Order in the eye of Haiyan relief

MANILA, Philippines - The day before Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) hit, the Manila Observatory, a science research center based at the Ateneo de Manila University, had issued a report warning that the storm surge might reach as far as 16 kilometers inland.

As images of the destruction and of traumatized survivors flooded the news in the wake of the typhoon, Toni Yulo-Loyzaga, the executive director of the 147-year-old observatory, called her contacts in the Armed Forces of the Philippines. 

The earthquake that had rocked Bohol just a month before had focused attention on gaps in post-disaster relief coordination, and the AFP and other agencies had been addressing these problems in preparation for the next disaster.

But no one had expected it to turn up so soon, or on the scale of Haiyan.

Toni and the AFP officer who was her contact knew that massive international humanitarian relief was being mobilized and would shortly be arriving in a deluge – a most welcome one, but a deluge all the same. 

To get the relief to those who needed it most, as quickly as possible, a highly-coordinated complex logistics system was essential.

“There’s someone we know who may be of help,” Toni said. “Shall I call him?”  The officer got back to her with the answer: yes.

At Stanford University, Luke Beckman had majored in international security, public service and human biology, picking up along the way a couple of medical patents. Later he worked in disaster response and the containment of flu pandemics, focusing on collaboration between civilians and the government in times of crisis.

He had been in the Philippines before, as one of a team of experts brought in by the Manila Observatory and others after Typhoon Ondoy hit the country in 2009.

Toni asked Luke: Would he come to help in the Haiyan relief effort? Would his superior allow him to take leave? Yes, he said, to both.

From different continents, relief for the Philippines began flowing in, mostly by air.

The problem was that seaports and runways had been demolished or piled with debris, which at first made access impossible. Roads were blocked, communication systems had gone down.

At least 4.4 million had been displaced by Haiyan, according to the US Agency for International Development. The final death toll is likely to exceed 5,700.

Peter Kennedy, a warrant officer of the Royal Australian Air Force, arrived on the second relief plane from Sydney. He described the destruction as “one of the worst I’ve ever seen. In terms of total damage it’s worse than the 2006 tsunami.”

Later, Luke said, “In Haiti there were more deaths, but here in the Philippines the destruction has been more widespread, and that’s made it harder to reach affected areas.”

The AFP set up the international relief hub at Mactan Air Base in Cebu City, centered on the Incident Command Post (ICP) by the runway. 

Luke flew into Cebu and was briefed by the AFP on the situation even as tables were being set up in the command post and relief aircraft were heading in from all over the world.

Next came a meeting with military officers from several countries, international NGO workers, and multilateral officials involved in the relief effort.

The Filipino officer who escorted him to the meeting recalls wryly: “Luke was immediately the most hated and most loved man in the room.” Some officials bristled at the sight of the gangling blonde civilian. Others were grateful for someone, anyone, who held the key to operational coherence.

Thing is, there was no key – yet. Luke recalls: “I showed up thinking I would be doing damage assessment, and when I landed in Mactan, they were saying, he’s brought a system.” All he had brought, however, was his brain and a laptop.

His first and simplest task took mere seconds: setting up an Excell spreadsheet. Thus was born the shared situational awareness system that became the heart of the massive multinational post-Haiyan relief mission, which tracked and directed logistics for more than four dozen military and humanitarian agencies from at least 14 nations.

On its first day alone, the system logged aircraft from Australia, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

In the end, Luke says, the effectiveness of the Mactan operation depended on people’s willingness to work as a coalition. “The biggest task was to build relationships and trust between the different groups so that they could work together.”

Sooner than anyone had imagined, the system facilitated the daily landing and take off of up to 24 to 30 winged aircraft on a runway that had been designed to accommodate three at a time.

While newly-arrived air crews were being briefed, relief workers were regrouped and cargo from different countries was unloaded and packed into other planes as these were being refueled.

Then the aircraft would take off for the typhoon-stricken areas where landing sites had been cleared, bearing mixed loads that might include food packages from the Department of Social Welfare and Development, medical teams with equipment, World Food Program boxes, tents and generators. Within the week, approximately one million pounds of cargo was being flown daily.

On their return routes, giving priority to those who needed medical treatment, the planes would ferry typhoon survivors, most of whom had waited in line for days to get a ride.

Days of diamond-sharp, almost hallucinatory concentration followed for Luke and his multi-country team in Mactan, none of whom had worked with each other before.

“I’d be holding six conversations with six different people at once, with aircraft landing, unloading, and taking off all the time, all around,” he says.

About a dozen countries had brought in C-130s, the workhorses of relief operations. The US, which  deployed helicopters from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, also sent in a cavernous C-17 that in one trip ferried more than 600 survivors.

Each aircraft was accorded the same treatment, but it was Luke, holding the center, who had to decide operational priorities.

Flight crews coming in for the first time were surprised by the sight of him darting across the runway, bearing an open laptop. He must have sprinted about 15 kilometers daily from plane to plane, he says, shifting loads and schedules as needed.

When one C-130 broke down before takeoff, they were able to fix the flight plan, transfer 30,000 pounds of cargo to another carrier, refuel it, and watch it take off – all in 40 minutes. The plane brought back 150 survivors.

In most disaster operations worldwide, NGOs rarely get to interface with military units. “In fact...” Luke hesitates, then says it anyway: “Most of them won’t have anything to do with military.”

The key was to get everyone involved on an equal footing at the coordination meetings held daily at 3 p.m. The AFP drew up its procedures for foreign air crews based on the meetings’ spirited discussions.

Luke was grateful for his team and the seasoned Filipino officers who smoothed his way and gave him guidance. “They allowed me to work with no restrictions, in support of mission objectives, ” he says. “In efforts like this, you get the absolute best of humanity in the worst of conditions.”

Ten days after arriving in Cebu, with the system running fairly smoothly, Luke finally assigned himself a ride on a relief goods shuttle to Guiuan, where Haiyan had made first landfall.

He was surprised to find as the plane took off that the Mactan Air Base was right next to the sea; up to then his concentration had centered non-stop on the 300-meter stretch of tarmac by the ICP.

As the plane circled before landing in Guiuan, he looked out the window onto what had once been a lush coastal landscape. His system analyst’s mind was pleased to note that there were hardly any relief stockpiles by the landing strip. That meant that supplies were moving out to survivors.

On the tarmac, his boots sank into briny mud, and he was assailed by the stench of rot and the sight of an ocean of debris stretching to the horizon.

He’d been a witness to the effects of natural disasters before, but he’d never been in a landscape so totally devastated. Luke, after all, had just turned twenty-six.

As Toni arrives at the ICP in Mactan on Nov. 22, Japanese army medics are piling out of a van. A UN  humanitarian official calls out a greeting to the AFP officer accompanying her.

“How’s it going?” the officer asks.

The U.N. official beams: “Just perfect.”

In the ICP lounge, exhausted South Korean airmen are taking ten on a rattan sofa as AFP personnel eddy around them. A bearded Médecins Sans Frontières medic confers with a European Union rep. Crews from Indonesia and New Zealand stride across the tarmac to their planes.

The atmosphere is charged. Things are moving more efficiently every day. The system spreadsheet flashes on the LCD TV in the lounge, but hardly anyone glances at it; they know who’s doing what, everyone’s on top of the situation.

It’s Luke’s last day in Cebu. His leave is up, and he’s returning to his regular job with the Red Cross in Washington DC. He takes a few minutes on one of the sofas, still humming with adrenaline, thinking of the reconstruction phase that’s already in motion. The Taiwanese have committed more tents for housing survivors. Sanitation and road engineers are moving in.

Those who are competent at looking after each other in extreme conditions bond quickly. People clap Luke on the shoulder, shake his hand, and wonder where they’ll next cross paths. A Swedish airman insists they share a beer. A US Air Force officer shakes Toni’s hand and thanks her for having brought in Luke.

In a brief ceremony in a quiet room, with Toni representing the Manila Observatory by his side, Luke Beckman receives from Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda, chief of the AFP Central Command, a plaque acknowledging his contribution to one of the largest collaborative, multinational humanitarian responses recently put in motion.

Relief professionals are forever extracting lessons from each disaster, so that things will move more efficient the next time – for there will always be a next time.

For those who’ve been there, Mactan has confirmed the overwhelming importance of one factor in any complex relief operation: establishing a standard operating procedure that everyone buys into and supports.

The AFP are already in the process of consolidating and enhancing the Mactan situational awareness system, training personnel even as relief and recovery operations continue.

As one Philippine official pointed out: “The tuition for this training in disaster management has been the lives of our people. We will not let it go to waste.”