Going around the world where disaster strikes

MANILA, Philippines—When disaster strikes, he is sure to follow in its wake.

Meet the likes of Marc Young, director for international disaster response of the US-based All Hands Volunteers, an organization that provides relief and rehabilitation services to calamity-stricken communities around the world.

“I’ve been in 12 international disasters and nine disasters in the US these past eight years,” Young said. He was at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 on Wednesday, waiting for a flight to take him to Tagbilaran City in earthquake-ravaged Bohol province, ready to plunge into action.

“Right after helping clear the rubble in the Indonesian earthquake in 2009, I went to similarly earthquake-shaken Haiti in 2010 to manage 1,200 volunteers from an applicant pool of 4,000,” he said. “We rebuilt 20 schools and ended up conceptualizing and running a five-hectare joint logistics base in an industrial park for the World Food Program.”

For over a year now, Young has been overseeing a volunteer program in Cagayan de Oro City, which has succeeded in putting up 344 houses for survivors of 2011’s Tropical Storm “Sendong.”

Weeks before arriving in the Philippines, he was in post-tsunami Japan. “I still carry haunting images of Japan,” he said.

During the weekend, Young was planning to go to India because of the cyclone heading the subcontinent. But all of a sudden, he’s now off to Bohol.

Relief Web

“I’m in charge of international assessments,” he said. “If there’s a disaster anywhere, I get messages from volunteers and our staff. I monitor Relief Web. It’s the online resource center of humanitarian aid organizations worldwide. I typically have 30 windows open, most of them media sites.”

He said he goes beyond the newsy stuff to find useful data.

“The death toll is always a cause of concern, but it does not impact on our decision-making. But I would be interested in the number of houses or schools or buildings damaged or destroyed. We can do something about that,” he said.

He sounded hopeful about earthquakes. “Earthquakes are easy when it comes to damaged houses. For the most part, there’s the footprint of the houses. There you have your starting point.”

He recalled that after the earthquake in Peru in 2007, a mining company began to bulldoze damaged houses. He and his volunteers promptly tried to stop it.

“We needed the footprint of the houses so that we could determine the size and exact site of the houses that had to be rebuilt,” he said.

He said he and his organization learned their lessons the hard way.

Hurricane ‘Katrina’

In the wake of Hurricane “Katrina” in southern United States in 2005, Young went to the Mississippi beachfront area, one of the most devastated places.

“Land-based gambling was illegal there, and so they had these huge barges docked by the port serving as offshore casinos,” he said. “When the hurricane came, the winds lifted these barges from the sea and swept them across the city, demolishing all the structures in their path. In one fell swoop, entire landscapes, including landmarks, were erased. I went with the chief of police, who grew up there, and he cried because he no longer knew where we were. After helping out with the mucking and gutting, we at All Hands coordinated with the city authorities so we could put up street signs. It sounds like a silly idea now, but, believe me, at the time it was great comfort to help people find their way in all that devastation.”

First disaster

Hurricane Katrina was Young’s first disaster, so to speak. Before that, he was managing a scuba-diving outfit in Papua New Guinea.

“It was the cyclone season and so I closed shop. I went home to visit my mom in Michigan. She and I saw Katrina on TV, and I was shocked that this could happen to our advanced, prosperous and sophisticated country. It freaked me out. And I realized that there is rule number one: nature always wins. It was the first time in my life that I was overwhelmingly compelled to act. I signed up to do volunteer work,” he said.

Driving more than 1,920 kilometers in 20 hours to reach the Katrina-stricken areas, Young began his new journey to the world of disaster relief and rehabilitation services.

Birth of All Hands

All Hands was organized the year before by David Campbell, an American visiting the United Kingdom a week after the tsunami in Thailand. A friend of his, who had just been to the Southeast Asian tourism capital, apprised him of the need for assistance there, and instead of flying home, Campbell went to Thailand. Inspired by his experience there, he put up the volunteer organization.

“We don’t want to go to a disaster area in an SUV, turning on the aircon to full blast and wearing fancy clothes, and giving away bottled water,” said Young, now the organization’s most senior decision-maker.

“We want to be immersed in the community so that they would know that the community of nations is concerned about them and is helping them rebuild their day-to-day lives,” he said.

After Katrina, Young went to Indonesia in 2006 to help clean up after the earthquake. “We did rubble-clearing and deconstruction of houses,” he said.

Deconstruction? “As opposed to outright demolition, we would dismantle a damaged house and ensure that we can recycle the materials in building new houses,” he said.

Typhoon ‘Reming’

That same year, Young found himself in the Philippines after Typhoon “Reming.”

“In Bicol, we shoveled debris as well as rebuilt bancas and schools,” he said.

In 2007, he was in Peru, leading volunteers in removing rubble after an earthquake and building temporary structures.

He also went to Bangladesh that year, rebuilding houses. “It was difficult because there were no available tools there. There were no chainsaws. We needed implements, so we had to go to the metalworks shop to have a blade made, and then we would go to the carpentry shop to secure a workable handle for the blade,” he said.

In the period straddling the end of 2007 and the early part of 2008, Young was in Haiti. “We cleared mud and dug a well-ring project,” he said.

Then 2009 was the start of a nonstop series of stints in Indonesia, Haiti, Japan and typhoon-wracked Philippines.

Messed up by Japan

“Japan really messed me up,” he said. “Or maybe the series of disasters took its toll on me. But Japan being the third largest economy in the world and among the most advanced scientifically—and suddenly it was helpless against the tsunami, that weirded me out,” he said.

He went to Ofunato in Japan. There, he noticed that 500 km of the coastline was shielded by a series of tsunami walls.

“The walls were embedded 30 meters down the seabed, then rose 10 meters above the sea. These walls gave everyone a sense of security. When the tsunami warning was raised, some people had so much faith in the walls they climbed up to see the tsunami up close,” he said.

As it turned out, the walls collapsed from the impact of the tsunami.

Young found Japan “a closed culture.” He said, “It’s an island-nation. They weren’t interested in receiving help. It took a long time to earn their trust. Simply put, we weren’t from there.”

It took a city councilor, a certain Fuchigami-san, to bring Young and a bunch of his volunteers to the house of one Suzuki-san, saying, “They are here to help you.”

When Young asked Suzuki-san how they could help, the reply was surprising: “Help us clean up the drainage canals.”

Apparently, it was the cause of the continual flooding in the neighborhood after the tsunami.

Young said, “When we were working on the drainage canals, the community began to bring us food. They invited us out to lunch. They brought us umbrellas. And when they passed by in their cars, they would honk at us and wave in a friendly way.”

Rebuilding team

Now that Bohol is his next destination, how will he go about his work?

“I come in and assess the situation to find out how we can contribute to the assistance efforts,” he said. “We’re not the emergency rescue guys. We’re part of the after-the-fact, rebuilding-the-community team. I bring in an assessment team of four people. We all do legwork. We find a community that we can work with. These decisions can be very intuitive. We want a base that’s accessible. In Bangladesh, our volunteers had to fly in to the capital and then take a 22-hour boat ride. That was tough.”

He continued: “I also consider the safety and security of our volunteers. That’s why we don’t do Pakistan, Turkey and domestically in the Philippines, Zamboanga. We shut down a project in Peru because of a string of thefts targeting our volunteers.”

On his way to Bohol on Wednesday, he hoped to be as lucky as when he and his volunteers were based in Bicol. “Our base was near the waters,” he said. And we had a fabulous view of Mt. Mayon. At the end of a full day rebuilding fishermen’s boats, we treated ourselves to a swim with a view. It was like we were in paradise.”