US can learn from Tsunami nations
- From: "Di Da Di" <didadi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 19:48:59 -0700
One of the most important lessons that one can pick is the set up of cooking
centre and toilet centre so that people can queue for hot food and water to
bath. In asian community context one can often see during big family party
like wedding that that a few field tents are set up for the wedding ceremony
and guest dining tables, portable toilets away from it, a tent for the
centralised cooking,and so on. Perhaps American have not anticipated the
preparations of such needs in the history of america..
Tsunami nations lend disaster advice to U.S.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050905/us_nm/asia_tsunami_dc
By Ed CropleyMon Sep 5, 6:55 AM ET
Police in the United States must not rush to identify the bodies of
Hurricane Katrina victims too quickly or they will run the risk of countless
mistakes, the head of Thailand's tsunami identification operations said on
Monday.
"They need to examine the bodies slowly and put all the data into a
computer," said Nopadol Somboonsub, a police general in charge of the
Thailand Tsunami Victims Identification Center on the southern resort island
of Phuket.
"It's very important to get it right. You cannot assume that this or that
body is the right body simply because a relative identified it," he said,
adding that identity theft and life insurance fraud were realities in the
wake of massive disasters.
As the head of the largest forensics operation in history, trying to put
names to the 5,395 bodies of at least 25 nationalities left in Thailand by
the Indian Ocean disaster, Nopadol does not speak without authority.
Nor is he alone in Asia in seeing the TV images of bloated corpses in New
Orleans and death tolls estimated in the thousands and thinking how the
experiences of the region after the December 26 tsunami might help the
United States after Katrina.
In India, where officials say the grassroots are the key to successful
relief operations, some felt the United States -- the world's most powerful
nation -- might have slipped up by thinking itself a match for anything
Mother Nature could muster.
"In a disaster, the biggest fallibility can be to think you are experts.
Disasters have a way of humbling even the mightiest," said one senior Indian
official at the heart of New Delhi's tsunami response.
"In India, for all its vastness, we have a very easily operable contingency
plan for disasters at the grassroots level. It is not a highly complicated
national response system," said the official, who asked not to be
identified.
"A person at the grassroots level knows that sandbags have to be organised,
identifies likely places of breaches, plans clearing debris and setting up
relief camps and cooking centres," he said.
"From what I have read about Katrina, it doesn't seem to have happened this
way there. They seemed to have focused on Florida and got caught unawares in
New Orleans," he said.
"STAY FOCUSED"
Budi Atmadi, head of relief operations in the Indonesian province of Aceh,
which bore the brunt of the killer tsunami waves, said rescue workers must
not let criticism from victims, politicians or the media deflect them from
their jobs.
"The early days after the disaster are always panic situations," said
Atmadi, the deputy secretary of Bakornas BPB, Indonesia's equivalent of the
U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
"In that period, the blame game is rampant because one person will always
say the relief has been slow while another says there are so many
limitations," said Atmadi. "The blame game will always be there so your ears
need to be thick.
"The important thing is to stay committed and put humanitarian concerns at
the top."
In a sign of solidarity with the United States, which sent a massive
military relief effort after the tsunami, Indonesia's chief welfare minister
Alwi Shihab plans to fly to New Orleans with 5,000 blankets and 30 medical
officials.
Disaster workers in Sri Lanka, where the tsunami killed 40,000 people and
left another million homeless, said it was vital that anybody who can help
does so -- an ingredient they saw as vital to ensuring the death toll did
not rise higher.
Buddhist temples, churches and schools became makeshift shelters in the days
following the disaster, ordinary Sri Lankans fanned out to help and
companies managed relief camps.
"People collected foodstuffs, clothing and everything was rushed down to
those areas to be delivered to the people. I think that really was the
success story here," said Rohini Nanayakkara, deputy head of TAFREN, the
country's tsunami reconstruction body.
"The people in those areas themselves, they helped in the relief operation.
The fishermen themselves, they got together and rescued the bodies, took
them to hospitals," she said. "The private sector got involved in a big
way."
(Additional reporting by Simon Gardner in COLOMBO, Achmad Sukarsono in
JAKARTA and Y.P. Rajesh in NEW DELHI)
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