Notes from a trip to the earthquake zone

The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck at 3:30 A.M on February 27 of this year was the fifth largest in recorded history. For the survivors in the Chilean coastal city of Constitución the shaking was only Act I in a drama that was repeated in other towns along the coast. The two minutes of shaking by the earthquake was followed in twenty minutes by a tsunami that inundated and destroyed the low-lying portions of the city on the water’s edge.


During a visit that I made to the city in July I got a chance to talk to some of the survivors. I was in Chile on a visit organized by the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the American Red Cross. The eighteen members of the group included not only members of the LA Chapter, but state officials from California’s emergency management agency, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, a civil engineering professor from the University of Colorado, a physician, and me, a state emergency manager from Florida.


On the afternoon of the second day of our tour of the earthquake affected region, we departed the city of Talca, the capital of the Maule region of Chile, for the city of Constitución. The city lay at the juncture of the Maule River and the ocean, gradually occupying and then filling the valley as we descended from the mountains. When we arrived at the river’s edge in the center of town we were presented with a view of the Pacific. Dusk was approaching and the spectacle of hundreds of sea gulls circling to our front diverted us from the panorama of an orange band that separated the horizon from the low hanging clouds.


As our vehicle crept forward, I saw an island in the river to our right, and eventually the reason for the interest of the birds. The Constitución fishing fleet was unloading their catch; orange, blue and white plastic tubs filled with strips of silver. Young men muscled the tubs from the boats and stacked them by the street to be loaded on waiting trucks. The fishermen wore slickers and had dark, sunburned faces. They stood on their boats and stowed their nets with practiced hands, repeating the motions of centuries.

The thought came to my mind: what a hard job.


Beyond the fishermen was the island, and I tried to imagine that awful morning. On the day of the earthquake the city had planned a traditional annual festival. In order to get a good view of the festivities and the fireworks, local inhabitants and visitors from out of town camped on the island that divided the river as it passed into the sea. When the terrible shaking had ended, three fishermen were able to use their boats to begin evacuating the island. They knew what was coming, and what would happen if those people could not be taken off. They carried away forty-five, and then went back for more. When the tsunami hit two of the fishermen were killed. Later, when they searched the island, dead children were found hanging in the trees.


The tragedy of the deaths is great, but what is surprising is that more didn’t die. Of the five hundred and seventy six deaths from the Feb 27 earthquake, approximately half were from the tsunami. The 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti the prior month was several orders of magnitude less severe, yet the death toll was in the hundreds of thousands. Haiti is not like Chile, as anyone with a cursory knowledge of the two countries could tell. Yet Chile clearly handled the response to the earthquake very well, despite the size and severity of the event. Why did they do so well? That question was the reason for our visit.



The big measure of the quality of the Chilean response was that the coverage of the disaster dropped off CNN after a few days. As every emergency manager knows, if Anderson Cooper is still camped with his TV cameras in the middle of your response after two weeks, then you must have done something wrong.



We are writing a report of our findings and look to have the first draft completed by the end of this month. When the report is completed I will share it with you. I will be making presentations on what we learned at every opportinity in the upcoming months.

On our way to Constitución we stopped by a temporary village, or Aldea, that the government had constructed for those left homeless by the tsunami or earthquake. Two women inhabitants approached us, drawn by the strangers and not afraid to talk about their plight. The Aldea, constructed on the empty land of a nearby sawmill, consisted of small wooden structures, called mediasaguas. Communal bathrooms and showers served for sanitation. Utility poles were installed in May and brought electricity to the dwellings. Although protected from the rain, the poorly insulated houses could not keep out the cold.

We asked if we could see inside one of the mediasagus, and after a moment’s hesitation, the women to the left in the above photo said yes. She led us down a muddy street, where a trio of girls made mud pies with toy dishes. Inside the home a man, probably her husband, crouched over a tub of dishes in the middle of the floor. He stood to greet us with dripping fingers. The home was clean and neat, but the man’s eyes clearly conveyed the daily struggles of their existence.

As we said good-bye to the people in the Aldea, the woman who had shown us her home embraced the women in our group and, in the custom of her country, exchanged kisses on the cheek with the men. We were leaving to continue our journey into the earthquake zone and eventually return home to our families and homes. She was left to continue her life of cold, wet and mud in a small wooden shack to which the earthquake had condemned her.



“No nos olvide,” she called out to us as we climbed into our vehicles. “Don’t forget us.”



Her plea broke my heart; the first, but not the last time this was to occur while I was in Chile. No, I won’t forget her. Hopefully, you won’t either.

The Chilean earthquake of February 27

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that affected Chile on February 27th of this year was in the top ten in recorded history, affected 80% of the country's population, and caused $30 billion in estimated damages, a sum equaling 18% of the country's Gross Domestic Product. Considering the immensity and size of the quake, the death toll of 576 (nearly half of which came from the impact of a tsunami on the coast) is remarkable. Why were the number of deaths so low?

I am here in Santiago with a team assembled by the American Red Cross to find out why. The team of 18 includes a civil engineering instructor from the University of Colorado, a scientist from the U.S. Geological Survey, a trauma surgeon, as well as public health and mass care specialists from the Red Cross and the states of California and Florida. The government of Chile and the Chilean Red Cross have made available to us in the last two days key individuals who have provided us with a wealth of information. This information is being captured by the team and will be included in our final written report.

At the end of each day we meet to go over what we have we have heard and attempt to digest what we have learned. A word that I have seen in many emergency management articles in the last six months is "resiliance" and this word has come up in our discussions about Chile. The people and country of Chile appear to have developed a culture of resiliance. How did they do it, and what can we learn in order to transfer this culture to our own country?

The largest quake in recorded history was a 9.2 magnitude that ocurred in 1960, off the southern coast of Chile. The quake affected a part of the country that was less densely populated, but did result in a change to the building codes. Another quake in 1985 resulted in a further strenthening of their building codes. Consequently, only two large buildings collapsed during the 2010 quake. Over 300,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed in the recent quake, but they were all older, smaller buildings made of adobe.

The coastal inhabitants of Chile are primarily involved in the country's large fishing industry, and they grew up listening to stories about the 1960 quake from their parents and grandparents. The warning they heard was, "If the ground shakes so much that you cannot walk, then when the shaking stops you must run to high ground. Don't wait for a warning from the government. Run." And run they did. Most of the tsunami deaths were from tourists visiting the coast who failed to follow the locals as they moved to high ground. This is what we mean by a culture of resilience. 

We have heard what the people in the capital have had to say about the government's response to this catastrophe. Tomorrow we drive into the earthquake zone to talk to the people who had to experience it on the ground. We are interested in hearing what they have to say. 

My trip to Chile with the Red Cross

I was invited to participate by the American Red Cross as a mass care subject matter expert on a team of 18 persons on a trip to Chile. The purpose of the trip is to gather some of the hard lessons learned by the Chileans as a result of the terrible earthquake they suffered in February of this year. We depart on this Red Cross sponsored trip this Sunday, July 18 and will return to the United States on July 28th.


Although I am taking leave from my job to make this trip, my emergency management responsibilities required that I request and receive permission to leave the country during hurricane season. My condition for participation to the Red Cross was that I be allowed to scurry home if a big storm threatens Florida.


I have known about the possibility of this trip since May, but was afraid to talk about it (or even think about it) until the last few days, when it looked like the Storm Gods were going to smile on me for at least the next 7 days. But now that it looks like I am going to be able to go, I am excited and see this as a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.


My lifelong urge for once-in-a-lifetime adventures was dramatically diminished after Iraq, but it it has been six years since my return from the Middle East, and I feel ready for another adventure, even if it is only of the small, ten-day variety.


I have seen the tentative itinerary, and after some initial meetings in Santiago, the capital, we travel south by vehicle into the earthquake zone. I have studied the local newspapers on the Internet, and the stories I read have confirmed that the country is still suffering through numerous, complex problems caused by the event. Yet, since these problems are no longer reported by CNN or Fox News or the New York Times, the people of the United States know nothing about them.


But I will.


I have been to every country in Latin American except Cuba and El Salvador (I have been to Chile twice). I speak fluent Spanish. But this trip will be different. Traveling outside the capital by vehicle, and getting to see and talk to emergency managers and survivors of one of the largest earthquakes in recent history, will be educational and enlightening.


There are real emergency management lessons to be learned there in Chile, lessons that we can bring back home for use in California, and even in Florida. I am going to do my best to find them.

Increasing national mass care capacity

I have been on the road the last two weeks advancing the cause of national mass care capacity, courtesy of FEMA funding and the knowledge that Florida will need to draw on this national capacity should a catastrophic event strike the state. In my humble opinion our national mass care capacity has been hindered by two significant shortfalls: a lack of mass care coordination capability at the state level and a lack of integration of mass care voluntary agencies into emergency management at all levels of government.

Providing shelter and food to survivors is the primary role of mass care in a disaster. The capacity to deliver this mass care role has traditionally been provided by the large voluntary organizations like the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the Southern Baptist Convention. These agencies have national organizations, mobile equipment, legions of trained volunteers, and full-time staff with the expertise to marshall these resources at a disaster location in order to feed and shelter the survivors.

These organizations respond to hundreds of incidents requiring mass care support every day. My very own Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross in Tallahassee responded yesterday to a multi-unit apartment fire, and was on hand with an Emergency Response Vehicle to assist both the firefighters and affected occupants of the buildings. I donate monthly to my local Red Cross Chapter, as do many others, so that this capability will be there when needed. 

When the disaster is greater than the local capacities of the voluntary organizations, then they call on their national organizations, bringing in personnel, equipment and organizational expertise gained from multiple responses across the country. But what happens when the disaster is catastrophic, when the mass care capacity required for the event exceeds the available national resources of the voluntary agencies?

This is where the overall lack of state mass care capacity comes in.  If the event exceeds the capabilities of the voluntary agencies  then the affected state must either provide resources to address the shortages, or request additional resources from the federal government through FEMA, or both. Unfortunately, because catastrophic events are so rare, most states not only have no one trained to perform this critical function, they have no one identified to perform this critical coordination role in a disaster.

Due to fate and circumstances, I received considerable experience in the role of state mass care coordination when I was involved in the response to eight hurricanes during 2004 and 2005. FEMA provided me the opportunity to assist in the development of a state mass care planning course, and then serve as one of the instructors for the pilot course June 8-9 in Lake Mary, Florida. State mass care planners from 11 states in 4 FEMA Regions were on hand for the pilot, and I think FEMA did more to enhance state mass care capacity in those two days than they have done in the last year.

Now that we have completed and tested a two day planning course, we will develop a two day state mass care operations course. If we don't get too tied up with hurricanes between now and the end of the year, we should have the operations course ready to pilot by the beginning of next year.

As for the lack of integration of mass care voluntary agencies into emergency management at all levels of government, we am working on that, too. I will explain what we are doing in a later post.

"Senator's Son" by Luke Larson: a novel of the Iraq war

During the ten months that I spent in Iraq I kept telling myself that I would write a novel based on my experiences. Beginning in the summer of 2004, after I returned from the war zone, I began working on a manuscript and am still slaving away on my third (or is it fourth?) draft. Despite the handicap of being a Marine (or maybe because of it), Luke Larson has written a true "insider novel" documenting a key turning point in the Iraq war: the Awakening of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province.


Bing West, in his outstanding book on the "surge," the Awakening and General Petraeus, entitled "The Strongest Tribe", outlined the big picture on the important and critical change in strategy implemented by the United States in Iraq in 2006-2007. As a Marine infantry officer on the ground in Ramadi, Iraq during this period, Luke Larson experienced first-hand the problems of the previous strategy and the remarkable results that became manifest when the strategy changed. Luke did a skillful job in his novel of explaining why the strategy was changed and why the new strategy was successful.


Larsen is much more proficient in infantry tactics and counterinsurgency warfare than he is in the craft of writing a novel, although the literary deficiencies are a distraction rather than an obstacle to the reader's ability to absorb and understand the many important messages that the author conveys.



In 2008 I wrote 3 posts on writing a war novel (see On Writing a War Novel, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). One of the big problems with writing a novel showing "how it really was over there" is that the military is a subculture of the larger society. The Army (and to a much greater extent, the Marines) is a subculture of the military, and the servicemen and women serving in Iraq occupied another subculture of their own branch of the military. Each subculture has different acronyms, folkways and mores. To translate this reality so that the average reader would understand is like translating from one language to another. In the process, a lot is lost.

Luke endeavors mightily to overcome this issue, and mostly succeeds, although I am a poor one to judge in this area. My service in the Army and in Iraq gave me a greater depth and breadth of understanding of what the Marines in Luke's novel faced. I have actually been to Ramadi, but I wasn't kicking down any doors while I was there, either. Thankfully, I never faced the intense combat described in "Senator's Son."

A good indicator of some one's combat experience can be determined by asking them how often they were scared. This is an inexact science, since many people have different definitions of the word "scared." The Army asked me this question in a survey while I was out processing in Kuwait prior to coming home. I answered bravely that I had not been afraid when I was in Iraq, but I think I may have lied. I believe that Luke Larson was scared many times when he was in Iraq. The Marines that he so winningly brings to life in his novel spend a lot of time being scared, whether they admit it to themselves or their buddies, or whether they continue on feeling that they must be brave.

This book is about what it was like to be in Iraq during the toughest days, in one of the toughest neighborhoods. But it's hard for me to tell how real it is. I wasn't there.

Blaming Iraqis for what Bush has done

While reading the voluminous comments to a NYT article on the Iraqi election I noticed that many of our citizens continue to spew vitriol and hatred toward President Bush, even though he has passed from the world stage. One wonders if they will carry such grudges with them for the rest of their life. As for myself, I have mostly forgiven or forgotten Bill Clinton's many transgressions. At least with Slick Willie, unlike Tricky Dick, there was the relief and satisfaction of an impeachment.


Unfortunately, the unrepentant Bush-haters associate Iraq with their grievances, and must by their arguments inflict collateral damage on the poor, long-suffering Iraqi populace. Iraq and Iraqis are associated with their list of Bush "crimes", and must receive some of the blame. The situation is somewhat similar to the actions of the anti-Viet Nam war crowd in the sixties and seventies. In their righteous fury over the war they released their anger on the nearest object available, spewing profanity and saliva in greeting to hapless, battle-scarred nineteen-year-old Viet Nam veterans as they debarked back home from the jungle. Although I did not fight in that war, I will carry an unforgiven and unforgotten grudge against those righteous ones for the rest of my life. Fortunately, the returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have not been subjected to similar offenses.


The fact that Iraqi success with democracy would vindicate (even if only in a small way) Bush causes his detractors to denigrate any signs of Iraqi progress. Personally, I believe that a successful, democratic Iraq would vindicate Bush in a big way. From my experience living in Iraq and the considerable study I have undertaken in the years since then, I believe that the Iraqis will be successful. The benefits of unity that strain to hold the many factions together in one country are greater than the centrifugal forces of dissolution. The constant and common interaction of the Iraqis with the numerous Iranian pilgrims has thoroughly indoctrinated them on the perils of rule by the mullahs.


Finally, and most importantly, I learned through my own observation that the Iraqis are intelligent, religious and hard-working, qualities that can take them a long way in overcoming their present and past difficulties. I heard an Iraqi sheik say that his people had been traumatized by Saddam for thirty years, and we Americans should make allowances for that. Many of their current problems are manifestations of that trauma.


Their elections and political interactions may not meet our elevated standards, but they are at least as good or better than the elections we conducted in Chicago in the 1930's. And if you still insist on hating Bush, that is your right to continue to waste your time in that manner. Just don't blame the Iraqis for what Bush has done.