Point Reyes Light - October 7, 1999
Coastal doctor aids Turkish quake victims
Point Reyes Station's Dr. Herb Sigmond, while on a relief mission in Turkey following that country's deadly August earthquake, was in the Turkish naval-base city of Golcuk on September 13 when a magnitude 5.8 aftershock hit.
"I was sitting in Golcuk and was getting ready to set out with our mobile van," Sigmond recalled two weeks ago upon his return. "And the only way I could describe [the scene], is that it looked like a Godzilla movie. Godzilla's coming into town, and there's this 'thump, thump', the waving of the ground, and people running in every direction, people jumping into cars and criss-crossing lanes at 80-miles-an-hour, and ambulances going every which way. It was chaos."
Sigmond, 58, has seen plenty of chaos in recent weeks. He and colleague Dr. Mark Stinson of Oakland arrived in Turkey on August 26 as volunteers for Relief International, a Los Angeles-based private organization which specializes in providing assistance worldwide to victims of warfare and natural disasters.
The pair brought $30,000 worth of medicine, a change of clothes, and a small amount of cash to begin their task of "front-line assessment" following the magnitude 7.4 quake on August 13, which rolled through the industrial provinces of Izmit and Adapazari southeast of Istanbul.
Lasting for 45 seconds, and felt as far east as the Turkish capital of Ankara more than 200 miles away, the quake was described by geophysicists at the US National Earthquake Information Center as one of the most powerful recorded this century.
Considered close in force to the 7.9 magnitude temblor that leveled parts of San Francisco in 1906, the Izmit quake proved to be significantly more devastating. By September 12, the Turkish Prime Minister's Crisis Management Center put the death toll at 16,000, with an additional 24,000 injured.
All told, damage to industry, residences, utilities, and roads is thought to exceed $25 billion, with 60,000 homes destroyed, 60,000 moderately damaged, and more than 100,000 people homeless.
After one night in Istanbul, the doctors asked a hotel employee for help in getting to Izmit. Soon the three were in a van driving east along the Sea of Marmara below the Bosphorus. The van would serve as their mobile medical clinic, and later, the team combined resources with other volunteers, who provided cell phones and other vehicles for getting around.
Both Sigmond and Stinson, who are emergency room physicians at the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, had worked together in Bosnia and Albania during the height of the recent war in the former Yugoslavia, setting up clinics for refugees with the International Medical Corps.
They had worked with other organizations as well, and Sigmond had traveled to provide care on his own in remote regions of the Amazon and Southeast Asia. Sigmond, in fact, has been traveling the world in search of "hot spots" where he could lend a hand since he was a medical student at UC San Francisco and interning at a hospital built by Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Gabon, Africa.
Earlier this year, the two doctors gave their names to Relief International, and within a few days of the Izmit quake received telephone calls requesting their service. "It's sort of a specialized team that goes in first," Sigmond explained. "You go in without very many supplies, and no mandate except to support the local infrastructure and take care of what immediate needs there are, and to be the eyes and ears of the American people and the organization."
Sigmond and Stinson immediately established an operating center in a condemned building outside of Izmit. For safety reasons, they slept in tents they set up outside.
They ran their mobile clinics in villages in the surrounding hills, and in the satellite cities of Golcuk and Degirmendere. With thousands of victims living in tent villages throughout Izmit province, many injuries - such as broken limbs - had gone for days, even weeks, without treatment. The doctors regularly treated more than 100 patients a day, as did the Turkish and European doctors also working in the area.
"We only went where there wasn't any Turkish infrastructure at all," Sigmond said. "Occasionally we would set up standing clinics, in a park, or at a high school, and people would come see us there." Seven of the 12 regional polyclinics had completely collapsed in the initial quake, he explained, and Turkish search and rescue units, though effective and methodical, were slow to reach the outlying regions.
Exacerbating problems for victims was the Turkish government's desire to not appear too needy. "It seems that the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Health really discouraged foreign help, mainly because they felt they were a developing country, and they had a 250,000-man army, had been supported by billions of dollars by the United States, and that they were pretty much like Europe."
Turkey, as a result of the "paternal" role of its government, Sigmond feels, lacked the civil service necessary to respond to such a widescale disaster. "Even though they said they didn't need any foreign doctors, a lot of groups came in, and were essentially working without any authority," he said.
He witnessed one Egyptian medical squad which was asked to leave for treating a cholera outbreak that didn't really exist, and a French relief team that was "working totally undercover, handing out toothbrushes and toothpaste."
The US government's response was limited, in essence, to the donation of roughly 7,000 tents, $270,000 worth of search-and-rescue equipment, and two 70-member search-and-rescue teams.
The teams, Sigmond said, were credited with saving a mere three lives, at a cost of roughly $3.6 million. (That figure is not included in more than $11 million in aid allocated in early September by the Agency for International Development, and the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance.)
Sigmond said that to his mind, it was bold Turkish citizens - many of whom unflinchingly risked their own lives - who were the true heroes of the rescue efforts. "One man I was working with at the crisis center, a professor, saw this hole in a pile of rubble, and he grabbed my stethoscope, and just dove in. He didn't come out until 20 minutes later."
After the aftershock in Golcuk, in which seven people were killed and 400 injured, Sigmond joined frantic residents in searching the rubble for survivors. "I went down to the crisis center, just a few blocks away, and got some hard-hats, and as we were driving around, people were screaming on the side of the road, 'Go down that way,' and then you'd hear, 'There's someone over there further to the left,' and you'd go around to the left, and then you were back where you had started. It was pandemonium, really."
One goal of his work, Sigmond said, is "to bring harmony out of chaos." Apart from providing medical care, he also helped in search-and-rescue missions (using training he received from the Point Reyes Fire Department), and served as an impromptu safety officer.
He sees his team's ability to network and stay positive as the cornerstones of its effectiveness. "Every person is a possible resource," he said with emphasis. "There are no bad people, and no lazy people. Only resources."
Once he had established himself as a recognized and reliable foreign assistant, Sigmond was approached for help by doctors in relief teams from Europe, as well as local Turkish community leaders. Even a group of Islamic Fundamentalists - whom Sigmond, looking somewhat official, gained access to by saying he was with the CIA - asked him to help find a nurse who could come to their camp.
On behalf of community activists, Sigmond worked with the Ministry of Health to promote projects such as the design and construction of a new hospital, the building of new schoolhouses, and the reconstruction of the clinics.
"Things are fast and furious," Sigmond said, explaining the context. "The rains are coming, school is starting, people are seen living in tents that aren't winterized and aren't even waterproof. Things have to get moving along, and red tape has to get cut. So Herb Sigmond gets to sit down with [Turkish officials] because he's the only American there."
Sigmond finally returned to Point Reyes Station after an arduous month of working 18 to 20 hour days under the auspices of Relief International.
He plans to stay at home only long enough to thank the firefighters at the Point Reyes Fire Station for the training they gave him, as well as Dr. Ladd Bauer (formerly of the West Marin Medical Center), who provided $1000 in medical supplies.
Then he'll prepare for his next mission. He'll be promoting a Stanford University student exchange program - in Mongolia.
Point Reyes Light Cover | News | Coastal Traveler