H5N1

Saunders: Lessons in giving from the wave that took all

Doug Saunders of The Globe and Mail has some wise advice: Lessons in giving from the wave that took all. Excerpt from his experience in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami:

Not only was it one of the worst natural disasters in history, killing at least 230,000 people in a matter of hours and leaving millions homeless in a dozen countries, it also spurred the largest worldwide charitable, humanitarian and aid-agency response. History’s first Internet-driven, crowd-sourced disaster charity effort generated $5.4-billion in private donations on top of $8.4-billion in government spending. 

It also provided an advanced course in helping damaged people back on their feet. Here, a decade later, are that catastrophe’s lessons in how to be charitable, and how not to be: 

Helping can hurt. 

It was three days before any aid arrived in this region – and the first aid trucks to reach this largely Muslim fishing village were from the Church of Scientology. Their assistance came with copies of Dianetics and overt conversion efforts, which were met with vacant stares. Christian and Muslim agencies were far more ethical and didn’t proselytize, but still sent the wrong message. Your religion probably preaches giving (most do), but getting your faith mixed up with your charity can cause people to lose hope. 

Good intentions are a bad idea. 

Within weeks, there were about 200 organizations operating in and around the village. Most were tiny. Some were devoted to single causes: water wells, sports training or marriage counselling. Some were vanity projects of celebrities. Even worse were the vanity projects of business people, who thought their product would be just the right thing. In the end, only the big United Nations bodies – Unicef and the High Commission for Refugees – and the Red Cross possessed the scale and organizational talent to help communities rebuild, and to keep the small groups out of everyone’s hair. Small charities may sound charming, but it’s better to give big. 

Don’t go there. 

One of the most extraordinary sights in the cities of Colombo and Jaffna were dozens of hotels entirely filled with doctors who’d arrived from North America and Japan, hoping to lend a hand. They weren’t needed. Even the tiniest villages each had three or four foreign medical teams, treating people who were largely healthy. (Decomposing human corpses do not cause disease outbreaks.) Never have very poor communities been so well treated for venereal disease and hernias. What was needed were framing crews, diesel mechanics and electrical technicians; the agencies scrambled to hire these locally. The doctors had simply assumed they would be needed, which was heartwarming – but they should have asked. 

Don’t send stuff. 

Most very poor people make their livings growing and selling food or fish or selling cheap goods to one another. A flood of free food, which was quick to arrive, was necessary at first, but it soon hurt the recovery: It’s hard for a poor rice farmer to compete with free dinners. Sending a planeload of toys, shoes or used clothing probably sounded like a good idea to people who’d seen a lot of forlorn kids playing in dust patches on television. Bringing these things to a faraway country and overseeing their distribution cost a fortune and tied up hundreds of people who could have been doing actual good (or buying those things from locals who needed the business). 

Such tomfool behaviour only worsened Haiti's earthquake and cholera disasters; too many North Americans just wanted to make themselves feel good about Those Poor Haitians. They did indeed make themselves feel better, but the Haitians continue to live in tents and catch cholera while going broke growing rice that can't compete with subsidized American rice.

Boxing Day tsunami: Ten years on, the scars are not hard to find in Aceh

I still recall seeing online photos of the effects of the tsunami when it was still Christmas night here in Vancouver. That taught me what a small, interconnected world this has become. Via The Guardian: Boxing Day tsunami: 10 years on, the scars are not hard to find in Aceh. Excerpt:

In the afternoons, after days of heavy rain, the boys in the village clamber up the wall of the shed, letting out screams of elation as they jump into the swollen river in their underwear. Clamber, jump, swim – repeat. By the riverbank their mothers slap soapy clothes on a concrete slab while their sisters catch fish in clear plastic cups, holding them up for communal inspection when they manage to scoop one up. 

For most of the children, life in the Indonesian village of Nusa has always been like this. They are too young to remember the day that people were swimming for their lives – not just for fun – after school. The devastating tsunami, sparked by a 9.1-magnitude undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean, smashed down on 14 countries on Boxing Day 2004 and hit the Indonesian province of Aceh the hardest. 

Along the coast, entire villages were instantly flattened as the tsunami, which in parts reached as high as 30 metres, rolled through. The disaster claimed the lives of a total of 286,000 people, including 221,000 killed or missing in Aceh alone. 

Residents in Nusa remember that Sunday morning when a panicked bule, or foreigner, called David screeched into the village in his four-wheel-drive car with his Acehnese wife and children. From the nearby coastal village of Lhoknga, where he lived, the Australian man had noticed the ocean rapidly retreating. As the water was sucked out some villagers ran to collect the beached fish, but David sensed there was going to be trouble. 

“You have to run to higher ground now,” he yelled from the car as he passed Nusa’s residents on the road. “A huge wave is coming.” 

In a tight-knit village the screams travelled fast. Nelly Nurila was baking in her kitchen when she heard the commotion. She rushed outside and followed others up the dirt path to the hilly jungle behind the village. 

Her husband, Mukhlis, sprinted a few doors down to get his grandmother, escaping toward the hills with her in his arms. As the mass of black water hit they gripped the nearest tree as the water and debris pounded over them. 

Only Mukhlis was strong enough to hold on. The spot where the Nusa boys now swim is where his grandmother was washed away.

Japan: Earthquake hits Fukushima

Via NHK World: Quake hits Fukushima.

An earthquake struck Fukushima and other northeastern Japanese prefectures early Saturday morning. 

The quake occurred at about 4:22 AM Japan time. 

The Meteorological Agency says the focus is 10 kilometers beneath the Pacific Ocean off Fukushima Prefecture. The magnitude was estimated at 6.8. The jolt measured 4 on Japan's seismic intensity scale of zero to 7. 

The agency issued a tsunami advisory for Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. The agency observed a 20 centimeter high tsunami at 5:12 AM in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture. 

Tokyo Electric Power Company says there are no reports of irregularities at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant that was crippled by a major earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Some cheerful Sunday thoughts about fire, flood, pestilence and famine

I hope that regular visitors to this site have not been put off by my sudden interest in the Valparaíso fire, and that new visitors, seeking fire news, have not been baffled by reports of MERS in Yemen or H5N1 in Japan. The longer I work on this blog, the more clearly I see how all these seemingly unrelated disasters actually fit together.

When the Chile story broke last night (hat-tip to Maryn McKenna for retweeting a startling photo of the fire), it quickly became the kind of disaster that draws a lot of traffic, like the Haiyan/Yolanda typhoon last year or the Ebola outbreak in recent weeks. That in itself fascinates me, because a kind of online community forms with astonishing speed. Flublogia seems to be part of the world's new electronic immune system, setting off alarms and making the planetary organism more aware of the threat. In this case, hashtags like #AyudaValpo appeared as channels for information and help. 

Those channels may dry up with the passage of time, but Flublogia knows they're there, and Valparaíso knows Flublogia is here. When the next disaster arrives, its flash-flood of information will have those channels to move through. Similarly, we won't be quite as ignorant when the next outbreak hits West Africa, and our familiarity with the region may help to hasten aid and strengthen support.

Apart from the shock and alarm of a given disaster or outbreak, I increasingly see such stories as just another aspect of a larger story: the environmental, climatic and epidemiological impact that we are making on the planet and its organisms.

Just this morning the IPCC released a new report advising us on what we can do to keep the global temperature to a rise of 2 degrees. It should come as no surprise to Chileans, who have been struggling with drought both in their far north and in Valparaíso. It is no surprise to those living in Africa just south of the Sahara, where horrendous low-scale warfare seems like a preview of a post-apocalyptic future: armed groups slaughtering one another to scavenge the scraps from dead or dying countries. Whether by driving herders and farmers into stinking refugee camps or by driving bats out of clear-cut forests, the struggle for survival becomes ironically suicidal.

So having started nine years ago with a focus on one very obscure strain of flu virus, I increasingly see such viruses as just part of an enormous picture. Trying to encompass the whole picture of fire, flood, pestilence and famine is far beyond the capacities of one retired college teacher in a Vancouver suburb, but as part of a growing Flublogia I'm happy to do my part.

Chile: New earthquake forces new evacuation in Iquique

Via Nación.cl: Un nuevo sismo obliga a otra evacuación en Iquique. [New earthquake forces another evacuation of Iquique.] The report so far, with my translation:

Un fuerte sismo sacudió la noche de este miércoles la región de Tarapacá, siendo situado por el servicio geológico de Estados Unidos en 7,8 grados en la escala de Richter, aunque el Servicio Sismológico de la Universidad de Chile lo midió como 7,6 en forma preliminar. 

A strong earthquake shook the region of Tarapacá Wednesday night, estimated by the US Geological Service at 7.8 magnitude, though the University of Chile Seismological Service gave it a preliminary magnitude of 7.6.

Patrullas de Carabineros están coordinando a los habitantes de la zona baja de Iquique que tiene que evacuarla y acudir a las áreas altas de la capital regional. 

Carabinero patrols are telling the residents in the low-lying region Iquique they must evacuate and head for higher ground in the regional capital.

Se trata de una evacuación preventiva motivada por el sismo de 7,4 que a su vez prosiguió a otro movimiento telúrico.

This is a preventive evacuation motivated by the 7.4 quake that may trigger another seismic movement.

El SHOA indica estado de precaución por tsunami menor para las regiones de Arica-Parinacota, Tarapacá y Antofagasta.

SHOA has announced a state of minor tsunami precaution for the regions of Arica-Parinacota, Tarapacá, and Antofagasta.

Chile: New earthquake in the north; preventive evacuation ordered

Via BiobioChile.cl, a developing story: Nuevo terremoto se registra en el norte de país y llaman a la evacuación preventiva. [New earthquake recorded in north; preventive evacuation ordered] The report, with my translation:

La noche de este miércoles, un nuevo terremoto se registró en el norte del país, afectando a las regiones de Arica, Tarapacá y Antofagasta. 

A new earthquake was recorded this Wednesday night in the north of the country, affecting the regions of Arica, Tarapacá, and Antofagasta.

Según la información preliminar se habla de un sismo de 7.4 grados al suroeste de Iquique, mientras que usuarios aseguran que es de similares características al de la noche del martes. 

Preliminary information describes a quake of 7.4 magnitude southeast of Iquique, and experts say it has similar characteristics to the quake of Tuesday night. 

Segundos después del sismo, las alarmas de evacuación se activaron de forma inmediata para dichas regiones, debido a la posibilidad de un tsunami menor.

Seconds after the quake, evacuation alarms were activated at once for the affected regions, owing to the possibility of a minor tsunami.

Chile assesses damage after massive quake, tsunami

Via Reuters: Chile assesses damage after massive quake, tsunami. Click through for several videos. Excerpt:

Chilean authorities on Wednesday were assessing the damage from a massive earthquake that struck off the northern coast, causing a small tsunami, but the impact was mostly limited, according to early indications. 

Thousands of people who evacuated the country's low-lying coastal areas returned home on Wednesday morning after authorities called off a tsunami alarm. 

The 8.2 magnitude quake that shook northern Chile on Tuesday killed six people and triggered a tsunami that pounded the shore with 2-meter (7-foot) waves. 

Authorities evaluated the damage on Wednesday as the ocean waves receded and daylight showed the full extent of the outcome. 

Mines in Chile, the world's No. 1 copper producer, mostly said they were functioning normally, and oil refineries reported normal operations. 

The arid, mineral-rich north is sparsely populated, with most of the population concentrated in the port towns of Iquique and Arica, near the Peruvian border. 

In Peru, the earthquake led to temporary power outages and evacuations in some southern towns, but did not cause serious damage or injuries.  

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet visited the affected area on Wednesday. She declared a disaster zone, promising troops and police reinforcements to maintain order while damage was repaired after landslides blocked a number of roads. 

Local television showed smaller fishing vessels badly damaged and overturned in Iquique. Although the tsunami alert was called off, the navy warned that high waves and strong currents could continue, and ports in the area remained closed. 

Several smaller aftershocks, some as big as 5.2 magnitude, were registered over Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, according to Chile's emergency office. 

Over 900,000 people were evacuated from the coastline along Chile on Tuesday, according to the government's emergency office, in a move that local media reported took place in a largely orderly fashion. 

Thousands of miles away in Hawaii, residents were warned by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of possible sea level changes and strong currents that could pose a danger to swimmers and boaters. 

It was too early to estimate financial losses, but they were expected to be much lower than the $30 billion from the devastating 8.8 magnitude quake in 2010, which affected the more densely populated central region, said earthquake expert Alexander Allmann at reinsurer Munich Re.

Chile: The quake in The New York Times

Via The New York Times: Earthquake Hits Off Coast of North Chile. Excerpt:

An 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern Chile on Tuesday night, forcing a massive evacuation along the country’s long coastline. At least five people were reported to have died. 

The first waves of a tsunami hit several cities along the coast, which extends 2,653 miles. 

The epicenter of the earthquake was in waters 53 miles southwest of Cuya, a small town in Arica Province near the border with Peru. The deaths — four men and one woman, all in the city of Iquique — were the result of heart attacks or crushing, Interior Minister Rodrigo Peñailillo said. 

At least three people in Iquique, which has a population of about 182,000, were also reported injured.  

The national emergency service ordered the immediate evacuation of all coastal areas throughout the country, including Easter Island and the archipelago of Juan Fernández. 

More waves were expected throughout the night, with the highest expected to reach eight feet, near Iquique, Chilean officials said. According to a Reuters report, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the coasts of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua were also at risk.  

“We are evaluating minute by minute the variations in tide, and ask the population to remain informed,” Mr. Peñailillo said, emphasizing that the tsunami warning would last for several hours. 

In the hours after the earthquake, more than 300 female prisoners escaped during the evacuation of a prison in Iquique, the authorities said. More than a dozen of the inmates were recaptured, according to the police. 

The government said it was sending more than 100 special forces personnel and military troops to coordinate with the security forces in Iquique, Mr. Peñailillo added.  

Electricity failures occurred across most of Arica, a port city of about 200,000 people, and some adobe homes crumbled in the quake, Chilean news media reported. Mining companies in northern Chile did not immediately report damage to their installations. 

Chile: Five dead in earthquake

Via 24Horas.cl: Gobierno cifra en cinco los fallecidos por el terremoto en el norte. [Government says five dead in the northern earthquake] Excerpt, with my translation: 

Desde la Oficina Nacional de Emergencias (Onemi), el titular del Interior, Rodrigo Peñailillo, informó el saldo actual de fallecidos y además realizó una actualización de la evacuación a raíz del tsunami generado tras el terremoto en el norte. 

From the National Office of Emergencies (Onemi), Interior Minister Rodrigo Peñalillo reported the deaths and also described the evacuation due to the tsunami generated after the northern quake.

"El SHOA ha decidido cancelar la alarma de Tsunami desde Puerto Chacabuco hasta la Antártica. Comunicamos el lamentable fallecimiento de cinco personas, cuatro hombres y una mujer, tanto en Iquique como en Alto Hospicio, por infartos y por aplastamiento", confirma el ministro Peñailillo. 

"SHOA has decided to cancel the tsunami alarm from Puerto Chacabuco to Antarctic. We are sorry to report the deaths of five persons, four men and a woman, in Iquique and Alto Hospicio, from heart attacks and structural collapses," the minister said.

"Cada Intendente comunicará en qué comunas se suspenderán las clases. Hemos pedido que los Intendentes que lo comuniquen cuanto antes", confirma Rodrigo Peñailillo.

"Every superintendent will report which communities have suspended classes. We have asked them to communicate that as soon as possible," the minister added.

Chile quake: Tsunami alert extended for six hours

I checked all the online media in Iquique; they were either offline or displaying pre-quake websites. So I've gone to La Tercera in Santiago, which is liveblogging the aftermath: Minuto a minuto: extienden por seis horas más alerta de tsunami en el borde costero de Chile. [Minute by minute: tsunami alert on Chilean coast extended for six hours.]

Rather than translate the text, here's a quick selection of items:

Minister Peñalillo reports massive escape of 300 convicts from Iquique jail.

Minister says school authorities are asked to decide region by region on school suspensions in all evacuation zones.

Onemi, the Chilean disaster agency, says telecommunications are operating (well maybe not so much in Iquique tonight).

President Bachelet has suspended all her morning plans and is considering going to the quake zone.

Bio Bio Hospital is functioning on emergency lighting. (photo)

Downtown Valparaiso completely evacuated. (photo)

Seven aftershock so far recorded in Cuya: three in Iquique, three in Alto Hospicio and one in Cuya. Strongest was 5.4.

For more news (in Spanish): @onemichile; 24horas.cl (includes streaming video where at the moment they're saying it's a "nondestructive" tsunami").