Doug Copp III

Update January 30, 2010. Current post is Doug Copp, Dubious & Self-Promoting "Rescue Expert" Shows Up In Haiti

Recommended Reading

• Snopes.com on "Triangle of Life" and Mr. Copp
• Marla Petal's refutation of Copp's claims, and sound earthquake safety advice. Clicking www.cert-la.com/RejoinderToDougCopp.pdf will download a (PDF) document
• Voices on the Ground in Haiti: Stanford Emergency Medicine Team -- Narrative with Links to Posts

(Index: *Doug Copp: Disaster Hero or Massive Fraud? (links to the Albuquerque Journal's four-part piece criticizing Mr. Copp's actions and rebuttals of Copp's claims from the Red Cross.)
*Doug Copp II. Includes in the comments a huge, long, repetitive, blustering missive from Mr. Copp himself. In the interests of fairness, I left it up.
* Doug Copp III, a rebuttal of Doug Copp's advice from expert sources.
*Doug Copp IV, more venom from Mr. Copp and more rebuttals from those more qualified. )

Doug Copp's bad advice was front page news on the Mercury News today. I've been getting about 250 hits per day looking for him: here's the previous: Doug Copp and Doug Copp II. The highlights of today's article:

A message getting wide circulation on the Internet has alarmed rescue experts, who say it offers misleading and dangerous advice about what to do in an earthquake.

"Copp himself is a danger at disaster scenes, where he poses as a rescue worker and tries to talk his way past the barricades."--Captain Larry Collins of LA County Fire Dept

"Doug Copp? Stand clear. This guy is causing us so many problems with people who are now questioning what to do. I wouldn't hold his credibility very high.''--Harold Schapelhouman of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District

January 30, 2010: change in headline, byline, and link

http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041108/news_1n8quake.html

Earthquake safety e-mail provides dangerous advice

Man claims he's a rescue expert

By Glennda Chui, KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE, November 8, 2004

Mass e-mails are annoying, but this one could be deadly. A message getting wide circulation on the Internet has alarmed rescue experts, who say it offers misleading and dangerous advice about what to do in an earthquake.

It says that when the shaking starts, you should lie down next to something heavy and strong rather than duck under it. That is where a ``triangle of life'' will supposedly form if the building collapses -- a void where you can be safe.

``Everyone who simply `ducks and covers' when buildings collapse is crushed to death -- every time, without exception,'' says the e-mailed advice from self-styled rescue expert Douglas Copp. ``People who get under objects, like desks and cars, are always crushed.''

However, people who study survival in quakes -- and those who dig survivors out -- say this is not true. They say ``duck and cover'' is still the best practice, Copp is not credible, and people who follow his advice are putting themselves at more risk of being injured or killed.

Capt. Larry Collins, a search-and-rescue specialist with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said he has been peppered with calls and e-mails from city and school officials who wonder whether Copp is for real.``It's a serious public safety concern at this point,'' he said. ``I'm really surprised he's been allowed to go this far.''

Not only is Copp's message dangerous, Collins said, but Copp himself is a danger at disaster scenes, where he poses as a rescue worker and tries to talk his way past the barricades.

Copp, 53, says his American Rescue Team International is ``the world's most experienced rescue team.'' He claims to have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings and worked with rescuers from 60 countries. However, a series of articles last summer in the Albuquerque Journal questioned Copp's credentials and experience, including the assertion that he had been injured while rescuing people from the World Trade Center collapse.

Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Copp acted fraudulently in collecting more than $649,000 from the fund set up to compensate victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

``Doug Copp? Stand clear,'' said Harold Schapelhouman of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, who leads one of the Bay Area's three urban search-and-rescue teams. ``This guy is causing us so many problems with people who are now questioning what to do. I wouldn't hold his credibility very high.''

Defending his advice Copp says the accusations against him are lies. Although his Web site lists a San Francisco address, he said he is living in a motor home in eastern Canada and suffering from injuries to his nervous, immune and respiratory systems suffered in the World Trade Center rescue.

``Let me emphasize that I have not told one single lie, not one single exaggeration, not one single false claim, about anything whatsoever,'' Copp said.

One of the central problems with Copp's advice is that it is based on the assumption that buildings will collapse in a strong earthquake. While that is true in many places, such as Turkey and Mexico, it is not true in California, where buildings are much stronger. Here, the biggest danger is that you will be hit by falling furniture or flying debris. It also ignores the fact that even heavy objects, such as refrigerators and cars, can jump around in a powerful quake.

``Some of the things he recommends are absolutely dangerous, like getting out of your car and lying down next to the car,'' said Kimberley Shoaf, assistant director of the Center for Public Health and Disasters at the University of California-Los Angeles. If the ground shakes hard, she said, your car could end up on top of you: ``I'd rather be inside a ton of steel than under it.''

And while it is true that rescuers often find people alive in voids, there is no way to tell where those safe havens will form, she and other experts said. Every earthquake is different; so is every building collapse.

``To tell you something is going to work every time is a fantasy. Nothing is going to work every time,'' said Mark Ghilarducci, former deputy director of the state Office of Emergency Services. He is a vice president of James Lee Witt Associates, which advises governments and companies on how to deal with disasters.

He said the best advice -- something that will protect most people in most situations -- is still the drill practiced by schoolchildren: duck, cover and hold on.

The American Red Cross and the Structural Engineers Association of California also are urging people to ignore the e-mail.

Rocky Lopes, manager of community disaster education with the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C., said the ``triangle'' e-mail first surfaced in 2000, then faded away until August, when it surged back with a vengeance. He said it conflicts with advice honed over the years by 22 national organizations, which meet periodically to figure out what to tell people about surviving all types of disasters.

The message has to be simple, Lopes said. ``When people practice something that's simple to do, then during the shaking of an earthquake, when you're very frightened and the adrenaline is rushing, you'll do what you have practiced,'' he said. ``It's normal human nature to get up and run. But during an earthquake, attempting to run can actually pose a more serious threat of injury.''

Shoaf said her research indicates that if you are in bed during an earthquake, it is best to stay there until the shaking stops. The farther you try to move while the ground is shaking, the greater the chance that you will be injured, she said.

Plan ahead

Other studies show that people who take refuge in doorways are often injured when the door slams into them or crushes their fingers. For that reason, emergency officials have stopped advising people to huddle in doorways. But they say the claim in the ``triangle of life'' e-mail that everyone who gets under a doorway is killed when buildings collapse is simply not true.

Michael Durkin, a Los Angeles consultant who has studied survival in quakes, said it is important to start thinking about safety long before an earthquake strikes: Look around at the places where you spend the most time and identify possible hazards. Then figure out how to neutralize or avoid them.

``I'm not advocating that you spend your whole life looking at every setting you happen to be in,'' he said, ``but that you take the ones where you work and live, and address those.''

Comments

[knp]

I have recieved this from two friends now asking if it is legit, since I am an expatriate structural engineer currently residing where there are no earthquakes. I told both of them that most of what this man has said is bull, but did not go to any hoax sites to check it out till after I got the second one today. I went to symantec which is usually the best source, but they donot have this listed as a hoax. I do not understand why since this is obviously a matter of importance in areas where earthquakes occur. I just really want to say thanks for listing the information so that it is somewhere easy to find. I have directed both of my friends to your site to read what you posted.

[Mehmet Zaim]

Friends,
I am writing from Turkey. A real earthquake field. I have recently received that Doug Copp mail. I made a simple search using google. My conclusions are;
- This man is true
- This man has a real experience on earthquakes
- His recommmendations are based on these experiences
- American Red Cross is not refusing his recommendations. But finding on of his comments(drop, cover, and hold on method deadly) not suitable for US. Look what they're saying: "What we are saying is that "Drop, Cover, and Hold On!" is NOT wrong -- in the United States. The American Red Cross, being a U.S.-based organization, does not extend its recommendations to apply in other countries. What works here may not work elsewhere, so there is no dispute that the "void identification method" or the "Triangle of Life" may indeed be the best thing to teach in other countries where the risk of building collapse, even in moderate earthquakes, is great."

Isn't it logical and scientific to discuss his findings and recommendations. So I do not understand people attacking on him. There is a forest of problems there and you are counting the leaves of a single tree.

Good luck.

Mehmet Zaim
A friend from far away.

[Saint Nate]

Mehmet,

You got that impression about Doug Copp from one Google search? the search engines must rank differnetly in Turkey. The first result I get is probably the one KNP was looking for:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/triangle.asp

After that, we get Copp's site and a slew of debunking pieces from the ABQ Journal, Red Cross, etc.

While I won't deny that "drop, cover, and hold on" was made by an American agency for an American audience, I will deny that everyone who does it instantly dies (as Copp claims). That's a pretty audacious statement: It implies he's familiar with absoutely every case of earthquake when this was tried. And since he says he doesn't lie or exaggerate, he must either have some skewed evaluation criteria or an intelligence network that makes Santa Claus's all-seeing eyes look myopic.

Also, Copp doesn't distinguish this is only true for foreign earthquakes, although it is worth noting most of the earthquake experience he CLAIMS to have is in foreign countries. His more grandiose stories are set in Costa Rica, Kosovo, Japan, etc; while domestically he's been limited to one earthquake in California and two terrorists attacks (Oklohoma City and New York City, and don't even try to tell me terrorist attacks are anything like earthquakes). Therefore, in what way does it make sense to say he's experienced to speak of American structural systems? If anything, he makes a compelling argument against himself.

I guess I started the same way you did by researching Copp in Google, but I looked at the situation critically and ended up with the opposite conclusion.

[Dennis J. Stouffer, Ph.D.]

I am a sociologist who has had an almost life-long involvement with, and interest in, disasters, prehospital medical care, and fire service operations. Copp's observations and claims are to me highly suspect, and the tennor of his statements appear to be lavishly self-promoting. I would like to see real evidence, as opposed to his claims, of his "rescue work" at all the incidents for which he claims involvement. I would also like to know how he has financed his world-wide disaster excursions. Is he independently wealthy enough to travel all over to major earthquakes, is he funded by a legitimate organization? Until his "triangle of life" blitz occurred, I had never heared of ARTI, and I would sure like to know who decided that it is the "worlds most experienced rescue team"(if it really exists and has functioning search/rescue specialists). That overarching claim seems to me to be quite preposterous based on the numerous, highly experienced, highly trained teams both in the U. S. and abroad. Perhaps he is real, and maybe he believes his own press, and I do not doubt that in some situations some of what he suggests may be valid, but overall I certainly have significant questions about his knowledge, suggestions, experience, and credibility.

[Dave]

Next time it rains, set up a table outside. Have your friend get under the table and you stand out in the rain. See who gets wet.

Now imagine the rain as rocks falling. Where do you want to be in an earthquake under the table or out in the rain?