While looking into some of the articles in the Los Angeles Times, I found an article on natural disasters that does not highlight the catastrophic nature of the event, but rather that catastrophe was largely averted. It praises India for its forward thinking and preparedness for the disaster, rather than for reacting after it happened.
Last October, the largest cyclone in fourteen years passed through the eastern part of India. However, while there was considerable damage to property, there was a relatively small number of deaths in total. Despite that it hit hardest an area of over 850,000 people, only 23 people in one of the most most populous nations of the world were killed in the storm. (While it is sad that there were any deaths at all, the expectation was that there would be a great deal more deaths as a result of Cyclone Phailin.)
The reason for this small count is that India was ready for the storm before it actually occurred. People were able to flee the areas and seek refuge else where while the cyclone passed through (all the while destroying much of their livelihoods - but at least they had their lives!).
This is one of the challenges facing the political sphere of disaster relief. Though it can be said that the world is rather good at responding to disasters, many argue that we need to become better at prevention. Though obviously no one can stop a storm from coming, what happened in India provides proof that it is possible to stay ahead of the storm and prevent much of the damage and/or loss of human life. It begs the question as to why so many nations still struggle so much with the process of prevention? It is, after all, not unfeasible.
A different article, also from the Los Angeles Times, asks this same question with regards to the United States. David R. Conrad and Edward A. Thomas, writers of this article, argue for the United States government to step up their prevention programs as opposed to simply relief (which is also important, but the focus should be reducing future damages). They claim that that greater insurances, much like the ones that exist in case of floods, should be extended towards other disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. What do you think? Considering the cost of insurance in this country in the first place, would having such insurance be a good idea to prevent people from having such great losses?
John Hannigan, author of Disasters Without Borders, suggests that the reason for why systems for prevention are still so immature is due to a lack of central planning among the risk management organizations (pp. 20). He calls this disaster risk reduction (DRR), and states that there are scientists scattered in the political world for disaster reduction, but are less there for disaster risk as for environmental protection. That also raises a good question: Would having more scientists in the policy field of disaster prevention provide greater validation for the need of risk reduction? I have to wonder how, with all the advancements in society, it could be so difficult to transition to better risk reduction policies. Considering the success stories of those times when a county has been prepared for a disaster and acted accordingly, such as the case with Cyclone Phailin in India, why have these policies not yet spread through the political world? Even those most developed countries with great resources and money at their disposal for such uses struggle to transition to this way of managing natural disasters.
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