Ian Wilderspin, Head of Disaster Risk Management Unit, Bangkok, Thailand
"Why didn’t we know?"
Seldom has a single question echoed in so many languages around the world as after the tsunami of the 26 December last year.
As we commemorate six months since the worst natural disaster of modern times, survivors, governments and aid agencies are still coming to terms with an enormously complex emergency.
Just this month, we heard with dismay and trepidation the news from leading seismologists that other major earthquakes could spark tsunamis in the same region. An anxious world waits with feelings that go beyond borders and nationalities – feelings of grief, frustration, anger and despair. Disaster preparedness professionals share these feelings because lives undoubtedly could have been saved through better risk reduction measures.
It is this painful insight that forces survivors to keep asking why they didn’t know, why they were not prepared. The main reason is because the investment - relatively little compared with the vast amounts now required to repair the damage – was simply not there. As an unprecedented outpouring of generosity from donors around the world has provided assistance to millions of tsunami-affected people, many of us felt a greater sense of frustration as a fraction of this money could have saved many lives.
The right, not only to information in times of natural disasters, but also of how to better prepare needs to be addressed if lives are to be saved in the future.
Disasters strike in different ways and at different times, but when they occur, people in the affected communities will be the ones who undertake the immediate response and provide emergency relief to others. Therefore, it is vital that they know what to do and have reasonable resources to cope with emergency situations. Nevertheless, the vital task of saving lives must start earlier, through identifying risks such as the people, buildings and facilities that are vulnerable to disaster.
The international debate and action to develop early warning systems in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster is welcome, as it increases public awareness of the importance of disaster preparedness. Even so, the tendency to focus on satellite technology and telecommunications risks overshadowing the key to successful disaster preparedness – the people living in high risk areas themselves.
All too often those for whom disaster warning systems are designed have little faith in the warnings. This may be due to a human inclination to ignore what appears inconvenient at the time, to a general misunderstanding of the warning system, or frustration with yet another false alarm. Still it underlines the importance of an early warning system being people-centred and community-based. The knowledge, skills and capacities of people in disaster-prone areas should be understood, valued and built upon.
We must also ensure that the warning systems being put in place are designed for a variety of hazards, not just for the rarer tsunami events, but importantly for the more frequent floods, typhoons, droughts, landslides and epidemics – the easily forgotten disasters – that erode the social and economic well being of an estimated 255 million people annually. These people have a right to know.
Many of these disasters can be prepared for and, when they do strike, managed. This is well proven in disaster-prone countries, including Indonesia, where over 100 such disasters have occurred over the last three years. Most of these did not make headlines, though they did wreck lives.
In Bangladesh, the Red Crescent has long invested in cyclone preparedness. In Vietnam, Red Cross public awareness campaigns have informed hundreds of thousands of primary school children and families how best to behave when floods strike. Research shows us that in disaster-prone areas, good training, planning and evacuation rehearsals, along with some basic equipment can be the difference between life and death.
We will never be able to stop natural disasters from occurring but we can do much more to reduce the risk to vulnerable communities that lie in their path. Resources in advance of a disaster will cost us much less than efforts to repair damage later and no effort should be spared to save every life possible.
Ian Wilderspin
Head of Disaster Risk Management Unit (DRMU)
Southeast Asia Regional Delegation
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Ian has been the Head of the DRMU of the Federation for the past three years. For four years prior to this, he was the Federation Disaster Preparedness Delegate in Vietnam. Before joining the Federation, Ian worked with Oxfam GB and Save the Children Fund (UK) for over four years and has field experience in Pakistan, Afghanistan, northern Iraq, Sudan, Vietnam and Thailand.