What Is Required to Manage and Respond More Effectively to Disasters and Emergencies? Discuss in Relation to International, National, and Local Response.
The first part of the 21st century was punctuated by a series of natural disasters, most notably the Indian tsunami, the earth quakes in Gujarat, India and Kashmir, Pakistan, the September 11 2004 terrorist attacks on the United States and Hurricane Katarina, Cyclone Nargis in Burma, and the Sichuan earth earthquake in China (Coppola & Maloney 2009). Reports indicate that individuals and communities struggled to cope in the aftermath of these and many other emergencies and endured a high risk of exposure to the consequences of these disasters which affected their likelihood of survival. (Coppola & Maloney 2009).
The first section of this paper presents the definition of a disaster and the subsequent sections examine basic concepts of disaster management and discusses upon those concepts to effectively manage and respond to disasters and emergences at local, national and international level. International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies( 2002, p.78) defines “disaster” as a “sudden calamitous event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. This definition illustrates that any event that overwhelms a community’s capacity to respond becomes a disaster and not all adverse events are disasters, only those that overpower communities’ response capacity become disasters. Vulnerability and capacity by communities to deal with the consequences of an event determine whether a disaster or emergency event results (Coppola & Maloney 2009).
(National Research Council Committee (NRCC), U.S.A, 2011) notes that each year millions of people fall victim to disasters, of which hundreds of thousands lose their lives. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, landslides, terrorist attacks and many others will continue overwhelm individuals and communities. Individual, local, state,
The first section of this paper presents the definition of a disaster and the subsequent sections examine basic concepts of disaster management and discusses upon those concepts to effectively manage and respond to disasters and emergences at local, national and international level. International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies( 2002, p.78) defines “disaster” as a “sudden calamitous event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. This definition illustrates that any event that overwhelms a community’s capacity to respond becomes a disaster and not all adverse events are disasters, only those that overpower communities’ response capacity become disasters. Vulnerability and capacity by communities to deal with the consequences of an event determine whether a disaster or emergency event results (Coppola & Maloney 2009).
(National Research Council Committee (NRCC), U.S.A, 2011) notes that each year millions of people fall victim to disasters, of which hundreds of thousands lose their lives. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, landslides, terrorist attacks and many others will continue overwhelm individuals and communities. Individual, local, state,