Learning From The Earthquake – What Rescuers Learned

There is an excellent article everyone – especially ET members – should read titled Learning From The Earthquake. It is a firsthand account of citizen emergency response in one area of San Francisco following the Loma Prieta earthquake. Reading the whole article is important because you better understand why the bullet points in the synopsis below are important. And only by reading the full account can you understand the all so important psychology of such a situation. You will be dealing with not only with your own emotions, but those of others around you as well. By understanding what to expect, you will be better prepared to respond to an emergency and save lives. On the World Changing website is a synopsis of the original article:
Stewart Brand wrote after the 1989 earthquake, in a Whole Earth essay titled “What Rescuers Learned.” The whole essay is sadly available nowhere online, but these bullet points (logged by Gmoke in an earlier WC post) pretty well sum it up:
  • Right after an earthquake, nobody's in charge. You self-start, or nothing happens
  • Collect tools!
  • If you can smell gas, turn it off.
  • After an earthquake, further building collapse is not the main danger. Fire is.
  • When you see a fire starting, do ANYTHING to stop it, right now.
  • In a collapsed building, assume there are people trapped alive. Locate them, let them know everything will be done to get them out.
  • Searching a building, call out, “Anybody in here? Anybody need help? Shout or bang on something if you can hear me.”
  • Give people who are trapped all the information you've got, and enlist their help. treat them not as helpless victims but as an exceptionally motivated part of the rescue team.
  • Join a team or start a team. Divide up the tasks. Encourage leadership to emerge.
  • Most action in a disaster is imitative. Most effective leadership is by example.
  • Bystanders make the convenient assumption that everything is being taken care of by the people already helping. That's seldom accurate.
  • If you want to help, ask! If you want to be helped, ask!
  • Volunteers are always uncertain whether they're doing the right thing. They need encouragement - from professionals, from other volunteers, from passers-by.
It's worth noting, as well, that self-starting isn't just some great idea for wealthy folks with a lot of expensive tools lying around: ordinary people are the best, and often the only, first-responders wherever disaster strikes. Helping each other without permission from the proper authorities is what it's all about.
    And this from ibiblio:
I'm reminded of a similar list (at a slightly different scale) in a Whole Earth Review article by Stewart Brand -- “Learning from the Earthquake” (WER #68, Fall 1990). It's a first person account and analysis of “the crucial difference of volunteers” in the 1989 Loma Prieta (SF Bay Area) quake. A few of the items from the “What Rescuers Learned” summary:
  • Right after an earthquake, nobody's in charge. You self-start, or nothing happens.
  • Collect tools!
  • When you see a fire starting, do ANYTHING to stop it, right now.
  • Join a team or start a team. Divide up the tasks. Encourage leadership to emerge.
  • If you want to help, ask! If you want to be helped, ask!
And the “Collect Tools!” list: These are some of the tools that have proven useful for earthqake search and rescue and for fighting fires while they're still small:
  • Gas-powered [chain] saws
  • Hand saws
  • Axes
  • Ladders
  • Crow bars and pry bars
  • Wrenches for gas valves
  • Flashlights, miner's lights, lanterns, extra batteries
  • Portable generator and power tools and work lights
  • Jacks, blocks, and shoring material such as 4x4 lumber
  • Rope
  • Shovels
  • Work gloves, boots
  • Loud hailers
  • Buckets