Disaster Management

 

 

 

Disaster Management is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks. It is a discipline that involves preparing for disaster before it occurs and supporting and rebuilding society after the natural or human made disasters have occurred.

 

Disaster Management has largely replaced Civil defense whose original focus was protecting civilians from military attack. Modern thinking focuses on a more general intent to protect the civilian population in times of peace as well as in times of war.

 

Different Meaning of Disaster Management:

The United Nations defines a disaster as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society. Disasters involve widespread human, material, economic or environmental impacts, which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

 

The Red Cross and Red Crescent societies define disaster management as the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters.

 

Types of disasters

There is no immunization  from disaster, though vulnerability to disaster varies in different countries. There are four main types of disaster.

Natural disasters: including floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcano eruptions that have immediate impacts on human health and secondary impacts causing further death and suffering from floods, landslides, fires, tsunamis.

Environmental emergencies: including technological or industrial accidents, usually involving the production, use or transportation of hazardous material, and occur where these materials are produced, used or transported, and forest fires caused by humans.

Complex emergencies: involving a break-down of authority, looting and attacks on strategic installations, including conflict situations and war.

Pandemic emergencies: involving a sudden onset of contagious disease that affects health, disrupts services and businesses, brings economic and social costs.

 

Phases of Disaster Emergency Management:

The process of Emergency Management involves four phases-

• Mitigation
• Preparedness
• Response
• Recovery

 

Mitigation: 

Mitigation efforts attempt to prevent hazards from developing into disasters altogether or to reduce the effects of disasters when they occur. These are activities designed to provide permanent protection from disasters. Not all disasters, particularly natural disasters, can be prevented, but the risk of loss of life and injury can be mitigated with good evacuation plans, environmental planning and design standards. Mitigation is the most cost efficient method for reducing the impact of hazards, however it is not always suitable.

 

The implementation of mitigation strategies can be considered as  a part of the recovery process if it is applied after the disaster occurs. Mitigation includes providing regulations, regarding evacuation, sanctions against those who refuses to obey the regulations and communication of potential risks to the public.

 

Preparedness:

Preparedness is a continuous cycle of planning , organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluation of activities to ensure effective coordination and enhancement of capabilities to prevent , recover,  mitigate against natural, acts of terrorism and manmade disasters. These activities are designed to minimize loss of life and damage – for example by removing people and property from a threatened location and by facilitating timely and effective rescue, relief and rehabilitation. Preparedness is the main way of reducing the impact of disasters. 

 

Disaster preparedness is a continuous and integrated process resulting from a wide range of risk reduction activities and resources rather than from a distinct sect oral activity by itself. It requires the contributions of many different areas-ranging from training and logistics, to health care, recovery, livelihood to institutional development.

 

Disaster preparedness tools:

International Federation Approach: The national societies are built up to prioritize disaster preparedness and its overall programming efforts.

Community Preparedness: The community should be made aware and given an idea of what resources need to be in place to respond to a particular kind of event.

Early Warning : Development and Exercise of emergency population warning methods combined with emergency shelters and evacuation plans.

Better Programming Initiatives: Communication Plans with easily understandable terminology and methods.

Contingency Planning: Contingency planning aims to prepare an organization to respond well to an emergency and its potential humanitarian impact.

 

Response: 

The primary aims of disaster response are rescue from immediate danger and stabilization of the physical and emotional condition of survivors. These go hand in hand with the recovery of the dead and the restoration of essential services such as water and power. How long this takes varies according to the scale, type and context of the disaster but typically takes between one and six months and is composed of a search and rescue phase in the immediate aftermath of a disaster followed by a medium-term phase devoted to stabilizing the survivors’ physical and emotional condition.

 

Many times  the situation may be compounded by a secondary threat, such as earthquake aftershocks or epidemics. It is essential that disaster response activities do not make a bad situation worse by fostering dependency or destroying existing community-support mechanisms. Rather, they should lay the foundations for the subsequent recovery of the affected population. Disaster situations are highly fluid, evolve rapidly and therefore require a close degree of coordination and cooperation between those involved in the response, including the affected community itself.

 

Recovery: 

The aim of the recovery phase is to restore the affected area to its previous state . It differs from the response phase in its focus  as it is concerned with the issues and decisions which are made after the immediate needs are addressed. Recovery is used to describe the activities that encompass the three overlapping phases of emergency relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction. 

 

Rehabilitation: Rehabilitation includes the provision of temporary public utilities and housing as interim measures to assist long-term recovery. Reconstruction: Reconstruction attempts to return communities to improved pre-disaster functioning. It includes such as the replacement of buildings; infrastructure and lifeline facilities so that long-term development prospects are enhanced rather than reproducing the same conditions, which made an area or population vulnerable in the first place. 

 

Development: In an evolving economy, the development process is an ongoing activity. Long term prevention/disaster reduction measures for examples like construction of embankments against flooding, irrigation facilities as drought proofing measures, increasing plant cover to reduce the occurrences of landslides, land use planning, construction of houses capable of withstanding the onslaught of heavy rain/wind speed and shocks of earthquakes are some of the activities that can be taken up as part of the development plan.

 

Shruti Kapoor (Sood), B.Com (Insurance Hons.)F.I.I.I.