No country in the world would have had the rescue resources to immediately cope with the CTV Building disaster, an expert told an inquest today.
The total collapse of the six-storey Christchurch office block in last year's killer February quake was so devastating that it could never have been planned for, a coroner's court looking at eight of the 115 deaths heard.
Even if the CTV Building was the only emergency site after the magnitude-6.3 quake, the emergency services would have struggled to cope, New Zealand Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) boss Jim Stuart-Black says.
They had to deploy the country's three USAR taskforces while sending out an SOS call to international comrades to try to tackle the immense disaster.
Plans had to be "augmented and supplemented", he said, as they scrambled to find survivors trapped in the concrete and steel debris.
"There are very, very few countries in the world that have enough capacity that they can meet the need, in short order, of something that was as big as Christchurch," said Mr Stuart-Black, national manager special operations for the New Zealand Fire Service, which includes responsibility for USAR.
"And I would suggest that no country could've hit Christchurch's response in the first 12- 24 hours with sufficient resource."
USAR is a crack unit that specialises in finding and recovering people in dangerous situations.
NZ USAR taskforces are based in Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch, and made up of firefighters, dog handlers, communications experts, engineers, doctors and paramedics.
International USAR missions are usually terminated once the focus turns from rescue to recovery, he said.
The quake sparked "chaos" in Christchurch, he said, resulting in an "incredibly complex" rescue situation.
Given that the Madras St structure "pancaked" in the violent ground shaking, and with people trapped in small voids or "tombs", coupled with the blaze that broke out soon after, rescuers were pushed to the limit, Mr Stuart-Black said.
USAR chiefs immediately set about developing an instant management framework and implement a coordinated rescue operation.
"Our role is to make sense out of the chaotic," he told the inquest in Christchurch.
Mr Stuart-Black admitted it takes time to put the plans in place, with most disasters taking 24-48 hours before control and site management is achieved.
"The fact that USAR, as part of the wider emergency response was able to do so in such short order is a credit to the individuals involved."
The Christchurch experience has provided several lessons for the international USAR community to learn from and will be incorporated into future guidelines.
"Such was the unique nature of the New Zealand response, we had to develop new protocols for managing and recovering the deceased, deconstruction of unstable structures to complete area searches, and information management processes," Mr Stuart-Black said.
The inquest, before Coroner Gordon Matenga, is looking into the deaths of Tamara Cvetanova of Serbia, Cheng Mai of China, Japan's Rika Hyuga and Jessie Redouble, Emmabelle Anoba, Ezra Medalle, Reah Sumalpong and Mary Amantillo, all from the Philippines.
All were students at King's Education School for English Language on the CTV Building's third floor and survived the collapse but could not be rescued from the wreckage.
- Kurt Bayer of APNZ
