Question

How does emergency management learn from history? Give some examples.

What are the threats you believe are most likely to create an incident in your community?

Answer 1

" We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives would'nt have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness"

- Petra Nemcova

The emergency situations often do not give an opportunity to plan a solution as its effect is huge and destructive within no time. The emergency situations that occur include earthquakes, floods, hurricanes etc. These natural disaster occured in the past have been deeply studied by the scientist which have laid to the formaulation of various preparatory methods to handle the destructive effects of these disasters. For example: the hurricane in the history have shown to occur in different months of year in different areas. The disaster declaration data visualization of the present and history is compared. This helps to take action for those hazards by creating a family paln, signing up for local alerts and updating the emergency supplies.

Another example is the Cyclones in the sea coast area which brings a massive destruction in the community. In history the cyclones were completely unpredictable. Therefore the preparedness of the community to face such a disaster was nill. But with the advances in technology, various equipments to alert the possibililty of cyclones, devices to measure the severity and the areas which will be affected can be analyzed earlier. Therefore, it can help to give alert signals at the sea coast and also to plan evacuation of the risk areas.

Example of earthquake can well explain how emergency management learn from history. The earthquake prone areas like Mexico have developed special houses which can withstand the effects of earthquake. This advanced technology was developed by studying the various negative impacts of earthquake on houses that have occured in history.

Although various technology have been developed for early recognization of a natural disaster by the alert system is still being monitored by the human hands. Lack of proper comminication or improper use of alert system will contribute to create an incident in the community. Contributing to this is the lack of adequate supplies and resources to manage the situation.To explain this I will frame the example of the cyclone that hit Kerala recently in sea coast. After the cyclone caused several deaths in the sea coast of Kerala, the general population complained that no alert about the cyclone was given prehand. They received the alert signals minutes before the incident took place due to which the evacuation had been effected. They also complainted that they have inadequate supplies of life saving jackets. Inspite of repeated reminders to the governmental agencies, no action has been taken to provide adequate supply of life jacket. This shows that how the improper communication and inadequate cooperation of government led to the occurence of an incident in the community.