“We are not doing business here. The organizations need to be more open and think more about the united good: To help people” UN worker!
Five years ago on the 26. december 2003 a devastating earthquake with a magnitude on 6,5 rocked the city in 12 long and black seconds, where 30.000 people were
killed.This blog post is for me to show respect to the fantastic people in Bam, and that I havent forgotten about them. In my last year at school, spring 2006 I wrote a thesis about tthe Bam earthquake and visited Bam in Iran, close to the Afghanistan border. Below some of the writings from the thesis.
Everything is almost deathly still in the dessert city of Bam, except for a tiny cold wind that is whispering through the palms, around the citadel. It is soon dawn, and Omead is going to sleep waiting for a new weekend to start. He suddenly woke up when he could feel a shake. It was possible to sense the floor moving a little bit. His wife turn’s around, and takes a deep look into his brown eyes, wondering what is going on. He tells her it is nothing to worry about; it was probably the main quake. His wife believes him, and turns over and closes her eyes.
Omead mud brick house is located right behind the 2,500 years old heritage castle, Arg-e- Bam, known to be one of Iran’s major tourist attractions. Omead is thinking about that the frosty winter has arrived to the old heritage city. The elevation over thousand meters above sea level makes the city quite cold in winters, and the temperature is in the vicinity of moving under zero for the first time this year. The cold temperature makes Omead body shiver a little, and he drags the blanket all the way up to his neck. Omead closes his eyes without knowing the devastating future of the 90.000 people in Bam that is just minutes ahead. He fall to sleep dreaming about the weekend ahead.
When the clock hits 05:28 the ground starts to vibrate. A devastating earthquake is rocking Bam in twelve long and black seconds. Iran’s shallowest earthquake in history measured 6.5 on the Richter’s scale. The earthquake ruins Bam, and kills the people in their own beds.
Omead suddenly wakes up. He is not sure about the time, just that something awful has stroked his city in the middle of the heart. The city is knocked down. He tries to move, but it is impossible, with huge bricks on his body and head. He feels all right under the circumstances, and do not think his back is broken. The beloved city has felled apart in a twelve seconds attack from the forces of nature. He can hear his wife, even though a lot of rubble is making a wall between them and does that he can not catch the sounds coming out of her mouth. He grasps for air, again and again. His mouth tastes blood, and makes him wonder how long he will
manage to survive under the rubble. He starts to think about his friends, who are still alive? Most of his family is living in his birth city Kurdistan, he guessed that it was too far away for that city to get the same results as in Bam. But what about his brother that lived in the city center. Is he still alive? Is anybody actually still alive in Bam?
Omead can not feel the time any more. Suddenly he can hear somebody else. He tries to concentrate. He can hear it now; it is his father in law. He is using his hands, and managed to drag his daughter out of rubble. Omead is safe!
One hour later:
Omead lies in the back of the truck together with a bunch of corpses. The truck will drive to a hospital. The engine starts, the chauffer push down the gas, and drive away from the devastated area, that looks like it has been bombed for several years, instead of a twelve seconds attack. The old heritage castle, the pride of the city looks like a sand castle after high tide. Nothing is left. It survived 2000 years of attacks from several armies without breaking down. The forces of the nature did not need more than a few seconds to make the castle into ruins for eternity.
Omead knows that something is broken in his body now. He closes his eyes and hopes the pain, the corpses and the disaster will disappear.
The disaster is a reality!
Findings:
In this research we investigated “How different actors, both national and international managed to cooperate with each other after a disaster.” After a disaster like the one in Bam many organizations, both national and international, are involved. This makes the coordination process complex. An effective coordination process can be looked at as a “Mission impossible”, but it is no doubt that many improvements can be done. Both positive and negative experiences can be drawn from the Bam earthquake. Our findings show the benefits when the cooperation functions well and the negative contributions when people/institutions do not manage to cooperate.
• Many organizations managed to cooperate and share information and knowledge in an organized manner. A good example is the team work between Red Cross, IRCS and UN that made a joint flash appeal. Unfortunately it has not been made any new joint appeals after the Bam earthquake.
o The most important success factor for the actors that managed to cooperate in Bam is previous experiences of cooperation. Alliance building over time is necessary.
o Most of the affected people got the help they wanted and their needs covered. Although there exist opposite examples.
o Unnecessary products were sent due to inadequate cooperation especially between the national and international actors.
• The Iranians were inexperienced and they had no previous history working with the international community. This created problems and the international capacity was not fully utilized. Experience is something you need to build through exercise. Local government must learn about international assistance. On national plan they hopefully learned something from Bam that will make it easier in the future.
• International staff is sometimes inexperienced. Bam findings tell us that all
organizations should always send at least a couple of persons with experience and some without that can learn.
• Change of personnel creates problems. It would therefore be better if at least some people could stay longer and provide continuity in the process.
• The coordination office was up and running too late. This made it harder for the participants to share information and cooperate from the beginning. It is necessary that the responsibilities are preset within the relief sector.
o Organizations should be better prepared and have a warehouse with necessary items. If an organization do not bring for example their own tent, they might be a negative contributor. Unprofessional organizations should not be present.
o Effective communication equipment combined with a short physic distance is important to manage information sharing.
o Too many actors involved will make decision making more resource demanding and harder to achive. It looks like the authorities need knowledge about the most important international humanitarian agencies. In some cases it should also be harder for small organizations to enter.
o SAR teams need to arrive immediately. Important criterias are: a time limit for when they are allowed to arrive (for example three days), a maximum number of teams and persons. Then the possibilities to save lives will increse. Alternatively the teams need a wider competence so they can be of dual use.
o One problem seems to be that too many organizations work in accordance with their own principles and objectives. They should think more about the totality. The organizations problem is that this can decelerate their donor funding. One step in the right direction is to make guidelines for the donors, but more education around the subject is probably also necessary. The problem ismost acute in “new humanitarian countries”. A dialog should be opened with these organizations.
• Utilize local knowledge to avoid misunderstandings and extra costs.
o A local purchase is often cheaper and faster, but UN’s rules and bureaucracy prevent this. A higher degree of flexibility will help even though the transparency must be kept.
o Field work is to a great extent about people. Participants that cooperated with the right locals accomplished more than other participants. To manage this you need to show accountability and that you can deliver. You have to show respect both for the people and their culture. Respect them, and they will respect you.
• Lack of trust
o The most important consequence might be found in distribution. The international agencies did not trust IRCS due to the logistical problems. IRCS did not understand the international agencies. IRCS think it would have been both more effective and controllable if they had the task to distribute the items for the international participants. A mutual understanding between the INGOs and IRCS is needed, and IRCS must prove its accountability.
o UN does not have enough respect. Many think that UN is there to pay the check. Symbolic actions like visible hands on UN management living in tents together with the rest of the UN people, instead of moving into hotels will change incorrect negative UN stereotypes. UN also needs to see the competence in the NGOs instead of saying that they are just bringing a mess.
o Agencies blaming each other instead of trying to understand the other party’s perception. It is important for organizations to create trust through good experiences and openness and symbols.
• Iranian organizations managed to learn new management styles and methods from the more experienced international organizations. The Bam earthquake made the local organizations more experienced and hopefully more professional. Probably the new competence will be utilized in future disasters so that they will act more effective and professional. This can probably be done even more structured and organized. In a dream world each INGO have their LNGO(s) for cooperation. The interreaction will give the LNGO new knowledge and the international local competence.
• It is necessary to improve cooperation with the relatives. They did not get enough information. Information about earthquake vulnerability in reconstruction is needed. They did not get enough tasks from the government. The affected people blame the government. What we think should be done is to start a newspaper and other information channels for relatives. This was done after a while in Bam and made things better. It is necessary to establish workshops. High ranks in the government need to come on periodical visits to show that the country care. This will create more respect and hopefully give more trust in the public.
• The actors need to cooperate about the rebuilding immediately and find out how much money they shall give. Be careful about corruption and put a pressure on the government. The government needs to be more open and try to see that some of the INGOs can be good use. They let some stay, but more organizations would probably have something they could contribute with. It is also important that the organizations follow the government’s wish. This will create equal respect for both parties.
Cooperation is about people, but how much is it actually possible to change the human mind? Probably not much, but we can try! Therefore it is likely but also unfortunatly that many of the lessons drawn is maybe based upon a vision than a possibility.
Girls living in an orpanhage for girls that lost both their parents under the earthquke. Its a cruel world!!Bam 21-23. June 2006
Omead is trying to give us a smile,but you can see the sadness in his face. It is not much happiness left. He did not die but he lost his life in the earthquake: He broke his back, and can never walk again. He divorced his wife, his brother died, and he can not go back to his old job, as a baker. He picks up three glasses from a small table, and fills them with hot tea, before he finds a bag with sugar cubs, and fills up a cup. He lives together with nine other people in a camp in Bam for disabled people, that was opened a couple of months after the earthquake. As many as 34 people lived here on the most and tried to get their life as close to normal as possible. Omead drags his left hand over his pan to drag away some drops of sweat. Bam is hot in the summer, the dry temperature must be close to 50 degrees. He tells us about his life. How he moved back to his birth city Kurdestan for nine monthes after a surgery that was payed for by the government. He wanted to go back to Bam, and was happy that he got the chance to live in a camp.We ask him about his future; he moves his hand to show the wheelchair and turns it around the small room he lives in, before he say “This is my future”.
Everybody in Bam know someone who died under the twelve seconds long earthquake. We are standing in the end of a overwhelming graveyard, that is just too big. Our translator raises his hand and let it glide over the graves, before he open his mouth “it is the same deathdate Same deathdate on all the graves on all the graves”. I can feel the sadness. Tears are fighting inside me! I take a short look on one of the gravestones. It has sketchings of two children, a man and a woman. Probably a family. I think of a story the Norwegian diplomat told us. She had drived past the graveyard many days in a row a couple of months after the earthquake. Each day had the same seventeen year old boy been standing in front of a grave, screaming “Why didn’t you take me too”. He had lost everybody he knew, his life had been taken away from him in a glimps.
Today many of the people in Bam have a two sided meaning about the graveyard. It is the worst place in Bam because almost everybody they knew is burried here. It is the best place in Bam because this is where they meet in holidays, and this is the place they can feel the old Bam, and remember the people they loved.
We had just seen it in pictures. The castle Arg-e Bam, that had been such a masterpiece. Just seeing the ruins made us understand what made this place so special, will it ever come back? Not in at least ten years, people say, but it do not seem like they believe their own words. The pride of Bam, what made Bam special is dead.
Bam is just another place now, that unfortunatly had a devestating earthquake ones.
Life must go on!
