International Search and Rescue: How it Worked in Haiti

By: Eric Holdeman on March 24, 2010

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[Photo: Members of Gisli Olafsson's search and rescue team in Haiti carry an injured woman from a collapsed building. Photo courtesy of Microsoft.]

Gisli Olafsson has been a disaster management technical adviser for Microsoft’s Global Strategic Accounts team since September 2007. In that capacity, Olafsson is responsible for providing guidance to international organizations — such as the United Nations, International Federation of Red Cross, World Bank, Commonwealth, United States Agency for International Development and NATO — on the effective use of information and communication technology to enhance response to natural disasters.

Olafsson has more than 15 years of experience in the field of disaster management and is an active member of the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team, which is on standby to deploy anywhere in the world on a six-hour notice. The team coordinates the first response of the international community to disasters on behalf of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Olafsson is one of the key members of Microsoft’s Disaster Response Team, which provides assistance to governments and leading response organizations dealing with natural disasters and pandemics worldwide.

In recent years, Olafsson has participated in disaster field missions in connections with floods in Ghana (2007); Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (2008); Hurricane Ike in Texas (2008); the Sichuan, China, earthquake (2008); the pandemic outbreak (2009); the West Sumatra earthquake (2009); and during the Haiti earthquake in January as the team leader for the Icelandic Urban Search and Rescue team.

What is your background and experience in responding to international disasters and what individual roles have you played?

I originally started as a search and rescue (SAR) volunteer in Iceland back in 1994. I quickly discovered I was better at coordinating things than running up mountains. This led to me joining the King County (Wash.) Emergency Operations Center support team when I lived in Seattle from 1998 to 2001, and after I moved back to Iceland, I became a member of the Capitol Area SAR command and then the National SAR command.

In 2005, this experience in incident management lead to me becoming a team leader for our Urban SAR team as well as a member of the UNDAC team, which is a group of around 200 emergency managers from around the world who are on call 24/7 to respond to help coordinate the response of the international community. In the past three years I’ve gone to missions in Ghana and Indonesia on behalf of the UNDAC. I recently was the team leader of the Icelandic Urban Search and Rescue team when it went to Haiti following the devastating earthquake there.

How does this work merge with your being employed by Microsoft?

In my role at Microsoft, I advise international organizations such as the UN, World Bank and the European Union as well as governments, on how to better utilize technology to enhance response to disasters. As part of that role, I am a member of the corporate disaster response team, called Microsoft Disaster Response. In that role I have responded to the Myanmar/Burma cyclone, Sichuan earthquake, Hurricane Ike (Galveston, Texas) and the H1N1 outbreak (Geneva). In many ways I am very lucky that I was able to combine my two passions in life — disaster management and technology, and get paid for doing what I love.

Since you have lived and worked in the United States and are a native Icelander — what differences are there between how the United States and other industrialized nations prepare for and respond to disasters?

In my experience there are many similarities in how industrialized nations deal with disasters. In most countries you have seen a shift during the last decade from response focus to preparedness focus. You also see that in these countries; the emergency management departments are usually small and rely on volunteers to play essential functions within their response. Another common thing I see is people turning the blind eye toward the fact that they will at some time face a disaster so big that they will need to ask for outside help. Two of the few countries that handle this well are New Zealand and Australia, which incorporated processes for asking for international assistance into their disaster response plans.

A good friend of mine who works for the UN once held a lecture for a group of national emergency managers and first responders called “Are we too proud to ask for help?” There he pointed out to each and every country a simple scenario that might happen to it causing its national response system to overload, yet none of these countries had incorporated external assistance into their national response plans.

What are some key concepts that you have found invaluable for responding to international disasters?

One of the key things I have learned is never underestimate the ability of the local people to deal with the disaster. We often think that developing countries need our expertise and help to get through a disaster. We often forget that we should support the local emergency management capacity instead of replacing it or “taking it over.” The best missions I have been on are the ones where the international community comes in with a support mindset.

Another important thing to keep in mind is cultural differences. What works in one country may not work in the affected country. Be open to different ways of dealing with things and being confronted with cultural differences.

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