Ilan

In my knowledge of developing countries, community disaster preparedness and
mitigation tends to be triggered by recent experiences.  Poor people
concentrate on their immediate problems, not what might happen some time in
the future.  The work I've recently carried out on NGOs' involvement in this
area strongly reinforces this view.  This is why communities tend to be much
better prepared for recurrent hazards (drought, monsoon flooding) than for
occasional ones.  There's also the question of adequate information about
hazards, risk and vulnerability, which might be available in some countries
to professionals but isn't available to communities or local-level
organisations.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: This is a multidisciplinary discussion group on natural hazards
and disaste [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
Of Ilan Kelman
Sent: 06 June 2001 11:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Thinking Ahead of Disaster


I am curious if anyone could provide examples where a community has embraced
disaster prevention, mitigation, or adaptation (not planning/preparation or
response/recovery) based on hazard assessment or disaster potential and not
due to a disaster event or near-disaster.

The background to this question is that I have recently returned from
Iceland where I spent some time examining disaster management there.  I was
surprised to learn that prior to 1995, little support for avalanche loss
prevention existed.  Those who spoke of avalanches or studied them met
derision and were labelled scaremongers.  In 1995, the country was stunned
by two separate avalanches in isolated villages killing 14 people in January
and 20 people in October.  Most of the fatalities occurred in zones labelled
safe, but the disasters sparked an overhaul of Iceland's approach to
avalanches.  Since then, they have developed a world-class avalanche
monitoring and evacuation programme, using a wide variety of solutions aimed
at eliminating all avalanche deaths.

Even more surprising, perhaps, is that the Iceland Catastrophe Insurance
(ICI) programme does not seem overly concerned about a major earthquake near
Reykjavmk.  One of the principal arguments for this stance is that "There is
no historical record (which date back to...1225) of such an event".
Otherwise, they base their analysis mainly on return period calculations.
Both these methodologies often have serious dangers, as most people in our
field know.  ICI also seems uninfluenced by the fact that the two June 2000
earthquakes in the southeast were of moderate magnitude but were felt
throughout Reykjavmk.

Iceland's structures are highly earthquake-resistant and structures near the
epicentres in June 2000 suffered few catastrophic failures, clearly
protecting life.  Neither fatalities nor serious injuries occurred.  (One
engineer stated that Iceland's earthquake-resistant buildings are a
coincidence, resulting more from the climate and material availability than
from a drive to protect against earthquakes, although the minimal damage
suffered by bridges cannot be explained with the same reasoning.)  Contents,
however, were severely affected by the earthquakes.  Anecdotes suggest that
the few people who did take cheap, simple steps to protect their contents
(such as those outlined by New Zealand at
www.eqc.govt.nz/safety/homesafe.pdf) had negligible losses while others
watched cupboards empty alongside dancing appliances.  I did not encounter
much interest in promoting a change of attitude to minimise such losses and
the obvious dangers to people posed by flying dishes, microwaves, and
wardrobes.

Furthermore, we can all relate examples where the occurrence of a major
disaster fails to influence society.  For example, in the U.K. some people
still declare that a flood disaster such as that in autumn 2000 could not
recur in this generation.  Others insist that rainfall was the predominant
factor in producing the floods and societal actions such as land use, the
planning process, and misplaced faith in structural solutions had minor
influence.

One potential answer to my question is the search for NEOs (near-earth
objects; see www.nearearthobjects.co.uk and impact.arc.nasa.gov), although
collision-induced mass extinctions are hardly a secret.  Similarly, action
is being undertaken with respect to climate change, but we have a long to
way to go yet, parts of the world are currently running backwards rather
rapidly, and most of the delay in implementing proper, comprehensive action
has arguably been because we have not yet witnessed the full, disastrous
impact.

Thank you for your time,
Ilan
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