Residents of the Bhutan capital recently woke up to sirens blaring, roadblocks, all three of the city’s bridges across the Thimphu Chu closed, and ambulances and fire engines rushing about. Those who had not paid attention to notices by the authorities could be forgiven for thinking this was a real disaster.
And that was the whole point of it. The mock exercises included simulated house collapses and building fires to test both information flow, coordination, and decision-making for search and rescue after a high-intensity earthquake.
On hand to design and conduct the simulations were engineers and seismic experts from the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET) – Nepal which has wide experience in disaster preparedness and retrofitting projects back home.
The simulation showed that Bhutan was sorely lacking in search and rescue equipment and contingency planning. But at least they now know what to do. Nepali experts say they have to work hard to get successive governments in their own country to listen.
Surya Narayan Shrestha of NSET was impressed with the receptiveness of Bhutan’s officials, right from the prime minister down. He recalls: “After the simulation, Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay told us Bhutan had to learn from Nepal because we are closest to their context, and no other country was in a better position to teach them.”
Such open-minded frankness is rare in the South Asian context where officials and experts often think they know best. The Nepal-Bhutan cooperation was supported by the New Delhi-based Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) of which Nepal is a member, and NSET was selected to support the Thimphu Earthquake Contingency Plan.
NSET helped Bhutan design the strategy in two phases: first to formulate decisions, information flow and coordination mechanisms before a disaster strikes. The second phase consisted of field-based exercises and simulations to analyse how those plans work in practice for search and rescue.
SEISMIC RISK
The 7.4M earthquake in Colombia this week, which followed another deadly temblor in Venezuela last month, was a wakeup call for both Nepal and Bhutan which share similar seismic risk. All four countries can learn from each other to be prepared with building code enforcement, national contingency plans, disaster drills, search and rescue experience.
At one point during the simulation in Thimphu, some sites had modern concrete cutters, while others did not. NSET’s Shrestha remembers the Bhutan search and rescue units wanted to know what they should do. “We asked them what they would do in a real disaster, and gave them a hint: perhaps call for urgent international assistance,” he said.
The authorities had chosen the largest referral hospital in Thimpu and two primary health care centres to create a mass casualty scenario. They factored in a sequence in which emergency medical staff could not reach the hospital either because they had their own family emergencies, or the roads were blocked by landslides, and the hospitals were themselves without power.
The simulation team also assessed the structural integrity of infrastructure, including 11 bridges, one hospital, an electricity terminal, the telecom network, and a food supply warehouse.
The entire simulation took four hours, involving 500 people in various roles, while the Nepali team spent nearly a year planning to execute the two simulation phases. Prime Minister Tobgay, officially the commander of the disaster response team, was also present and King Jigme was kept updated on the exercise.
