National Disaster Mismanagement Plan

Since the beginning of time, the reservoirs of water have always provided a substrate for the establishment and progress of human civilizations. Oceans are as vast as the affection of motherhood while rivers act like responsible but strict fathers, they feed well but hit hard. Besides maintaining aquatic life and providing a source of irrigation for agriculture, rivers also serve as conduits for transport. They provide food and also help grow crops but may also be responsible for extensive havoc even ripping entire communities of existence.

The disasters caused by the rivers are not entirely controllable but it is quite possible to manage the effects of disasters optimally, provided that a comprehensive management plan is devised and implemented in a true sense. It is a frequent occurrence yet whenever a flood hits, we are always caught unprepared resulting in such extensive damage to life and property that its effects are faced by generations.

Mitigation is mainly a set of precautions and is the first step of a disaster management plan. There should be a flexible yet efficient system of distribution of volumes of water so that no route gets over-drained by controlling through dams, head works and linking canals.

For that, we need more strategically located dams which we don’t have at this time. The constructions for domestic and business purposes should also be kept away from the reach of floods by distance or at least by elevation, and the buildings in flood-prone areas should have an architect and built that could tolerate the rage of wildly running waters.

Again, we do not have purpose-oriented and geographic-based building codes or monitoring departments, so this risk factor is also not well-managed. For flood mitigation, people can also be offered a temporary or permanent relocation. This requires a deep sense of responsibility and value for human life and financial investment but we lack both of these. So, we fail miserably at the very first step and therefore our national disaster management plans always face failure.

Preparedness is the second step in disaster management. Precise weather forecasts and flood warnings are a part of preparedness and it extends beyond making announcements over speakers. There should be a preparation to collect, mobilize and distribute the resources according to anticipated needs when the hour of turmoil finally reaches.

Evacuation awareness, plans, rehearsals and drills should be organized. Rescue points should be prepared and advertised. Volunteers should be recruited and trained to enhance the skilled manpower against the disaster. Alternate routes for access should be explored and alternate modes of communication set up temporarily. However, what is being done in the name of preparedness is a few days of get-togethers of a bunch of people from different fields with no extra supportive material being provided.

All that happens in such preparation camps is making government employees sit for an entire day, sipping tea, gossiping and waiting for the visit by higher officials so that their attendance may be marked. What can a medical or veterinary doctor do to help if he is advised to bring medicine out of the hospital stock so that when a media person comes to cover the activity of camp, there should be a few boxes of tablets and a few dozen syrups to photograph? What is the benefit of making school teachers attend such camps if no rescue drills are being carried out? The government boasts that the preparation for flood has been done by providing two boats to these camps which are supposed to cover an entire district.

Response forms the climax of the management plan. When the waters reach so close to a locality that people can see the tides and hear the roars, the response is initiated. It is the most crucial step but a lot of aspects are criminally neglected. Bread and shelter are key concerns but these are not exclusive. During peace or disasters or war, unfortunately, we could barely think beyond bread and shelter.

The response activities are also focused only on these two and we still fail at it too pathetically because people always die of hunger and lack of shelter during floods. The day we will be able to provide these necessities during disasters, we will realize the importance of other requirements that are also vital. The three most commonly neglected aspects are specific to children, women and cattle. Any disaster leads to a disruption in education delivery systems, immunization programs and children’s nutritional drives. This leads to a further drop in the proportion of school-going children and the rates of malnourishment and vaccination, all causing long-term effects.

There has never been a focused approach towards women-related issues specifically pregnancy and menstrual health. As far as cattle are concerned, we have never even thought of including them anywhere in our rescue efforts. Hundreds to thousands of animals, domestic and wild, are lost resulting in disturbance in ecosystems and a decrease in farming-related products in near future.

Recovery is the last step in the management of a disaster and it can last for years or even the entire lives of the affectees. Once the response stage is over, it is assumed that the disaster is over too but in reality, it is just the beginning of disaster for the survivors. They have to restart everything from scratch because all they are left with are physical and emotional scars. Rebuilding houses and re-establishing the sources of income at an individual level and repairing the damaged infrastructure at the government level are time-consuming and finance-demanding tasks.

During the response phase, the victims are in limelight so there is a hope to secure some assistance from fellow citizens and the government, but once it is over, nobody is available for help anymore. After major disasters that the country has suffered previously, no proper and efficient system to deal with the recovery stage has ever been developed. It is the need of the hour to make an official department to assist people through the recovery and rehabilitation stage after this flood. This stage is more important than any other stage because it affects the people who have escaped death and can also continue to haunt the survivors for life.

Natural disasters also expose a lot of social disasters. This highlight the socio-politico-economic injustices, disparities in the utilization of resources, priorities of governments, attitudes of politicians towards their people, incapacity of professionals holding technical posts, lack of rules and regulations in various departments, under-budgeting and under-financing in various fields, lack of proper record maintenance, repeated long-standing neglect in policy making and implementation and a lot of other short-comings that are heatedly debated over during these hard times.

Every time we hope that this would be the last time we suffered and that we will not let this happen again. But when another river overflows, we realize that we have been standing at the same point of unpreparedness and have made no progress at all. More importantly, we could still not decide who should be held responsible for the damage. We keep our political affiliations above everything else even above the loss of thousands of lives. Our political leader is dearer to us than an entire community that has been erased from the slate of the earth. So, the politicians escape the blame from the people. However, they manipulate such sad incidents for point scoring and the ruling people try to present themselves as saviours while the opposition portrays the officeholders as monsters.

Government servants are also above the blame because we can never dare point out a finger at them due to our colonial inferiority complex before authorities. We also suffer from forgetfulness as a nation so we are always one thrilling news headline away from ignoring the current crisis and forgetting a near past event. Sooner or later, we need to decide on the culprits and hold them accountable. We cannot keep looking at the sky and praying but doing nothing for the future. This is not the first such event and painfully writing, will not be the last.

The only thing that can save us during such times of trial is the development of a comprehensive system to tackle such natural challenges during the time of peace. We cannot fight against nature, but we can struggle for a better management strategy for the next time. If we will not do anything different after this flood, the results would be the same when another disaster hits in the future.

If nothing else, we should at least audit the progress of all the departments that were responsible for providing prevention, protection, rescue, response and a rehabilitation program. Floods might be declared as an act of nature but the mismanagement is an act of criminal neglect by men holding power and authority.