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The International Search & Rescue Response to the 2009 Padang Earthquake
SARAID is a Non-Governmental (NGO) UK International Search and Rescue Team operated entirely by volunteers and funded by public and business donations.
An NGO is one of the two types of teams that often deploy on international search and rescue missions, with governmental organisations being the other dominant type of organisation. Government sponsored search and rescue teams often make up the large teams on a deployment, travelling using either military or chartered aircraft, backed by significant national resources. Whilst the NGO's are often smaller, they are no less important. Being non-governmental, they often have the ability to deploy faster with permissions and paperwork being less of a problem, although they are often restricted to scheduled flights which can pose a major problem for deployment.
The other major difference between NGO's and governmental organisations is that NGO's often have a more diverse background than a governmental sponsored search and rescue team. The SARAID team deployed to Indonesia was only 10 people but within that team there was a Doctor, a Structural Engineer, full time USAR specialists, a Policeman, an Emergency Planner, a Mechanic and an Electrician. A diverse skill set is a key component of any international search and rescue deployment just because of the range of problems that needs to be addressed so these diverse NGO's are equally as important as the larger more heavily resourced governmental teams.
Although the development of international search and rescue teams is now supported by the United Nations, there are no international laws or restrictions on a search and rescue team deploying from one country to another following a disaster. All teams that deploy are considered guests in the host country, operating under the host country laws and directed as necessary by the host countries Local Emergency Management Authority (LEMA). In principal this means that anyone can deploy to help after a disaster, but in practise this creates huge problems. The host country often has severely restricted resources to both support and co-ordinate.
To deal with this problem, INSARAG (International Search and Rescue Advisory Group) has set up guidelines for international search and rescue teams to set out minimum standards for search and rescue teams and is currently undertaking assessments of teams against the guidelines. If teams adhere to these minimum standards, the co-ordination and the resourcing of international search and rescue teams will be significantly improved.
All international search and rescue teams that operate in accordance with the INSARAG guidelines are now expected to achieve a minimum technical standard in a range of skills including Urban Search and Rescue. Core technical skills of international search and rescue teams include:
• Rescue including breaching and cutting, shoring, rigging and lifting and moving
• Medical including hostile environment and personal health training for team members. Team medics need to be able to access casualties to stabilise them deep with buildings and need to be able to give some life support for a casualty until they have been removed to a medical support environment
• Technical skills including engineering, equipment maintenance, hazardous materials assessment and needs assessment
• Self sufficiency including sourcing and purifying water, field craft, survival, cargo handling for the equipment
• Command and control including the ability to run or take over a reception or coordination centre
• Search including reconnaissance, technical search and canine search.
The other key element of the INSARAG assessment system is classifying teams as either - Light, Medium or Heavy. This classification system is intended to improve co-ordination and management of teams responding to a disaster, assigning clear capabilities to teams of different sizes.
Light teams are local teams travelling from adjacent countries. These teams are intended to rapidly bring technical and canine search capability to the disaster as well as a light rescue capability. The medium teams are the smaller teams that travel long distances. Typically these teams are made up from 20 to 30 people and a diverse but relatively lightweight equipment cache. Medium teams therefore provide a full search and rescue capacity, but remain relatively mobile. The SARAID team is designed so that it can travel on a single 50 person bus. Disasters such as the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir show how important mobility is in providing a disaster response.
Heavy teams are usually made up from at least 70 people. These teams bring a full search and rescue capacity with the ability to work on a single large site with no additional support, something that smaller teams could not achieve. These teams also have the capacity for the massive campaign rescue efforts needed to rescue people deeply entombed in large buildings, something that the smaller medium and heavy team could not achieve.
The INSARAG guidelines show the importance of a diverse response with the diagram in figure 1 which shows the proportion of casualties normally expected to be rescued by the teams of different classifications.
A total of 21 international search and rescue teams deployed to Indonesia from around the world following the earthquake in Indonesia. Teams deployed from around the world all arriving with the first 2 days following the earthquake.
The SARAID team self deployed to Indonesia through scheduled flights with Qatar Airways. Having a Search and Rescue turn up at the airport needing to deploy with a lot of equipment is always a challenge for the airline, but Qatar Airways proved to be more than capable of dealing with the challenges. Qatar Airways flew the team to Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport via Doha and Singapore, where the team were met by Indonesian Civil Defence. Even a task as simple as changing terminals at an airport can be a challenge when you have to carry a full equipment cache. It took just 4 large taxis and a pick-up to transfer the team and the equipment, a major benefit of being a small team travelling as light as possible.
Flights from Jakarta to Padang were provided on chartered planes free of charge to both national and international rescue teams. Our flight included other rescue teams from the UK, France and Canada as well as representatives of the UN and Indonesian National Rescue teams.
Arriving at the site of a disaster of the scale of an earthquake is always a challenging experience. We do everything we can to find out about the place we’re going to, but the reality is you really never know what you are going to encounter. Reading through the media reports on the way to Indonesia, it seemed like there was a lot of damage and casualties, but we knew that the depth of the earthquake and the relatively slow rise in the number of reported casualties means that the media reports may not be giving a full picture.
Arriving at Padang it was soon very clear that, whilst it was a major disaster, it was not of the same scale as other massive earthquakes in recent years. The airport was operating normally, and despite being within 20 miles of the epicentre, suffered no major damage. The first task of any rescue team once they arrive is to head to the designated Reception Centre. This gives teams a chance to immediately slot into the coordinated international response to the disaster. Our team leader and deputy then took a taxi to the main on-site coordination centre to get any Taskings for the team whilst the team set up camp with some help from Russians and French teams.
After meeting at the co-ordination centre the SARAID team was tasked to support the Singapore Civil Defence team in clearing an area that had up to that not been searched, south of the river in Padang. We had to arrange for our own transport, and as soon as we had met and coordinated with the Singaporeans
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