It's Complicated: Emergency Reponse Efforts After Cyclone Pam

I don’t know quite where to start talking about what is going on with emergency response efforts in Vanuatu right now.

I was literally sleeping in the middle of it all because the World Vision office in Vila was damaged in the cyclone, so the entire crew is now working out of the house Mike and I are renting. But even after four days there I know I still only saw part of the puzzle.

World Vision communications officer, Chloe, struggling to get a good signal on the satellite phone as she gives the first interviews post-cyclone

World Vision Office in Port Vila

World Vision staff working out of Mike’s house

And it is a puzzle. The Vanuatu government, aid agencies, Australian military, and others, all trying to figure out how best to help those who are now without shelter, much food, or clean water. It sounds like it should be fairly simple, right? Monster cyclone destroys houses and livelihoods, so we just need to figure out what people need most and then get it to them now.

Yeah. Not so simple when that monster cyclone left a trail of destruction across dozens of different islands and small, rural communities. And when it knocked out all power and telecommunications in many areas for up to a week. And when many of the local staff (especially those based in the hard-hit communities where the response needs are greatest) have also had their houses damaged or destroyed.

Or when you first need to get relief supplies into the country, and then out from Port Vila to those communities. Somehow. In a country that doesn’t have a whole lot of helicopters sitting around and when the landing strips on those islands are too small for anything but lightweight planes.

Or when military planes from other countries are rushed in full of soldiers, but without the supplies that aid agencies have stacking up in the ports and airports—supplies the agencies can’t get into the country easily or cheaply. (There were a lot of bored soldiers sitting around Vila in the early days after the cyclone because there was nothing much to hand out).

Or when aid agencies are getting emergency response grants tied to money that all has to be spent fast (there are often conditions attached to emergency response money that it be spent on immediate aid supplies and programs within the first 90 days after a disaster).

Or when those same agencies are flying in their disaster management experts to assist their teams on the ground as they scale up to deal with the scope of this challenge, experts who then have to get up to speed on the politics of the whole operation.

Because emergency response is political. The government understandably wants to be across operations—to assess what has happened in their communities, and to co-ordinate food, shelter, and sanitation relief efforts. Put that together with dozens of NGO agencies who have been working in different communities around the country and want to help with aid distributions in those areas (or who want to work in different communities around the country and are rushing to get involved in the relief efforts and aiming to use this response as a platform for future development work) and it perhaps should not be surprising that things on the ground are complicated.

So it’s complicated. Sometimes it feels downright chaotic. Things can change on an hourly basis (which supplies are arriving, which aren’t, how those supplies are getting anywhere, and who is spearheading each particular distribution). But in the middle of all of this I do believe that those NGO agencies who were already on the ground before Pam hit are well placed to help. I do believe they are largely making good faith efforts to co-ordinate effectively with the government (and vice versa), and that good things are starting to happen for people who have lost more than most of us can fathom.

This emergency response phase will become a much longer recovery phase. This is a marathon, not a sprint. But here are some pictures Mike has taken to give you a sense of what’s happening on the ground right now, at the start of this marathon.