Pandemic hurts ability of nations to handle natural disasters
Before New Zealand started out its four-week lockdown to fight the coronavirus, a reporter asked Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern what would happen if an earthquake struck while every person was sequestered within their homes.
"Why on the planet would your brain go there?" Ardern quipped back.
Every year, the world contends with devastating typhoons, wildfires, tsunamis and earthquakes. The dynamic doesn't change just as the globe also happens to be fighting a pandemic.
What has changed for the worse, however, is the ability of nations to prepare for and react to natural disasters. Not just that, but authorities also fear the most common protocols for dealing with the aftermath of such disasters could further spread the virus, compounding the death toll from both.
Carlos Valdés, who handled two major earthquakes during five years until 2018 as Mexico's disaster response director, said that during his tenure, the Mexican government didn't have any protocols for coping with simultaneous disasters as an earthquake and a pandemic.
"That is a scenario that people hadn't even contemplated," he said.
Valdés, a seismologist who now works in Costa Rica, said he has since sent Mexican authorities his thoughts on how to handle such a situation. Among other things, he said, is the need to reserve one hospital for earthquake victims to split up them from infectious coronavirus patients.
But whether Mexico has taken action on such ideas remains unclear. Xyoli Pérez, the top of the National Seismological Service, said authorities who monitor quakes could work from home during the pandemic but she didn't address whether they had specific procedures for a dual disaster.
Some natural disasters are predictable, just like the wildfires that scorch California most summers. But already, the virus has hindered preparations there after a particularly dry winter.
The U.S. Forest Service has canceled its planned seasonal burns. The a huge selection of firefighters who come to aid every year from other countries may not have the ability to travel. And the camps that usually house a large number of firefighters from over the U.S. pose a large threat of spreading the virus.
"Picture several hundred tents on a football pitch, rows of porta potties, shared kitchens, and crews of 15 persons getting on a bus with all their equipment," said Michael Wara, the director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. "Well, with this virus, you can't put 15 people on a bus. They're really trying to accomplish a rethink, plus they have not yet gotten to the end of this process."
Earthquakes are also an ever-present risk in California, Wara says, but officials haven't yet thought through alternatives with their evacuation plans, which typically involve sheltering hundreds of people together in places like school gymnasiums, another situation primed to spread the virus.
Perhaps most concerning, Wara says, is that hospitals and medical staff swamped with virus patients might not exactly manage to cope with additional victims from an all natural disaster.
Japan is prone to devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. But a tragedy management official in the Cabinet Office headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that while they have protocols for infectious diseases, they haven't yet developed a specific disaster plan to account for the coronavirus.
In Japan, schools and community centers tend to be used as shelters during disasters. Hundreds of folks cram into confined spaces with little ventilation and questionable hygiene.
The disaster official said one option to slow the spread of the brand new virus in such conditions may be to use easy-to-assemble cardboard beds and partitions. The Cabinet Office can be considering new ways to disseminate evacuees, into places like hotels, or corporate gyms.
Among the world's most disaster-prone nations is the Philippines. It really is typically lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year and has regular volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Often entire villages are moved to emergency shelters such as for example gyms or basketball courts.
Even with out a pandemic, the shelters can be troubled by overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and poor medical services.
"It will complicate the problem," Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano said of the virus. "But whatever disaster comes, we'll face it."
He said they would try to maintain social distancing throughout a natural disaster "as much as possible."
Even a number of the top disaster officials in the Philippines stay in quarantine because they've contracted the virus or have already been exposed to it. It's a problem playing out all over the world, with the virus afflicting leaders like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Among the first natural disasters through the pandemic occurred on March 22 whenever a magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck Croatia's capital, Zagreb.
The quake killed a 15-year-old girl, injured at least 27 other people and caused panic throughout a partial lockdown. People fleeing their shaking homes had little choice but to disregard the official advice of avoiding public areas like parks and squares.
Ultimately, the city's preparedness for the pandemic helped them deal quickly with the quake. The military was mobilized to evacuate damaged hospitals.
Some Zagreb residents said the quake took priority over the virus: get out of your home first, worry about grabbing a mask later. Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic noted that "we've two parallel crises that contradict one another."
Ardern said that as leader of an earthquake-prone country sometimes called the Shaky Isles, she actually is always planning the opportunity of earthquakes. She said social distancing protocols would obviously ought to be sacrificed by any crews who taken care of immediately a big quake.
"Of course, at that time, you're ready of wanting to make certain you are saving lives," she said.
But saving lives from an all natural disaster that requires people working shoulder-to-shoulder and protecting persons from a virus by requiring them to keep their distance is a dilemma that many countries are only just starting to contemplate.
