Late in the evening of October 18th, 1356, the Swiss city of Basel was struck by a mighty earthquake – the biggest in Central European history to this date. It was felt as far away as Konstanz in Germany – almost 100 miles to the east – and in the Paris region – 250 miles to the north-west. In Basel itself, there was catastrophic destruction. Churches and castles collapsed, and amid the shaking, candles and torches were knocked from their sconces to the floor, setting light to wooden buildings across the city. The city was almost totally destroyed, and an estimated 1,000-2,000 people lost their lives. There have been larger, more destructive, natural disasters around the world in the intervening 665 years, taking the lives of many times more people, but the Basel Earthquake remains the most significant disaster in Swiss history. It also continues to be a key reference point in disaster response training exercises. One such exercise I attended – SEISMO12 – simulated an earthquake of the same magnitude centred on Basel, with the events of the 14th century featuring prominently in press releases and internal documents. For more than six centuries, the country has been waiting for an event like this to happen again. Switzerland should, on average, expect an earthquake of magnitude 6 on the Richter Scale every 100 years, and one with a magnitude between 6 and 7 – the size of the 1356 Basel earthquake – every 1,000; as yet, however, there has been no repeat of Basel. And while there have been other destructive events in the intervening period – both natural and human-made – among many Swiss, there is a continuing perception that disasters are both relatively infrequent and often not so serious as others around the world. For most people, that is good news – the lack of a major disaster is something to be celebrated – but for the Zivilschutz (Civil Protection), Switzerland’s dedicated disaster preparedness force, it creates a problem. The standing force of around 70,000 people, mostly male conscripts, divided into regional forces across the country’s 26 cantons, was established at a nationwide level in 1963 to provide a response in the event of nuclear strike at the height of the Cold War. The threat of nuclear holocaust has waned, and the focus of the organisation is instead on preparing for other kinds of disaster. In Zivilschutz’s near-60-year existence, Switzerland has suffered flooding, the 1965 Mattmark disaster – when 88 workers constructing a damwere killed in an avalanche – and the 1986 Schweizerhalle environmental disaster, when poisonous chemicals were discharged into the Rhine after a fire at a storage depot, but nothing on the scale of Basel. How can such organisations continue to be relevant as the absence of disasters severe enough to authorise their activity goes on, and when they are based on the (distant) past and an anticipated future that may never come? The perceptible absence of disaster is a specific problem. It becomes a ‘phantom’ as one cadet described it, a ‘fantasy’. The longer a disaster remains absent, the harder Civil Protection must work to stay relevant. 12 | The threat of nuclear holocaust has waned, and the focus of the organisation is instead on preparing for other kinds of disaster. In Zivilschutz’s near-60-year existence, Switzerland has suffered flooding, the 1965 Mattmark disaster – when 88 workers constructing a dam were killed in an avalanche – and the 1986 Schweizerhalle environmental disaster, when poisonous chemicals were discharged into the Rhine after a fire at a storage depot... ‘‘ ’’
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