1. The Armenia Earthquake: Grinding Out an Effective Disaster Response in Colombia’s Coffee Region

09/2009-5610

This case was written by Alfonso Pedraza Martinez, PhD student in Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD, Catalina Estrada Mejia, Research Assistant, Uni-Andes School of Management, Orla Stapleton, Research Associate at INSEAD Social Innovation Centre and Luk N. Van Wassenhove, the Henry Ford Professor of Manufacturing, and Academic Director of the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre. It is intended to be used for research purposes rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Universidad de Los Andes School of Management in developing this case study.

Copyright © 2009 INSEAD

The situation became critical two days after the disaster when, frustrated by delays in the arrival of an organised response from Bogotá, people began looting supermarkets. The President of Colombia imposed a curfew and sent troops to Armenia on 28 January, where 183 persons were arrested. Despite the military presence, on 29 January the Colombian Red Cross¹ warehouse was looted.

¹ The Colombian National Society of the Red Cross is member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement based in Geneva, Switzerland.

² Figures taken from DANE (National Department of Statistics) preliminary database, Disaster of the Coffee Region, June, 1999.

Located in the mountains of Los Andes, Armenia was founded in 1889 and is the capital of Quindío, one of the 33 states of Colombia.³ In 1999, the population of the city was around 300,000 and per capita GNP⁴ was US$1,980. Situated in the heart of the coffee-growing region, its economy is dependent based on the coffee crop.

³ Exhibit 1 shows location of Armenia and pictures after the earthquake.

⁴ This value corresponds to 1998. In that year, the population of Colombia was 40,826,815, and per capita Gross National Product was US$1,693. The shock of the disaster resulted in an economic cost estimated at 2.2% of Colombia’s GDP (Inter American Development Bank).

Ironically, Armenia was among the best prepared cities in the country in terms of disaster response, but the major rescue resources were buried in the earthquake and many officers from the police and fire departments (see Exhibit 1) were killed, a fact that considerably diminished the local public services’ capacity to react. The mayor’s office was partly destroyed, although the mayor was unhurt. Telephone communications were cut off, although they were partially restored 24 hours after the quake. Roads were badly damaged and radio and television signals were out of action. The radio network was quickly re-established and played a crucial role in handling the security problems that arose over the next three days.

Once the mayor of Armenia, Alvaro Patiño Pulido, had established that his family was unharmed, he called the President of the Republic, Andrés Pastrana Arango, in Bogotà, where the tremor had been felt 290kms away. The President had already been informed of the disaster by General Tapias, the commander of the Army, who had warned him:

“Mr. President, it’s going to be tough. It occurred 15 minutes ago and people are already talking about deaths.”⁵

⁵ White Paper on the Earthquake (2000), p. 36.

But the President only understood the magnitude of the catastrophe once he had spoken with Mayor Patiño. He immediately flew to Armenia but it was impossible for the plane to land: the airport was blocked. Instead, at 16:30 they landed in Pereira,⁶ from where Pastrana took a helicopter to Armenia, accompanied by several ministers and Monica Yamhure, the Coordinator of the National Disaster System. She recalled:

⁶ The capital of Risaralda, one of the states of Colombia, Pereira is 48kms from Armenia.

“We were flying over Armenia when the President asked why everything was moving down there. The strongest replica, the one that killed most of the people, was taking place.”

“There were contingency plans on paper, but in practice there was total lack of coordination. Everyone had to see to their own tragedy. I had to bury my deceased family members before beginning the rescue operation with the ICBF.”

The destruction was exacerbated by several factors. Firstly, there had been a severe lack of foresight. In 1995, the Occidental Seismology Observatory (OSSO) had presented an alarming picture of the risk of seismic movements in that zone, showing that it was one of the most at-risk regions when it came to earthquakes. Secondly, the situation was worsened by the construction of homes on very unstable terrain. General Jaime Cortés, commander of the Third Division of the Army,⁸ elaborated:

⁸ The pyramid structure of the Colombian Army is made up of a General Command, followed by seven divisions which are structured into brigades and battalions. The Third Division had jurisdiction over the Coffee Region.

“Sixty percent of the buildings [in Armenia] didn’t have foundations, were placed on mountainous edges and unstable hillsides, with clay roof tiles, which seem to cause the most damage in the case of an earthquake.”

Furthermore, although the reaction of the national government was immediate and at the highest levels, nobody was prepared for the magnitude of the devastation. There was no protocol to determine how they should react in such a huge catastrophe.

One advantage Colombia had in reacting to disasters was its experience with armed conflict.⁹ Government agencies and the Red Cross had learnt lessons in disaster management between 1985 and 1995, during a period of narcotics-funded terrorism in Bogotá, Cali and Medellín, the main cities of the country. Walter Cotte, National Aid Director for the Red Cross and 25-year veteran in the organisation, described the approach:

⁹ Colombia has suffered over 50 years of armed conflict between government forces and communist guerillas.

“We suffered all those bombings, and since then we have established a procedure. A Unified Command Post (PMU) has been set up, which is coordinated by the first one at the site. All government agencies, the Red Cross and the Civil Defence are present in the PMU.”

Following an evaluation of the damage to public buildings, the PMU was established in the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Quindío (CRQ).¹⁰

¹⁰ The Regional Autonomous Corporations reported to the Ministry of Environment and were in charge of managing environmental policy in the State of Quindío.

“The operative coordinator reaches the site and checks: ‘Number one, the money, where are we going to keep it? Number two, the cars, where are they? Number three, maps, where are we going to locate our command post?”

Once the operation was under way, operatives began to gather information from the radio, the press and on the ground. With it they produced a diagnostic of the situation and broadly determined the scale of the disaster. The initial requirements were estimated to be 150 metric tons of food and half a million litres of water every 24 hours.¹¹

¹¹ White Paper on the Earthquake (2000), p. 49.

Crucial to the operation was the establishment of shelters. The agencies evaluated the state of the infrastructure for this purpose. The football stadium was partially destroyed so they decided on the exhibition centre, CENEXPO. Director of the Scouts, Emilia Casas recalled:

“Although the buildings had some structural damage, the parking lot was in good condition and was sufficiently large. Here we set up our first shelter.”

“At first they tell you to buy and spend, but afterwards investigations on expenditures begin.”

The Red Cross had a budget for aid during emergencies which was not part of the national public budget. During the emergency it also mobilised resources from the Red Cross National Societies in other countries and from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (see Appendix 1).

“I arrived at 18:00, and it was full of dust. Everybody in the government was complaining because it was too disorganised and chaotic. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘it’s an earthquake!’”

Emilia Casas joined 13 volunteer experts in organising massive camps.

“I called the Director of the RSS, who was a friend of mine, and told him we had experience in organising massive shelters for jamborees; we once organised one for 16,000 people.”

She also contacted the commander of a Mexican disaster aid battalion, Colonel Coronell, who moved his unit to Armenia on the third day. This was the first overseas aid to arrive and their help was essential in setting up shelters.

Other teams specialised in rescuing earthquake survivors were also deployed by countries such as France, the US, Belgium and Russia. Doctors from Médecins Sans Frontières, specialising in family medicine and epidemiology, also arrived from Havana, Cuba. On Tuesday, volunteers from the Red Cross¹² and the Civil Defence arrived from all over the country. They brought with them machinery, mechanical excavators and specialised rescue equipment; 99% of Red Cross personnel were Colombians.

¹² The Colombian Red Cross had 2,000 employees and 35,000 volunteers around the country—its donor network comprised approximately 30,000 people.

Individual volunteers also began to arrive spontaneously. They began distributing money and food, but the problem was that nobody knew the quality of what they were delivering. Moreover it was perceived as generating inequality: some people received aid more than once, while others got nothing.

“There was a feeling of corruption among the population as they saw what appeared to be no equality and no order,” commented Cotte.

“Due to our lack of experience everything at first was by trial and error. But I think we learned quickly.”

President Pastrana delegated military command to General Cortés, commander of the Army’s Third Division. To tackle the tragedy, Cortés added 300 men as reinforcement to the 2,000 troops already stationed in Armenia. This way he had a reserve of personnel that could replace those troops who had become exhausted.

The Red Cross assigned an administrative employee to take charge of money and personnel. The Technical Department was in charge of threat analysis, vulnerability, risk and security. In other words, as Cotte explained:

“We were responsible for how we were going to give opinions and what we were going to tell people; that is, what the message of the Red Cross would be in order to avoid saying anything stupid to the media.”

They also assigned a logistics coordinator which covered transportation, supply, warehouse network and specialised volunteer management. Another was assigned to telecommunications. Three other key persons went to Armenia: the reduction coordinator, who was in charge of all preventive measures, a second in charge of response, rescue and shelters, and a third in charge of recovery, whose responsibility was to plan what to do with those affected over the next three months.

“Many foodstuffs and medicines arrived past their expiry date. They were of no use and took up a lot of space.”

Food and medicine had to undergo quality controls before being stocked. INVIMA¹³ and the Universidad de Antioquia checked the quality of the food, medication and water. For example, ICBF received a shipment of several tons of rice seized by the DIAN on the border with Venezuela. Although badly needed, the rice neither looked nor smelled in good condition and INVIMA declared it unfit for human consumption. It was buried during the night. Mejía explained the need to deal with this situation carefully:

¹³ Instituto Nacional de Vigilancia Médica y de Alimentos

“We couldn’t keep it in the warehouse because the community would have said that we were keeping food from them. The controls we set around food helped us avoid cases of intoxication among the population.”

International donations started to arrive on the third day. Specific requests were made through the Chancellor’s office. Some significant international donations those first days included a mobile operating room from USAID and grains such as rice, lentils and cereals from the World Food Programme (WFP). Some organisations set up parallel systems to receive donations. The Red Cross had its own system for gathering international donations, which allowed it to act very quickly during the first few days.

Food procurement management was initiated on Tuesday, 26 January by the ICBF. They held a meeting with local supermarkets, at which it was decided to buy everything in Armenia to help reactivate the economy. Whatever was not available in supermarkets was to be purchased directly from wholesalers that had not been seriously affected by the earthquake.

¹⁴ CATAM is the Air Force airport located adjacent to Bogotá’s “El Dorado” International Airport.

“The President called me and asked what was going on and why no aid was arriving. I told him that we had sent everything to CATAM, so he told me to go over and take care of the delay.”

When Casasbuenas reached CATAM, he saw that all the aid was being held in a warehouse. The commander of the base explained that Cartago’s airport had no night-time operation and nobody had authorised the aircraft to take off, nor did they know who would pay for the fuel. This situation delayed the delivery of the first supplies. After 24 hours of negotiating with the military, the first Hercules took off for Armenia. Once the problem was resolved, the air force’s help came more quickly and contributed greatly to overcoming the crisis.

The air force provided five Hercules,¹⁵ each able to carry 110 passengers. They each made six flights daily, starting the second day and continuing for 10 days. Even the presidential jet, a Boeing, was used to transport aid. On the way to Armenia they carried supplies and on the way back they evacuated victims who had family in other cities. Commercial airlines also provided planes to evacuate victims to other cities. The Red Cross made 34 search and rescue flights between 26 January and 4 February. Aid destined for several villages which could not be reached by land was transported by a fleet of air force helicopters. These also assisted in evacuating victims. In total, during the first week close to 10,000 people were evacuated, General Cortés confirmed.

¹⁵ A high-capacity kind of military plane.

The condition of Armenia’s airport allowed only one Hercules to land at a time. A minor accident occurred because the runway was so narrow that two planes collided on the ground. Fortunately, they only touched wings and nobody was hurt.

For transportation towards the interior of Armenia, vehicles belonging to the local and regional governments, the Red Cross, Civil Defence, the Army and private individuals were used. Citizens who owned vans lent their vehicles to different agencies or drove them themselves. Ambulances also began to arrive spontaneously from nearby cities—by the third day there were about 350 ambulances operating in Armenia. But instead of helping, they were starting to slow traffic down. “We had to return some to their cities of origin,” commented General Cortés.

The traffic situation and the arrival of people not related to the earthquake forced the Army to set up roadblocks on access routes to reduce the flow of vehicles and people towards Armenia, allowing only those with permits to enter the city as of the third day.

“There was an application called SUMA. People from IBM came to show it to us but it was of no use in a situation like this. There was no time to fill in all the information that the system required,” said Mejia.

The situation within the Red Cross was different. The Red Cross could track an item until it reached the victims.

“Part of our transparency system consists of being able to receive something and getting that thing somewhere and knowing who received it and having it all registered. These things are part of our daily life,” explained Cotte.

¹⁶ Corferias is a subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá. Its facilities cover a surface area of 151,460 m², divided into 27 halls. It also includes a parking building with a capacity for 2,700 vehicles.

A further warehouse was set up next to Armenia’s airport building. This storage facility was managed by the RSS with help from the national Army, which was in charge of security. From the first day, a warehouse belonging to the IDEMA¹⁷ was also used. This was the largest warehouse in Armenia during the recovery period and was initially managed by 120 operators from the RSS. It was used to store all kinds of supplies (food, blankets, tents and medicines) before they were distributed. A warehouse was set up in the CENEXPO shelter, where food supplies for the victims were kept. The ICBF set up a small warehouse, operated by 10 people, to receive donations and store purchases in Armenia. Other lower capacity warehouses were set up in the city by the Civil Defence and the Federation of Coffee-Growers of Quindío.¹⁸ The Red Cross had two warehouses in which to store food, blankets, tents and essential medication.

¹⁷ Institute for Agricultural Marketing.

¹⁸ The Federation of Coffee Growers of Quindío is a private, non-profit, guild-like organisation which seeks to foster regional coffee growing and facilitate the well-being of coffee growers through cooperation, participation and innovation.

“We had one which was looted and another, larger one, which was in an isolated place,” recalled Cortés.

Asset management included transporting items from one warehouse to the other prior to the final delivery. Casasbuenas explained:

“There were parallel efforts. Besides, things were being sent from one warehouse to another instead of delivering them directly to the people.”

At this point, aid was failing to arrive from Bogotá. The community lacked reliable information, resulting in panic and uncertainty among the population. Although very little time had passed since the quake, the fact that no food arrived prompted fears that they were going to starve to death. Also, there were rumours that others from outside the city had come to steal from them. Fearing for their lives and abandoned properties, people started to build barricades to defend themselves.

“It was terrible. Neighbourhoods were defending themselves from other neighbourhoods,” recalled Eduardo Uribe, a professor at the Universidad de los Andes.

During those first days it was very difficult to deliver supplies. Tension in city centre streets was heightened by people who were armed and aggressive and it was frightening to be out at night. Armed groups were seen guarding their block with pistols, rifles, machetes and shotguns.

“We drove by slowly so they wouldn’t harm us. It isn’t easy to tell someone that you will distribute supplies the next day when the guy has a gun and a machete in his hands. Our safety regulations say that where that happens, we stay away,” Cotte pointed out.

The situation worsened on the third day, when looting occurred in some of the city’s supermarkets. In one of the supermarkets, people took everything, including the cash register. Other stores were also looted.

“People were saying: ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry,’ and they would walk out of the store with a TV,” added Mejía.

To make matters worse, the mayor’s office gave erroneous information over the radio, she recalled:

“The mayor had everyone on his back asking for things and people complaining a lot. On Thursday, he said over the radio, ‘Go tomorrow to the Red Cross because tomorrow they’ll give you things there.’ So lots of people went to our warehouse.”

Despite the fact that the Red Cross had a distribution system set up, that they had counted people, and that they were going to distribute food to the neighbourhoods, Mayor Patiño’s message sent all the people to one warehouse which couldn’t handle the demand.

“We tried to line them up and count them there. But at one point, everything got out of control and they broke into the warehouse. We let them, even though we had army personnel on the premises. I asked the army not to do anything. Afterwards, they chased them and some people were captured. It only took a few minutes, but the news travelled around the world. Our image suffered as a result, although after that we received international donations via the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies that allowed us to build a warehouse network to respond to future disasters in the region,” Cotte recollected.

“We had no indicators. We had no time for measurement,” said Casasbuenas, from the RSS.

Fortunately, there were control organisms. The Office for Oversight of Government Resources and the Internal Government Affairs Agency were monitoring management of the disaster. Scouts kept paper forms of their management of supplies. However, as Emilia Casas noted:

“Nobody controlled us. No external control was applied. People know that scouts don’t steal things on principle.”

The lack of monitoring made some administrative processes difficult. The Regional Director of the ICBF recalled:

“We suffered a lot when finalising a contract several months later. The food contract was very costly and we didn’t have a good record of what had been given out. In the end, the notebook of a highly organised ICBF employee saved us because she had a detailed list of everything: quotes, purchases, deliveries, etc. It’s a good thing she didn’t throw out that notebook. That notebook saved us.”

“When I went, I didn’t allow any other military officer of lower rank to be present. I represented the Army. I also coordinated actions with the Red Cross and the Civil Defence,” said General Cortés.

Some organisations had to interact for the first time after the earthquake. This was the case of the scouts.

“Perhaps the president thought I was a person of some influence in the international scout organisation because I had gotten the Mexicans to send their disaster response squad. He made me part of his work team, and a lot of people started to ask, ‘What are the scouts doing here?’” mused Emilia Casas.

President Pastrana assumed the coordination of the Disaster System.

“The president tried to manage the situation but he had no idea what to do, he was not familiar with the Disaster Recovery System structure and capacity. Fortunately, he noticed that very quickly, let others coordinate the operation and supported the process well,” recalled Cotte.

There was some conflict between the national, regional and local levels. The locals were very sensitive because they saw it as their tragedy. They told the national representatives that they had no right to speak. There were also conflicts between organisations. Some agencies wanted to stand out, which initially put the governor’s and mayor’s offices at odds. In some cases it became personal, involving the governor and the mayor.

“It was terrible. They would be in the same place and they wouldn’t speak to each other. There was a lot of institutional jealousy, duplicate actions. There was no coordination. Everything was so hard to organise,” bemoaned Casas.

On the fourth day the organisation started to improve. The president put an end to the disputes between organisations.

“I had never seen President Pastrana angry. But he said, ‘No more!’ And he made the right decision,” observed the Director of the Scouts.

Five days after the earthquake (30 January), the president created the Fund for the Reconstruction of the Coffee Region (FOREC), which would be controlled by Luis Carlos Villegas, president of ANDI (see Appendix 1). FOREC was the organisation put in charge of managing financial donations, loans and public money for reconstruction.

“Doctor Villegas said, ‘Look at the problem we got ourselves in.’ My reaction was, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll pull through,’” General Cortés reminisced.

One year after the earthquake, FOREC won the United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction, one of three prestigious prizes established in 1986 by the Nippon Foundation. On 11 October 2000, World Disaster Reduction Day, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the UN honoured FOREC for its “outstanding contribution not only to the rehabilitation of the earthquake-devastated area but to the building of a truly sustainable and socially equitable development model.”

The earthquake that devastated the region of Armenia had a lasting effect not only on the country of Colombia but on the international community. How could future generations ensure that they were better prepared to cope in the event of similar disasters and that the lessons learned from this earthquake did not go unheeded?