN usually takes over the the general organisation of all incoming foreign relief agencies and acts as their “general manager”, being tightly in touch with the local national authorities. This requires a good deal of communications infrastructure because the number of “sub-agencies” to be co-ordinated is usually high. • The “hot period” after an earthquake where immediate and intense response is required to save lives lasts in average 3-5 days. This is also the period where communications plays a crucial role. Looking back to previous experiences, it can be said that the average stay of foreign rescue groups is in the vicinity of 7-10 days. This is also the period where UN co-ordination is required.

7. Problems common to Big-Scale Emergencies • Events such as earthquakes demand a short-period operation of UN. This is opposite to other operations such as humanitarian aid operations in problematic areas of the world which can last several months or even years. • It can be observed that UN engages dedicated communications personnel only if a long-term operation is required. • Therefore, a method should be found to overcome the communication problems which arise in short-period but intense operations. This has to be in conformity to the regular UN standarts (OSOCC).

8. A possible solution • As experienced in numerous events, amateur radio is often a key resource of emergency communications. On the other hand, it seems that to deploy communication experts for short-time operations is impossible for the UN. Therefore, embedding organized amateur radio resources which are known to be integral part of their national emergency management system into the OSOCC-mechanism would make it possible to maintain efficient communications and therefore co-ordination in short-time deployments in a feasible way. This would have several additional advantages: -Utilisation of the local radio amateurs in the affected area-including their possibly existing technical infrastructures such as repeaters and stations, besides maintaining a closer liaison with the local authorities that way. This would also mean a better guidance and information gathering. -Avoiding frequency collisions with the existing commercial or governmental allocations in the area for the most possible extend.

9. The TRAC Project • As apparently TRAC will be integral part of Turkish Relief Deployments to foreign countries in the future, following actions will be aimed: -Assembling a WaveMail/Airmail PACTOR setup which includes a Satphone as a backup for possible propagation problems for communicating with Ankara, the capital. This setup will also contain a UHF portable repeater, a set of UHF and VHF radios for maintaining in-site tactical communications within the Turkish Team. -This package will include some additional VHF and UHF radios along with a frequency counter. This additional equipment will be dedicated for establishing communications with other teams. The package is intended to be held ready in the Istanbul Military Airport as usually deployments are made with military aircrafts. -Efforts will be made to obtain a OSOCC certification in order to assist UN if required. These efforts will be made in co-ordination with the Turkish Emergency Management Agency.

10. OPERATIONS ABROADBam-Iran Main Task has been in-site tactical communication with some sporadic long-range Communication as well. HF communication was difficult due to propagation problems. The duty lasted almost one month.

11. OPERATIONS ABROADCPEMEX-04 (Bulgaria) The TRAC Communications Van, the main communicaton tool of the Turkish Team.