Eyecatchers-146: Disaster Management

...Bangladesh lost more than 500,000 people during Cyclone Bhola in 1970. It subsequently built 2500 cyclone shelters on elevated concrete platforms and trained more than 32,000 volunteers to help in evacuations. When Cyclone Sydr struck in 2007 with an enormous sea surge, the death toll was less than 4000.

Cyclone Nargis, a similar event in unprepared Myanmar in May 2008, cost 140,000 lives.

Cuba weathered four hurricanes in 2008. It sustained $9 billion of physical damage but very few lives were lost.

The evidence is overwhelming. Yet the lessons of these disasters are forgotten with depressing speed. Many governments have failed to follow through on the practical measures Hyogo proposes. (The Hyogo Framework for Action, a 10-year plan to make the world safer from disasters triggered by natural hazards, was adopted by 168 governments in 2005).

Some states argue that they cannot afford to embrace the prevention model. I say no country afford to ignore it.

We know prevention actually saves governments money in the long run. When China spent $3.15 billion on reducing the impact of floods between 1960 and 2000, it averted losses estimated at about $12 billion.

Similar savings have been recorded in Brazil, India, Vietnam and elsewhere.

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Excerpt from "Do not wait for disaster to strike" by Ban ki-moon, Secretary General, United Nations, in The Hindu, Trichy, March 27.3.2010.

For reading the Full Text of
Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015:
Building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters (HFA)
http://www.unisdr.org/eng/hfa/hfa.htm

Grateful thanks to The Hindu, U.N.Information Centre, New Delhi and UNISDR.