By Anthony O. Miller
INTERIOR Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou said yesterday that he planned to set up earthquake rescue teams of volunteers to help police and fire fighters pull victims from collapsed buildings.
The teams, which will include doctors, engineers and architects, should be ready by March for scheduled initial drills with the police and the fire brigade, he said.
“We’ve already found the first core people, 15-20 individuals in all districts, and we’re looking at the issue of training and finding centres where they will be based, and out of which they’ll operate,” Christodoulou said.
After the March drill, exercises will be held in May and June in all districts, involving the teams and all the state services, Christodoulou said, adding that in September there would be an island-wide earthquake rescue exercise.
Christodoulou first broached the idea of establishing earthquake-response teams in September, following a moderate earthquake in the Limassol area in mid-August and destructive and deadly quakes thereafter in Turkey and Greece.
At the time, many Western countries airlifted their special quake-rescue teams to Greece and Turkey, which also exchanged rescue teams with one another after quakes rocked each country.
Interior Ministry Permanent Secretary Andreas Panayiotou said in September that he would have a proposal about the rescue teams ready for the Council of Ministers to act on in October, because “we don’t have these special rescue teams” in Cyprus.
With the proper political will, the government could equip and staff the Civil Defence Department to be earthquake-ready to rescue victims in “a few months,” Panayiotou said, adding he expected to have all the needed equipment “by the end of this year.”
Phemos Demetriou, a civil engineer and first vice-chairman of ETEK, the Technical Chamber of Cyprus, said ETEK had long “been critical” of the fact that the earthquake “preparedness of the Civil Defence (Department) is next to nil.”
Demetriou said creating the rescue teams Christodoulou envisioned was “a huge project.”
Government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou, on September 24, said creating the rescue teams was such a “priority issue” that the government could not “proceed on the basis of a budget,” but had to “spend whatever is necessary” on them.
He said there was no spending ceiling on them, but rather that Christodoulou’s ministry had been given “a green light” by the Council of Ministers to proceed irrespective of the cost.”
In discussing the rescue teams yesterday, Christodoulou made no mention of spending any government money on them.
In a display of uncommon official candour, Papapetrou conceded in September that “Cyprus is not ready to face a big earthquake… There are gaps. There were mishandlings (of the Civil Defence Department) since the establishment of the Republic.”
One Civil Defence officer conceded that, while his department had lists of heavy equipment owners – who could be drafted by law into lifting crushed buildings off victims – the government had no plan ready actually to commandeer the heavy equipment or coordinate moving it where it might be needed.
At the time, Papapetrou admitted it was not so much foresight as shock at the quakes in Cyprus, Turkey and Greece that had jolted the government into action to improve its Civil Defence quake-rescue abilities.
