Direct Relief Director of Operations, Craig Redmond, talks about the Venezuela earthquake and the local disaster response force

Written by Talia Myers

When a 9.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, in 2004, triggering a tsunami and killing more than 200,000 people within 20 minutes, Craig Redmond quickly joined the response, helping community members rebuild their livelihoods amid the wreckage.

It was an early formative moment in a career spent responding to dozens of catastrophic disasters.

Redmond is Direct Relief’s Chief Operating Officer and a humanitarian leader who has spent more than 30 years working in Central and Southeast Asia, the Caucasus, the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere. He described distraught and grief-stricken Nepal earthquake survivors around a village leveled after the country’s deadly 2015 disaster, family members digging through rubble after earthquakes in Java, Indonesia and Turkey, and anger that turned to community activism and new safety measures after the 2009 earthquake near Padang, Indonesia, that killed more than 1,100 people.

He added that such experiences provide a basic road map for a disaster such as the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela last June.

The death toll in Venezuela has risen to more than 3,600 people, and is expected to rise much higher as recovery efforts continue. In the coming months, indirect deaths resulting from lack of access to health care and unmet medical needs are likely to significantly increase these losses.

“These types of disasters multiply the power” of existing stressors in a community, Redmond explained. Preventing these unnecessary deaths is key to Direct Relief’s strategy in Venezuela over the coming weeks and months.

Direct Relief: What are some responses to the earthquake that really stick with you? What did you learn from them?

Craig Redmond: Being there a few days after more than 200,000 people lost their lives in 20 minutes during the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami changed my perception. Not just what humanitarian organizations should do [during emergencies]But how can societies respond and how can the international community respond. Then in Indonesia, two more massive earthquakes occurred shortly after that: one in 2006 in Central Java, and the other in 2009 in Padang, Sumatra.

I was also part of the field response after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. [Haiti’s cataclysmic 2010 earthquake is estimated to have killed over 200,000 people.] Nepal responded after another massive earthquake in 2015, and in Türkiye and Syria after one in 2023.

One thing they all have in common is that they have this disgusting way of bringing deep, deep-seated injustices to the surface: problems of corruption, problems of mismanagement.

You have this first phase where the earthquake happens, and of course, everyone jumps into action to try to save as many lives as possible. It’s an amazing thing to witness. You have people running on adrenaline for weeks. Then the horror of what happened begins to settle in, and the anger comes right after, understandably so. Communities are trying to figure out, “Why couldn’t we get more immediate help? Why did these buildings collapse in this way?”

Direct Relief: In those cases, what interventions work?

Craig Redmond: Nepal was one of those earthquakes that everyone knew was coming. No one knows exactly when, but there have been organizations talking about it for a while. At the time I was working with a different NGO, and we had some equipment prepared in advance in case this happened. And then, unfortunately, it happened.

The organization I worked with at the time was distributing basic items: frying pans, blankets, that kind of thing. We were also experimenting with post-emergency cash distribution. I remember seeing the line of people; They’re really grateful for the pans – and then they go straight to the store and try to resell some of them.

And I realized, “Oh, okay. We need to help people in a way that gives them the power to act like cash does. It’s about finding some way to work with communities so that they can have agency and make decisions about their future. When they’re at the worst moments of their lives, when they feel as powerless as they’ve felt in their lives, helping them have some kind of control over their lives is essential.”

Direct Relief: You said that people in Nepal knew that a major earthquake would be devastating, but of course they did not know when the earthquake might happen. We don’t have many natural disasters that work this way. We know days in advance that a hurricane-like tropical storm system is forming. We usually know hours before a fire that wildfires pose a serious threat, and we can evacuate people, if not always as quickly as we would like.

But we know that an earthquake only happens because it actually happens. How does this change the way people on the ground are affected, their needs, and how do we strategize to respond?

Craig Redmond: One thing I strongly believe in, especially at this point in my career and my life, is the importance of working with local organizations. That’s why Direct Relief partners with organizations on the ground. They know the situation better than anyone else. Believe me, they know where the threats will come from. and [because of those partnerships]We are uniquely positioned to make a profound impact, especially after rapid emergencies such as earthquakes. These local organizations will be the first responders.

In every one of the earthquakes I saw, within the first 72 hours, it was mostly local organizations that responded. In Venezuela, even the groups that managed to get there as quickly as possible, it took 48 or 72 people or sometimes longer to get there. But local organizations were there to save lives and get people out where they could. Building their capacity and helping these groups is what Direct Relief focuses on.

Second, it’s about helping those groups think about what resilience looks like for them. In the case of that area of ​​Venezuela, there are hurricanes, and it is an earthquake zone. So it helps those organizations think through, “What is it going to take for us to stay in business if something happens?”

That piece of preparedness, thinking about what resilience looks like, is a role we can play.

Direct Relief: In Venezuela, we have built a strategy based on partner reports and regional contacts, but we also know from some experience what to expect in the coming weeks, and we are planning accordingly.

Craig Redmond: We think about this emergency in terms of waves of needs. The first shipment we sent contained life-saving first aid supplies and vital medications needed to treat trauma and other emergency problems.

The second wave of stuff was more focused on waterborne diseases and those types of secondary impacts. Those will be critical. The hard truth is that while everyone is focused on the earthquake and the associated emergencies it caused, all the other medical needs continue. Mothers still have children. People still get into accidents. Chronic diseases still need to be treated.

These types of disasters are a force multiplier for all the other things that would have happened anyway. We need to ensure that health care providers not only have the trauma supplies and emergency medications they need to respond to the earthquake, but are also equipped with the backup essentials they will need, so they can continue to respond to what will be a long recovery.

Direct Relief: This touches on something often overlooked in the media: almost every large-scale disaster has much broader impacts and a much greater human toll than the official death toll indicates. What are some of the broader impacts we are preparing for? How will Direct Relief accommodate this larger outreach?

Craig Redmond: I’m concerned about systems collapsing or further undermining trust in those systems. We all know that the past years have been very difficult in Venezuela. It will be very difficult for people to have faith. If there is ever a time when you need to be able to rely on yourself [existing] Structures, now. And our work is about trying to support the health care system, as much as we can. We are doing everything we can to make sure they get the medicines and supplies they need, so the system doesn’t collapse.

Unfortunately, what begins to happen in many of these emergencies is that after a few weeks and months, the international community largely disappears. And that difficult recovery period, when the community and local government are left to try to recover and return to some sort of normalcy again, can last for years.

Direct Relief: This brings us back to that local focus. Many people believe that it is the major NGOs and international agencies that do all the most important work on the ground. These players are extremely important, but it is often the communities themselves, specialized regional responders, local health care providers and leaders who play the most urgent and longest-term role. Let’s talk a little about that.

Craig Redmond: There is nothing more important than clearly defining the key partners you want to work with [before a disaster happens]And the extent of their strategic location to respond to some potential threats. You can form that close partnership with them so that you know each other well. You learn what their needs are and how we can support each other.

Over time, many international organizations will move away. Those who focus on short-term response certainly will.

But local organizations are here for the long term. They are the ones who will stay during the recovery phase. They are the people who invest in a way that no international organization will ever invest. We care deeply, but it’s not our home. It’s their home, so we have to invest in it.

Many international organizations have known this, but they have not reached the point where they all have this in common, philosophically speaking. Direct Relief has done this for a very long time. And obviously we work with international organizations as well. But our main focus is actually those local organizations in about 100 countries that we work with around the world.

When you do this, the necessary trust is already there, especially when something as horrific as a massive earthquake happens. They are able to tell us what is most needed on Earth. And we can say, “It’s on its way.”

I was talking to a colleague a few days ago and he was saying that his group was about to do an assessment in Venezuela before they launched the response strategy. And I thought, “We already have two waves of material medical aid.”

This is how quickly you can respond when you have a network of local partners. Our strategy is to think of these partners as an extension of our identity, and we are theirs. If we have that, we have a global team that cannot be matched in terms of reach and scope.

This interview has been edited for length.

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