By The Associated PressApril 3, 2020
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Before New Zealand began its four-week lockdown to fight the coronavirus, a reporter asked Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern what would happen if an earthquake struck while everybody was sequestered in their homes.
“Why on earth would your mind go there?” Ardern quipped back.
Every year, the world contends with devastating typhoons, wildfires, tsunamis and earthquakes. The dynamic doesn’t change just because the globe also happens to be fighting a pandemic.
What has changed for the worse, however, is the ability of nations to prepare for and respond to natural disasters. Not only that, but experts also fear the usual protocols for coping with the aftermath of such disasters could further spread the virus, compounding the death toll from both.
Carlos Valdés, who dealt with two major earthquakes during five years until 2018 as Mexico’s disaster response director, said that during his tenure, the Mexican government did not have any protocols for dealing with simultaneous disasters like an earthquake and a pandemic.
Valdés, a seismologist who now works in Costa Rica, said he has since sent Mexican authorities his thoughts on how to handle such a situation. Among other things, he said, is the need to reserve one hospital for earthquake victims to separate them from infectious coronavirus patients.
But whether Mexico has taken action on such ideas remains unclear. Xyoli Pérez, the head of the National Seismological Service, said experts who monitor quakes can work from home during the pandemic but she didn’t address whether they had specific procedures for a dual disaster.
Some natural disasters are predictable, like the wildfires that scorch California most summers. But already, the virus has hindered preparations there after a particularly dry winter.
The U.S. Forest Service has canceled its planned seasonal burns. The hundreds of firefighters who come to assist each year from other countries may not be able to travel. And the camps that usually house thousands of firefighters from across the U.S. pose a big risk of spreading the virus.
“Picture several hundred tents on a football pitch, rows of porta potties, shared kitchens, and crews of 15 people getting on a bus with all their equipment,” said Michael Wara, the director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. “Well, with this virus, you can’t put 15 people on a bus. They’re really trying to do a rethink, and they have not yet gotten to the end of that process.”
Earthquakes are also an ever-present risk in California, Wara says, but officials haven’t yet thought through alternatives to their evacuation plans, which typically involve sheltering hundreds of people together in places like school gymnasiums, another situation primed to spread the virus.
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