Dear RADIX’ers, Hazards network readers, GDN members as well as Hola and abrazos fuertes, companero/as de la Red,

You are probably aware by now of both the large floods and many landslides that have affected Mexico and the very bad earthquake that affected Pakistan earlier today.

I am sorry to say this brings me, and doubtless Maureen, back to the sickening events in Gujarat and El Salvador that caused us to launch RADIX in 2001.

I am just catching up with the Pakistan situation where I am, Greenwich minus five hours.  My thanks to Ilan Kelman, who was also involved with the founding of RADIX and maintains the excellent web site and list server, Disaster Diplomacy, who alerted me to the earthquake and to others for posting updates.  

I grieve for the people injured, who have lost loved ones and friends, who feel the anger and frustration of KNOWING how homes, schools, health centres can be retrofitted or built more strongly, how communities can prepare, and still see this pattern of destruction and loss again and again.

This earthquake and the Mexican bi-coastal flooding I wrote about to Gender and Disaster Network and other places a few days ago are not NATURAL.  No disaster is 'natural'.  There are root causes and dynamic pressures pushing the affected people into situations of vulnerability and, again, for those with applicable knowledge of school safety, etc., into situations that block effective use of their capacities.  

We have to convince UNISDR and, especially, UNISDR's financial supporters (some of whom are quite skeptical about UNISDR's performance) that HFA2 has got to include these root causes and dynamic pressures among the currently bland and superficial list of 'underlying risk factors' in HFA1.

Who has the ear of anyone advising UNISDR on HFA2?  Who will be writing and sending ideas for GAR 2015?

In both sorrow and in anger,

BEN