This has been a truly horrible two weeks. Like a lot of people, I’m still reeling from the shock of what happened, and is still happening, in Sichuan. This is the third time this year that I’ve found myself looking out the window in Beijing at complete normality, while not far away people’s lives have been turned upside down.
Compared with the overwhelming enormity of the events since May 12, the issue of whether foreign rescue teams seemed irrelevant to me, so I dismissed it as a waste of time. But it has been brought up to some extent in the media and it did generate a bit of argument in China. Some of that argument I can respect - the practical issue of whether foreign rescue teams would really save more lives. Some of it I can’t respect - paranoid claims by some that the foreigners might be spies.
One of the reasons I dismissed the issue was this article by Nick Cater, written after the Bam earthquake in 2003:
The British search and rescue teams arriving back from Iran have successfully proved that flying in people and dogs to scour the rubble and mud of foreign disaster zones for survivors with hi-tech gear or their bare hands is in almost all cases a waste of time, effort and money.
Information from the main charities involved suggests that the 68 search and rescue experts from five different UK groups and their four trained dogs failed to find a single person alive in Bam. The story was much the same in other recent disasters, such as the earthquakes in Algeria, Turkey and India, after which few people have been found alive by British teams.
This is hardly surprising. While the experts talk of the “golden hours” - usually just the first 24 - in which those trapped can expect to be found alive, it is local people who recover the vast majority of survivors, often based on knowing exactly where their families and friends were when the disaster struck.
If local people need help, it is from staff and trained volunteers who speak their language, know the area, require little or no external support and are integrated into the disaster preparedness and response systems of national and local government, specialised agencies and their country’s Red Cross or Red Crescent society.
International search and rescue teams today descend upon every sudden catastrophe from all over the world. Bam had around 34 groups from 28 countries. They even arrive without invitation or local partners, and their needs in terms of food, water, shelter, translators, transport and information put further strain on resources that are already scarce.
No doubt the British teams from Rapid UK, the International Rescue Corps, Canis, Bird and the fire services of Kent, Hampshire and Essex were better prepared than most and so totally self-sufficient that they could start work immediately and not be a burden on those they came to help.
But it was pointless for the Department for International Development under Hilary Benn to fly them to Iran when they could not arrive until well past those vital 24 hours, and more so when knowledge of the local construction techniques made it clear that few could have survived trapped. Earthquake-experienced Iran had it all under control.
Of course, Iran is happy to receive aid in terms of equipment, supplies and money, but early in the crisis its health minister, Ahmed Pezeshkian, was quoted - and presumably ignored - as saying that foreign volunteers were not really needed since large numbers of Iranians were already coming from all over the country.
It appears that in everything but ill-enforced building standards, the Iranians have done a superb job, mobilising many thousands of helpers, recovering tens of thousands of bodies and, within the limits of any crisis, efficiently organising evacuation of the injured and burial of the dead. Could any comparable British town have done as well?
The international volunteers are interviewed on TV after every natural disaster. Are these dogged - and doggy - heroes of search and rescue perhaps taking over from nurses in white as that popular, patronising media cliché, the angel of mercy? Or is it just that improved communications and transport have put more disasters within reach of the over-enthusiastic?
Either way, the best response to disaster is not to head for the airport, but to support local preparedness efforts with hard cash, and to consider how to help the recovery operation that will still be under way long after all those rescue dogs are released from quarantine.
AP put out one of the few articles in English devoted solely to China’s initial rejection of foreign rescue teams:
A team of British rescue specialists were rebuffed in their attempt to go to China to help hunt for earthquake survivors, a spokeswoman for the group said Sunday.
International Rescue Corps spokeswoman Julie Ryan said 10 volunteers flew to Hong Kong in the hope of joining the rescue effort. But the Chinese government denied them visas, saying it did not have the resources to manage their work.
[…]
“We have 27 years of earthquake rescue under our belt,” Ryan said. “We felt we could offer something quite unique to the Chinese government.” ….
Nick Cater’s article in 2003 convinced me enough that I didn’t really think very much more about the issue. But this earthquake in Sichuan was the first time such a catastrophe has happened in the country where I live. So it’s the first earthquake that has made me want to find out if things are true or not true.
How many people could the International Rescue Corps have saved if it had been allowed into China? The IRC’s website lists 13 earthquakes it has responded to. Unlike most search and rescue teams, it also provides mission reports for six of them. Here’s the number of people actually saved:
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(1995) Japan: 0
(1999) Turkey: 1
(2001) India: 2
(2003) Algeria: 0
(2003) Iran: 0
(2005) Pakistan: 3
It’s not so easy to find the records of other international SAR teams because most don’t make their success rate so public. Since the IRC’s best result was in Pakistan, I tried to find out how many people other foreign teams saved there. The British government says the total number was 24, in a footnote here:
UK Search and Rescue teams - 84 experts with 4 dogs – who rescued 13 of the total 24 survivors pulled from the rubble;
A dozen or so countries sent search and rescue teams to Pakistan, but virtually none of them seem to have actually found anyone. The Turkish teams saved nine. The Chinese saved three. That means the British government was wrong by at least one person. At least 25 people were saved by foreign rescue teams. I tried to find more, but I gave up.
How does that compare with the number of people saved by locals? I can’t put a figure to that. But according to the South China Morning Post (subscription) by last Wednesday, 6,375 people had been saved in China. By the time foreign teams arrived in Sichuan, there was virtually no chance of finding more than a handful of survivors. The Russians found one. If foreign teams had been allowed in sooner, they would have found more, but the number would still have been tiny.
In angry debates I’ve read in Chinese forums, people have countered this argument by saying “If you could ask the people who are buried under the rubble, what do you think they’d want?” I can’t answer that, and suddenly this whole numbers thing seems utterly heartless. A life is a life. Twenty lives are twenty lives. The three children that the International Rescue Corps saved in Pakistan are alive, not dead.
But… The International Rescue Corps says it spent 30,000 pounds sterling getting to Hong Kong. How many lives could have been saved if that money had been spent differently? I don’t know. One single building in Sichuan built to higher standards would have saved more lives than several hundred foreign search and rescue workers.
14 Comments
An even better question than how many did foreign rescue teams save is how many did they save that would not have been saved by locals? I am not taking any position regarding the use of foreign rescue teams because I have absolutely no clue regarding their utility or impact, but I do think that my question is a more precise one.
I agree with the point that foreign rescue workers who don’t speak the language could be more of a hindrance than a help. I know there is money behind every offer of help, money to hire translators and support staff. As a foreign team goes in to a new area, the host government can provide the support assistance needed (paid for by the foreign service).
The fear as I understand it after reading the various Chinese blogs permitted by the government during and after the earthquake was that foreign workers (and their government backers) would try to steal state secrets, spy or do damage to the state itself. Anyone who had followed the work of foreign assistance organizations like “Doctors Without Borders”, knows that is an absurd and ridiculous worry. These foreign organizations’ only goal is to help people. To help people, not to spy on the government. Not to steal state secrets. Not to take over the country!
What most people in China may not realize is the American people (and many other peoples from other nations) feel a strong connection to the Chinese people (not the Chinese Government). America is a country of immigrants, and during the 1800’s, the Chinese immigrants that came to America in droves, and brought their families, their culture, their language, their food became an important part of the American culture. These people, along with Italian immigrants, Polish immigrants, Irish immigrants, built our cities, our railroads, our power plants and our irrigation systems. They are as integral a part of America as I am (a grandson of an Irish immigrant), or my neighbor (a son of a Lebanese immigrant). The Chinese people are thought of with the same awe and respect that we give to any of our founding fathers and grandfathers.
So when something horrible like the earthquake happens in the Chinese home-land, we feel sadness and pain for these people as we do for our own families. We only want to help. But we want to help the PEOPLE of China. To help people, not to spy on the government. Not to steal state secrets. Not to take over the country!
I hope one day the people of China will see that Americans are their friends.
Adam
Rescue groups from Japan, Russia, South Korea and Singapore were participated in the rescue and recovery work. Unlike the UK team, these teams were professional and very self sustaining. The Singapore team brought their own vehicles, medical and food supplies. All the teams (except the Russians) had their own translators.
The Chinese are a logical and practical people and they allowed these teams in not just because of the number of people that could have been rescued. But to show that China was willing to accept outside professional help.
The Chinese are similar to the Americans, they accept that the American people are friends but the American government is not necessarily a friendly one.
“But… The International Rescue Corps says it spent 30,000 pounds sterling getting to Hong Kong. How many lives could have been saved if that money had been spent differently? I don’t know. One single building in Sichuan built to higher standards would have saved more lives than several hundred foreign search and rescue workers.”
well that makes a whole load of sense. Instead of spending 30K to try and help out in some way, the IRC should have invented a time machine, gone back to 2001 and invested that money in building schools that can stand up to an earthquake. what an idiot.
Thank you mike for changing your pseudonym. As for the time machine, that is clearly not what I was trying to say. My point is that jetting around the world for a dramatic search and rescue that will probably rescue no one is not really very useful to anyone. It gets media coverage, but it’s irrelevant to the real rescue and relief operations which are carried out by local people. Help is certainly welcome. There are better ways to offer that help.
Sorry ‘tonytigerballs’ (Mike?). I think you have misunderstood the point Rob was making. He was simply suggesting that GBP30,000 was a lot of money to spend in order to send an apparently ineffectual rescue team to Hong Kong without even securing Chinese mainland visas. If the statistics in Rob’s article are accurate then it may be true to say that money donated to such rescue organisations could be better spent. He’s making constructive criticism not idiotic comments. These rescue groups should be held accountable for the money donated to them. Perhaps the six UK groups mentioned could combine their efforts. However it would be interesting to review there success in different disaster situations before making any more judgments.
Let’s also not forget that the American Government refused foreign rescue teams after Katrina, and in some cases foreign groups that wanted to help risked arrest if they came anyway.
Those who assume that all foreign rescue volunteers are qualified and pure of motive should be realistic. Not everyone who volunteers to help is necessarily motivated by pure altruism or qualified to take effective action.
For example, this article about the tsunami in Thailand points out how aid workers can “add to disasters” by carrying out questionable religious-related activities (such as the Scientologists) or incompetent vaccinations:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/credib/2005/1005tsunami.htm
This piece by investigative journalist John Pilger takes an more cynical look at the motivations and impact of foreign aid in Cambodia:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Pilger0526.htm
“‘Join the aid community. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And make a killing.’”
Roughly half of all aid to Cambodia is spent on “technical assistance”, or TA. Between 1999 and 2003, this amounted to 1.2bn dollars. What is TA? It is an invasion of “international advisors” on whom up to 70m dollars was spent in 2003 alone. Add to them “international consultants”, who each cost more than 159,000 dollars. By contrast, the cost of a genuine foreign aid worker in a truly independent NGO is less than 45,000 dollars, and the cost of recruiting a Cambodian expert is an eighth of this.
More than 740 foreigner advisers and experts earn nearly as much as 160,000 Cambodian civil servants, who get as little as 25 dollars a month. In many ministries, the pay of foreign advisers exceeds the entire annual budget. It is more than twice the budget of the agricultural ministry and four times that of the justice ministry.
Foreign aid workers constantly complain about local corruption, often justifiably. But they rarely identify and measure their own legitimized corruption. “There has been no systematic analysis of the effectiveness of TA in Cambodia,” says ActionAid. “Government of Cambodia officials [have] suggested that this is because donors don’t want to recognize the ineffectiveness of their aid.”
This is not to take anything away from genuinely qualified and effective groups such as Doctors Without Borders. It’s just that people should not immediately assume that foreign aid workers will be the most appropriate solution in all cases.
Adam Sweet expresses his heartfelt and no doubt genuine sentiment; sadly however, this sentiment and good will is not shared by all and does not always translate into effective action.
Clearly there needs to be some kind of vetting process to make sure that the volunteer rescue teams are competent, qualified and adequately equipped. It would be irresponsible of the authorities to allow in volunteers who may become a danger to themselves and others.
First do no harm.
Hi ! I’m a reporter from a newspaper, Correio Braziliense, from Brazil. I’m doing a history about blogs around the world from all kind of places, especially about young people who tell how the situatinos is in their cities, neighborhood and countries. I would love to talk to you for an interview via e-mail or phone, whaterver you like best.
Well, thank you very much! Hope to hear from you soon!
Tatiana Sabadini
www.correiobraziliense.com.br
When assessing the performance of rescue teams, perhaps we should also take into account other crucial factors like the date they flew in , the time they stayed there and other limitations.
siegfried - far too sensible a suggestion. as is assessing what kind of assistance/training/equipment they gave the local rescue crews.
what we should do is rely on cold hard data and snipe from the sidelines in a bid to prove how us foreigners who are embedded in China are so much more knowledgeable about pretty much anything China related than those on the outside. I mean, what do international rescue groups really know about international rescue? How many of them can even read Chinese? How many of these so-called ‘experts’ have ever polished the news at CCTV9?
fucking charlatans.
I’m sure the person who died under the rubble after holding on for 3 days is glad to know you pointy heads are debating whether having trained, equiped, and experienced professionals on the seen quickly would have made a difference or not.
I’d rather listen to opinion of an uneducated but experienced fireman than listen to a bunch of dweebs talk about a subject for their master’s thesis that no one will ever read.
Overall, more teams should equal more lives saved. There is a problem with rescue teams setting off without having things set for them to arrive. It is a balance between being practical and being ready to help as soon as possible, as in the UK team. In a disaster most people expect a government to welcome you in to help but as we have seen paranoid governments don’t think that way. It is a judgment call by the groups and when your purpose is hands on rescue, thinking about sending the money to another organization is not your first thought and possibly not allowed.
The other problem is people using it for their own gain and all you can do is only let a few large, well known organizations in, let no one in or let everyone in and kick out the bad ones (or put them on trial) when you catch them. There is no regulation committee for this, so all you can really do is point out the bad ones to the world.
The USA and Katrina was an example of ego gone wrong and the problem with President Bush, but a different issue from China and Burma.
Hello,
I’m a journalism student doing masters at Bournemouth University UK. I chose my project topic as search and rescue dog teams and its funding. Can we make an interview if I send some questions by email? I really need some comments about how efficient these dog teams in abroad and the strict British rule of quarantine time of six months.
I would be appreciated if you can ever help me.
Thank you very much in advance
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