Good news from the Icelandic Ha ïti Team

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

De beving vond 12jan10 om 16:53 (21:53 UTC) lokale tijd plaats.
Het IJslandse team vertrok op 13jan10 om 10:00 GMT (=UTC), dus 12 uur na
de beving in een gehuurde Icelandair 757 (een knappe en prompte
prestatie, het vliegtuig stond toevallig idle aan de grond die dag).
De afstand Reykjavík - Port-au-Prince is rechtstreeks 3379nm (ruim 7 uur
vliegen), maar er werd een tussenlanding in Boston gemaakt om nog meer
goederen mee te nemen en te tanken (zodat het toestel weer in de
bewoonde wereld konden komen zonder tanken in Haïti of Dominicaanse
Republiek).

Groet / Cees

January 26, 2010 4:00 AM PST
What a Microsoft rescue worker saw in Haiti
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10440431-56.html
by Ina Fried

While many people have jobs at Microsoft that aim to avoid disasters,
Gisli Olafsson's job is getting through them.

As a full-time disaster management specialist for the software maker,
Olafsson works with the United Nations and other agencies to prepare
before devastation hits and also to coordinate efforts once it does.
Olafsson has been sent across the globe to deal with the aftermath of
earthquakes and hurricanes, offering help in rebuilding the
infrastructure that nature has wiped away.

But, that's only part of the reason Olafsson so often finds himself on
the scene of natural calamities. A native of Iceland, Olafsson also
volunteers as part of that country's national search and rescue team.
Microsoft employee joins Haiti rescue effort (photos)

It was chiefly in that role that Olafsson found himself on the ground in
Port-au-Prince just hours after the massive quake struck earlier this
month. As part of one of the first international rescue teams on the
scene, Olafsson was among those who helped pull three survivors from the
rubble of a collapsed grocery store.

In an interview, Olafsson talked with CNET about his experiences in
Haiti, what's still needed there, as well as how his work on the ground
influences his day job working to prepare for when disaster strikes.

Before he switched to emergency planning work full-time, Olafsson worked
in various roles at Microsoft Iceland and before that was based at the
company's Redmond, Wash., headquarters where he was a lead program
manager for Microsoft's SQL Server database.

Here is an edited transcript of our interview, conducted just after
Olafsson returned to Iceland last week, following many days on the
ground in Haiti.

What did you see on the ground?
We flew in and arrived on the 13th, just before 4 o' clock. We were the
first search and rescue team to arrive in the country. As we landed, the
airport was still pretty quiet compared to what it was when we left.
Right now, it is endless flights, takeoffs and landings--as busy as a
major international airport.

The first thing we saw as we were landing was simply collapsed houses
and damaged buildings. We got off the plane, got all of our equipment.
Our first task was to go do a reconnaissance of the city and see the
initial information about where were things really bad. As we drove
through the city, it was getting into the evening hours. It was getting
darker. We saw people everywhere out on the streets. Nobody wanted to
stay inside. There were...many people going to sleep on the sidewalks.
Related coverage
Companies pitch in for Haiti relief
The tech industry helps gather donations and rebuild communications
following the massive quake.

There were also a lot of bodies that had been put on the sidewalk and
just covered with something. It was not a very pretty sight that we saw
as we got in there and drove around the city and saw the destruction.

You participated in a couple of rescues, is that right?
Yes. What we did is we went to work at a supermarket where people could
hear voices coming out from the rubble. We went in there and rather
quickly managed to get two women out of there who had been trapped. Then
we worked for about eight hours to get out the third woman who was
actually located in the middle of the rubble, so it took a long time for
us to break our way all the way through.

After that, were there a lot of times you were hoping to rescue people
but didn't find anyone alive?
The thing is there were so many houses that had collapsed there. We
spent the following days to search through schools and churches and also
private houses that had collapsed. Unfortunately, in all of those we
ended up finding simply dead bodies. At the same time, that is part of
the whole work. You go out as an urban search-and-rescue team and you
very seldom find anybody (alive). It's simply that most of the people
who get saved, they get saved in the first 24 hours, which is before the
international teams even arrive. In this case, over 120 people were
saved from rubble in the first week. That is an amazing thing to accomplish.

It seems like one of the challenges in Haiti was it struck the capital
and so what little infrastructure there was, I imagine, was either badly
damaged or destroyed. And there wasn't that much to begin with. Can you
talk a little about that?
It definitely did cause some issues. The entire government was affected
itself. The UN had a big presence there and they were affected extremely
themselves. It, of course, paralyzes the local response. A lot of the
effort had to be put on the international community coming in.

You had no telephone system working for first 72 hours. You had no
electricity still in the capital and running water is very scarce. All
of these basics that we would have in many other countries were not there.

This meant that all communications we had, we were using satellite
phones for all voice communication and BGANs (broad global area
networks) for all Internet connectivity.
"You go out as an urban search-and-rescue team and you very seldom find
anybody (alive). It's simply that most of the people who get saved, they
get saved in the first 24 hours, which is before the international teams
even arrive."

When you say BGANs, what are those?
It's the little terminals that CNN and all the news crews now have to be
able to do live broadcasts. We use the same things to be able access
information and provide information out to the community and the rest of
the world.

What other kinds of technology were involved?
We of course made use of all kinds of (mapping) solutions. There was a
group of volunteers from an organization called MapAction. We were using
a lot of the imagery that was made available by the different providers.
This was Microsoft, this was Google. Some of it came from the military.
Other (maps) came from the satellite owners. During the disaster nobody
cares where it came from as long as it comes.

What are the individual encounters that have stuck with you the most?
For me it was meeting the people there. People in the media were saying
there are riots there and people are angry. We met the complete
opposite--people who were very thankful that we came there to try to
help search for loved ones. Yes, we did see riots or people trying to
get things out of stores, looting. You take something that you can trade
for food. Even when we saw those kind of things, they would stop, allow
us to go through and then continue to do what they were doing.

What kinds things do you take back to your day role at Microsoft?
What I see out of this since my daily job is linked to disasters is that
I see which things were not working. Where might technology have played
a bigger role. But you also learn where are the ways technology makes
things too complicated. Coming into a country like Haiti there is very
little infrastructure. You have to keep that in mind.

One of the things that has been noticeable as someone watching this is
just the immediacy of information getting out there over things like
Twitter. I would say there was also misinformation, reports that turned
out to be false--things like American Airlines was flying doctors for
free to Haiti or UPS was shipping boxes for free.
We did get a lot of reports of people reporting they had gotten SMS
(text messages) from phone calls from friends underneath certain
buildings. They got this from Facebook and other things. In less than 1
percent of those cases did it turn out to be correct. People think they
are doing a good thing by repeating rumors like that. Rumors are
sometimes good but they are sometimes bad. We heard a rumor that one of
the teams had rescued 63 people from a car park underneath a house that
had collapsed. It was completely bogus.

We did do one thing that was an interesting use of social media. We were
searching the Hotel Montana, which was one of the areas where a lot of
the Westerners--UN people--were staying. As we were searching it someone
reached out to me through Facebook, realized I was leading the Icelandic
team and we were working there. After that, I was in communication with
relatives of missing people through Facebook. I was able to provide them
with information about our work.

They could provide us also with information about which rooms (their
relatives) were in possibly. As you dig through the rubble of a building
like that it's just as much detective work to try to figure out 'where
am I right now' because of course, it doesn't look like it used to.

Unfortunately we only recovered a few bodies out of there and nobody
alive, but at least that provides a certain measure of closure to those
families.

What are some of the most critical needs right now in Haiti
A lot of people have lost shelter and food is of course an issue, and
clean water. If you look at it from the point of view from people
reading this story. The big needs is for all these different response
agencies to be able to provide for those basic needs. They can only do
that if they get funding. The key thing is funding--the cash they can
turn into shelter and other things for people.

Very often a big mistake people do is they think they should be donating
food locally in the U.S. and have it shipped or collect clothing and
have it sent. Usually those things just block up the delivery channel.


Iceland SAR in Haiti, Earthquake rescue specialists
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-383049 (Cees: CNNiReport)
January 13, 2010 | reykjavik, Iceland
30 volunteer rescuers and 14 tons equipment belonging to the
International Rescue Squad of the Icelandic International Rescue
Authorities has landed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
They are exper , in earthquake resque ,and have been to other earthquake
situtations all around the world.
The Search and Rescue team has water and equipment to independentlyfor
ten days.
The Icelands foreign office has offered assistance in taking foreing
citizens from Haiti.
The have offered every foreigner that has embassy in Iceland, UN, and
the Europian Union.
USA  Denmark and Sweden have accepted .
The Iceland goverment rented a Ielandair 757, and sent 37 Search and
rescue specialists.
The left Iceland at 10 ( gmt ) this morning .
The photo is of the SAR group in the plane on their way to Haiti.
The Boeing 757 ,will leave Haiti at midnight .
They will meet representatives of the UN ,and work in cooperation with them.

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