In case of a natural disaster or national calamity, dial 9-1-1


By Dr. Keith Martin MD, Montreal Gazette - March 22, 2010

Last week Haitian President René Préval called on U.S. President Barack Obama to endorse the creation of a "red-helmet brigade" that can respond rapidly to natural disasters.

The impetus for this is that for several days after the earthquake that devastated Haiti on Jan. 12, little aid reached Préval's beleaguered people. Access to crucial medical care, food, and water was scant. Beyond what people were doing with shovels and their bare hands, efforts to rescue those trapped in the rubble were largely non-existent. Haitians, starving and dehydrated, were dying by the thousands.

All this occurred despite the fact that large quantities of donated emergency supplies were sitting on the tarmac of the country's main airport in Port-au-Prince.

Tragically, this scene of weak logistics in the face of devastation and massive need has been played out time and time again.

When calamity strikes, the international response can vary. The response to Haiti was large and quick. The response to earthquakes in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years was paltry and slow. However, all shared one disturbing feature: The co-ordination and distribution of emergency assistance proved laboured and chaotic. We always begin at Square One to identify, acquire, and deploy assets.

In responding to a disaster, time is not your friend. If a person does not receive water within six days (less if they are injured) they will die. Without simple cleaning agents and antibiotics, ordinary infections can spread rapidly, resulting in amputations and deaths that could have been prevented.

So what can be done to rectify this problem? We can take some lessons from what we do on a much smaller scale when responding to emergencies in our own communities. In North America, communities have a 24-hour, 9-1-1 command-and-control system that connects the required people and assets. If we used this model, expanded to a significantly larger scale, the world could have a robust, coordinated and effective emergency-response mechanism.

Such an international 9-1-1 system should have a command-and-control centre under the auspices of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which has the mandate to respond to natural disasters. The centre could develop a database that would pre-identify the assets needed in an emergency: heavy lift, emergency response personnel, water-purification equipment, non-perishable foods, extraction machinery, temporary shelter, field hospitals, medical teams, rescue dogs, and so on. This database should have information about the emergency-response capabilities of governments and of non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross and Médecins sans frontières.

Some emergency assets should also be pre-deployed to three regions that are frequently affected by natural disasters: Central America, Asia Minor, and Southeast Asia. The Red Cross now does some pre-deployment, which makes it easier for them to quickly send life-saving supplies to where they are needed.

Canada and the United States should lead a multinational effort to create this rapid-response system. There is certainly a compelling - and perhaps selfish - reason why we should do this. There is a 100-per-cent certainty that, as the Pacific and North American tectonic plates grind against each other, a catastrophic earthquake will hit the west coast of North America some day. This disaster, like others before it, and others to come, will need a massive, rapid, and co-ordinated response from the international community.

Humanitarian agencies and nations cannot deal with these calamities alone. An effective response demands a co-ordinated multilateral and multinational effort.

When disaster strikes, a worldwide 9-1-1 system would save lives and reduce harm. As Haiti and Chile are showing us once again, we simply cannot continue to plod, struggle, and stumble in the face of nature's wrath.