Gerard Kennedy

Rescuers await call to Haiti

Expert team complains of sitting on sidelines

As trapped men, women and children die in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince, five Canadian teams specially trained in urban search-and-rescue sit on the sidelines, pained that they have not been deployed to Haiti.

“We have a membership that lives and breathes this type of scenario. We are itching to go,” says Coby Duerr, leader of the Calgary unit, known as Canada Task Force 2.

None of the Canadian teams — the others are from Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg and Halifax — have been sent to Haiti, even though all are specially trained in rescuing people from collapsed buildings.

Known as heavy urban search and rescue, or HUSAR, the rescue teams can be deployed internationally when directed to do so by Public Safety Canada.

“It is what we do,” says Duerr. “Structural collapse, trained for earthquake scenarios, is exactly what our capacity is. Can we deploy internationally? Yes.”

Neither a spokesman for Public Safety Canada, nor the Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, responded when contacted Friday.

Vancouver’s HUSAR team was placed on standby but told on Friday to stand down, according to one report, even though 1,400 Canadians remain missing in Haiti. Toronto Mayor David Miller offered that city’s HUSAR team but had no response from the federal government.

One observer said it is a “pity” that the expertise of Canadian HUSAR teams is not being used in Haiti.

“Here we are, 31/2 to four hours away (from Haiti). It’s unfortunate if there was that capability and it wasn’t in the air Tuesday,” said Paul Knox, a journalism professor at Ryerson University who covered several international disasters as a Canadian news correspondent.

Canada has sent its Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), a military unit that provides purified drinking water, security and medical assistance to stricken areas.

But DART does not have the urban search-and-rescue capability of a HUSAR team, whose expertise would be critically needed in the first 24 to 72 hours of a disaster, says Gerard Kennedy, the federal Liberal infrastructure critic.

“We are certainly concerned. There are people who could have been brought over who are sitting idle,” Kennedy said. “It seems strange that they wouldn’t have been part of the first wave. It is certainly something that the government has to explain.”

Duerr said there has been close communication with federal and provincial agencies throughout the Haiti crisis. Among the factors that go into any decision to deploy internationally is security on the ground and the need to keep teams in Canada if a disaster occurs at home.

“The government is well aware of that responsibility. They need to keep a capacity here in Canada,” Duerr said.

Kennedy said he believes that only three of the five HUSAR units — Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary — have an international deployment capacity.

Although other nations have sent HUSAR teams to Haiti, Knox said it makes no sense that Canada would not have done the same. “It’s been pretty clear from the beginning that there is no such thing as too much help.”

The Calgary unit has 65 members drawn from throughout the province, most from southern Alberta, who Duerr says can be mobilized on four-hours notice. They operate on a volunteer basis, but work professionally as firefighters, paramedics and emergency doctors. All are trained to work in natural disaster situations, he said.

One criticism of DART, says Knox, is that some of its work, such as distributing clean water, duplicates efforts of non-profit humanitarian organizations.

“Medical teams and water are things other agencies do at a lower cost because they operate with volunteers and donated equipment,” Knox said.

“It becomes a question if DART is mostly a military public relations exercise that is duplicating the work that humanitarian agencies do more efficiently.”

If so, it makes sense that Canada’s response to situations like Haiti would be better served by reorganizing DART as a military security and transportation unit supporting the search-and-rescue expertise of a HUSAR team. DART has four heavy-lift C-17 transport planes and about 45 of its 200 members have security capability.

Bringing in a HUSAR team for the initial first week of a disaster, aided by a DART security force, would seem more logical, with the remaining DART members relieving the HUSAR teams after the rescue portion of the mission is complete.

Sadly, we are already approaching the latter stage in Haiti. It is almost too late, at this juncture, to send HUSAR teams, Kennedy says.

“This early stage is very critical. We are approaching the point of grave difficulty for people in the rubble.”

rremington@theherald.canwest.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

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