International Culture of Disaster Management

International Culture and Disaster Management

Gujarat, which is one of the India's wealthiest states, was stroked with earthquake that shook the Indian province on 26th January 2001 at around eight fifty local times. It was on Friday and a Republic day, there was a celebration to mark 50 years of India's independence. Kutch district was highly affected. Massive loss and injury was realized (Bilham, 2004). Nearly a million families were left homeless, much of the areas infrastructure which includes; school, and village health dispensaries, water supply systems and breakage of communication and power. It also damaged the states commercial capital, Ahmedabab.Quite numbers of airport staff were reported to have been killed and wounded.

Death was placed at 19,727 and those injured at 166,000.Findings showed that 600,000people were left homeless, with 348000 houses destroyed and 844000 damaged. The Indian state department roughly calculated that the earthquake affected directly or indirectly, 15.9 million people out of a whole number of 37.8 million.20,000 and above cattle were reported to have been killed .Direct economic losses amounted to $1.3 billion, other number indicate losses to be as high as $5billion.There was need to act hastily to rescue the victims. There was need of federation staff to be leveraged to estimate the size and gravity of the disaster (Bilham, 2004).

EARTHQUAKE INFORMATION

Date and time of Occurrence of Earthquake: 26 January 2001 at 8:50 AM

Magnitude: 6.9 on the Richter scale with epicentre at 20 K.M. North East of Bhuj

No of districts affected: 22 out of 26 districts

Most affected areas: Kachchh, Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Rajkot and Surendranagar.

Death toll: Around 20,000.

Affected villages: 7904 villages

Affected population: 15.9 million affected out of total population of 37.8 million

Role played by humanitarian aid organizations

The international Red Cross offered a great support in support and recovery of Gujarat Earthquake disaster the American Red Cross of central New Jersey had pronounced that the infinity foundation had started a matching grant program of $10,000 this was to be forwarded to the American Red Cross Indian earthquake relief food.

Immediately after the disaster inflict, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the international federation launched and appeal for £10million to help 300,000 people, this was budgeted to sustain them for a period of four months and support the Indian red cross emergency relief activities. Their role was to provide affected people with shelter, safe water and medical assistance. They also played a major role in flowing in special units to the region to provide essential service with inclusion of a 350-bed hospital, water and sanitary units, telecommunications teams a primary health care unit and a British Red Cross logistics team.

CARE international did not relent, they responded rapidly to assist people in need. They played a role in giving out materials for temporary shelter, clothing, cooking utensils, a kerosene cooker and water purifications tablets. CARE worked with the Indian government and other international agencies and local partners to target severe hit blocks in the Kutch regions for emergency relief to offer prompt humanitarian need and rehabilitation as a long-term goal.

WHO responded and played a role in placing the experts in emergency and humanitarian action in Ahmedabad and Bhuj.It mobilized an estimate of $1.2million through its own giving's this was to meet urgent public health needs of the affected population in Kutch district in India.

Various NGOs, national and international took part in the relief operation. After the relief period was closed many of them slowly withdrew, the reason for withdrawal was due to lack of funds to take part in reconstruction program, large and strong NGO's proceeded and got involved in rehabilitation programs. The government played an important role advocating for NGO's to adopt a particular village for rehabilitation. The governments supported by contributing a half of the cost of rehabilitation.

Sources of funding for reconstruction included:

Through Multilateral loan funding from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

From the corporate sector and NGOs

From the Government of India and the Government of Gujarat.

Through grants and loans of bilateral agencies.

Through the prime ministers and chief minister's relief funds

From insurance companies, banks and financial institution

Reconstruction activities.

UN system plays a major role in responding to various disasters, the progressing programmers of the UN family have provided the organization with an expansion in a broad variety of activities in India .UN has built up networks of NGOs partners with strong field participation.

The World Bank and Asian Development Bank has done a great job in reconstruction in the Indian state.

Culture of preparedness

Disaster risk management refers to the systematic process of using administrative decisions, organization operating skills and knowledge to implement rules and regulations, strategies and duplicating capacities of the society and communities to lessen the impacts of natural hazards and related environment technological disaster (Bilham, 2004).

The essential role that disaster preparedness lays is in saving lives and livelihoods especially when integrated into an overall disaster risk reduction approach.

It also increases capacity to predict, monitor, and prepared to reduce damage or deal with potential threats and strengthening preparedness to act upon in an emergency, hence assisting those who have been severely affected.

Preparedness is essential and effective since early warnings can be detected with application of sound scientific information and risk knowledge in place and being able to communicate.