Responding to disasters – volunteers and immediate relief

When an earthquake struck the city of Kobe, Japan, on 17 January 1995 - causing thousands of fatalities and extensive damage - more than a million volunteers arrived spontaneously from all over Japan to help survivors rebuild. The same was true in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia after the December 2004 tsunami, where the outpouring of instantaneous help was massive. Thousands of locals and foreign tourists on site freely devoted days and weeks to assisting the official relief effort. When disaster strikes - whether the emergency-response systems are improvised by the victims themselves or directed by professionals – volunteers are there. Despite a growing capacity for rapid mobilisation of international, professional rescue teams, it is often the disaster victims themselves who offer immediate, front-line support to their own affected communities. Local residents are pivotal in disaster-response operations, providing what would amount to billions of dollars’ worth of manpower. And their voluntary contributions often go unacknowledged. Volunteers - the first wave “Volunteers form the first line of response in the aftermath of any disaster,” Ramanathan Balakrishnan, of UN Volunteers, an agency that mobilizes international volunteers to support sustainable development, told IRIN in Kenya. The first 24 hours after a disaster strikes are the most critical, as it is still possible to save lives, especially in the case of earthquakes. The two most significant roles for volunteers in the recovery phase are technical cooperation and community mobilisation: assisting rescue teams with equipment or gaining access to disaster areas, and working with the non-technical aspects of coordinating communities; helping people organise themselves, offering comfort, assisting distribution of assistance and letting people know where to go for different emergency services. Evacuating flood or fire victims, searching for people trapped in rubble or removing bodies are part of the challenging tasks volunteers face in the immediate aftermath of disaster. Despite the damage to infrastructure and equipment, volunteers often provide for victims’ initial needs such as first aid, medicine and food, often from their own meagre resources. “In Sri Lanka alone,” said Balakrishnan, “around 300,000 volunteers contributed to the immediate relief efforts. The valuation of this effort could well exceed millions of dollars.” There is an intangible value to volunteer efforts as well. “Besides the economic contribution, the social contribution that the volunteers make in the aftermath of the disasters through demonstrating attributes of sacrifice, dedication, commitment to fellow human beings is far more than the economic contribution itself,” Balakrishnan explained. Worldwide mobilisation Even though extensive early-warning systems throughout the globe provide data as to where disasters are most likely to occur, it is virtually impossible to predict exactly when or where they will strike.

Thai Red Cross volunteers prepare meals for people living in the camp for displaced people in Ban Muang district in Thailand. Many of these volunteers have come from central Thailand to the damaged west coast to help the tsunami victims. Credit: Yoshi Shimizu/International Federation

There are hundreds of specialised agencies with disaster-reduction and disaster-response initiatives worldwide. The inter-agency International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) has catalogued the various agencies, which include numerous national and international organisations that work with communities and volunteers. These range from scientific-research bodies that measure and respond to climate change and meteorological impact to general poverty-reduction NGOs that work to reduce vulnerability to disaster. Some emergency-relief NGOs have established quick-response systems, which allow them to mobilise and transport professional resources over huge distances in record time. The medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) uses its “Kit 10,000” - a ready-made, pre-packed unit that contains the necessary equipment to provide emergency medical relief to 10,000 disaster victims. The kit can be shipped in cargo planes within hours of MSF’s decision to respond. Many of the larger, international NGOs now have similar kits for urgent disaster response. Specialised agencies in the UN and the Red Cross that deal with refugees and emergencies have developed considerable stand-by capacity as well. The UN has established a team of disaster-management professionals through its Disaster Assessment and Coordination Unit (UNDAC), which is on permanent stand-by and can be deployed to disaster sites within 24 hours of a disaster striking. UNDAC teams carry out rapid assessments, prioritise needs and support national authorities in coordinating international relief. Despite efforts to respond speedily to natural disasters, there are inevitably logistical, administrative or financial issues that slow down the response time. Geography, climate and absence of infrastructure also cause delays. For example, the recent tsunami destroyed roads and bridges in Indonesia, which prevented access to remote areas and forced all assistance to be brought in by air. Global organisations with designated volunteer networks, assisted by the increasing ease in international communication technology, are now able to mobilise response at unprecedented speed. Steve Penny, the disaster-management coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies described as “fantastic tools” the combined forces of the Internet, databases and satellite communication, which enable local branch offices staffed by volunteers to make disasters known globally within minutes. The work of the Red Cross Developing networks of civilian nonpaid workers that reach from capital cities down to the most remote villages is a challenge few can meet. Certain religious associations and unions have networks with a strong rural reach in discrete regions of the world, but of all volunteer-centred organizations, the IFRC is the largest and most systematic. It has regarded volunteering as the very heart of the Federation since its inception in 1863. According to its own data, IFRC claims to have a staggering 97 million members in the Red Cross / Red Crescent Movement worldwide, of whom an estimated 20 million are volunteers. Anthony Spalton, senior officer at the Disaster Preparedness/Disaster Response Department of IFRC, Geneva, explained to IRIN, “What we need to do is invest in local response. In Bangladesh in the 1970s, where repeated flooding from cyclones was causing a lot of disruption, the Federation invested heavily in early-warning, developing a system where volunteers on bikes go around warning people when a cyclone is about to hit.” Spalton continued :“It is the local people who are important. In Bam [2003 earthquake], it was the local people who mattered. By the time the first international SAR [search and rescue] teams came, the locals had already done first-line relief.” Community mobilisation Emergency-response operations need to be community-based to be effective, experts stress. Regular interaction with the vulnerable communities and local authorities is needed, not only during the response period but as immediate help evolves into recovery and rehabilitation.

Volunteers have come from all over the world to the tsunami-affected areas of the Phang Nga region of Thailand to help clean up the debris and houses. Credit: Yoshi Shimizu/International Federation

UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery Bill Clinton met in May 2005 with leading humanitarian agencies based in the UK for talks on how to speed up delivery of aid to the hardest-hit survivors of the 26 December tragedy. Echoing the approach widely insisted upon by most agencies working with affected communities, Mr Clinton said, "As we transition from relief to recovery it is imperative that local communities participate in the decision-making process and that the needs of families, and especially children, are at the heart of the recovery agenda." Recovery efforts are more successful when they are accepted and owned by the victims themselves. “The community needs to be actively involved in the recovery planning, as well as the implementation of the plan. Mobilising the community for their participation in the recovery process is a key role of foreign volunteers,” Balakrishnan told IRIN. The involvement of the community in response efforts is essential to its ability to process the psychological aspects of a catastrophe. It is the best manner of caring for survivors’ mental health. Dr. Claude de Ville de Goyet, of the World Health Organisation, wrote that “often overlooked is the unintended social consequence of the precipitous and unceremonious disposal of corpses. It constitutes just one more severe blow to the affected population, depriving them of their human right to honour the dead with a proper identification and burial.” Untrained volunteers and relief workers from outside the affected culture may inadvertently offend the very people they are assisting. Habitat, the UN’s agency in charge of human settlements, also advocates civil empowerment and social mobilisation in post-disaster contexts. The agency regards community involvement as an important channel for awareness and for preventing and mitigating conflicts and crises in the aftermath of disaster. The recovery phase following disaster can offer a unique opportunity to revisit past practices and rewrite policies concerning town planning or building standards. Good intentions are not enough - managing disaster volunteers During an emergency, volunteers face many organisational challenges, the least of which is not coordinating relief efforts amid chaos, grief and confusion. Organisation is essential to assisting survivors appropriately. Despite a willingness to give a hand to the needy, well-intentioned but untrained volunteers who arrive on a disaster site can obstruct salvage efforts. The relief organisation CARE International states in its explanation of its work that, “in the face of such tragedy, many people want to put their skills and compassion to use at the site of the disaster.” CARE, however, distinguishes that “well-intentioned foreigners, lacking technical skills, disaster experience and familiarity with the local culture and language, can seriously complicate relief efforts.” Volunteers helping victims in disaster areas run the risk of becoming victims themselves, as infrastructure crumbles, after-shock waves follow earthquakes and “opportunistic catastrophes” such as fires and landslides add to the dangers. The recruiting, engagement and training of volunteers is therefore a key part of disaster response. It seems goodwill alone does not ensure appropriate disaster response. Suzanne H. Brooks, director of the Centre for International Disaster Information (CIDI), told IRIN, “Most well-intentioned volunteers without prior disaster-relief experience are rarely accepted for international relief efforts.” However, Ramanathan Balakrishnan noted, “Every volunteer has a role to play in any disaster. Depending on the skill levels, it could range from the clearing of debris, providing medical and logistics support, counselling the affected, coordinating the dissemination of information, offering IT support.”