Are we prepared for disasters?

 By JAMES LARAKI

THE report of the Papua New Guinea Defence Force and the Australian Defence Force joining heads to work out procedures for conducting relief efforts during a crisis is welcome and timely.

PNG has been and continues to be prone to many forms of disasters. 

There are reports of some 45,000-plus people affected by flooding triggered by continuous heavy rains in Southern Highlands and Gulf.

A warning has been issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) of a possible El Nino event. This is expected to happen any time from now and is predicted to last for at least three months. 

According to NWS projections, it may go beyond this year depending on its severity. This could mean many communities will experience prolonged dry spell, as experienced during the last El Nino event during 1997/98.

Crisis situations continue to test our level of preparedness and capacity to respond effectively. The projected El Niño event will impact on many communities. The consequences are many; including loss of life, and damage to properties and environment. 

It can devastate communities. They will be left vulnerable, having limited or no access to some of life’s essentials such as food, water and other necessities to sustain life. They will be left to face the uncertainty of seeing their livelihoods destroyed or severely affected. 

Reports relating to the 1997-98 incident indicate by November 1997, at least 150,000 people were in life threatening situation with no food other than dwindling bush or famine food. 

Some 175,000 people were eating only small amounts of rapidly diminishing garden food. Over 500,000 people across the highland provinces, remote low lands and other outer islands, had insufficient food to live on. 

By February 1998, some 260,000 people had almost nothing to eat, 980,000 faced food shortages and most seed material had been consumed. 

This is despite large quantities of seed/seedlings were needed in the affected areas for the recovery process.

This calls for extra efforts towards preparedness so that our communities are better prepared to cope with what confronts them. 

Disaster preparedness efforts ensure us to prepare for and reduce effects of disasters. That means we must have the capacity to predict disasters, mitigate their impacts on vulnerable communities and respond to and effectively cope with their consequences.

Disaster preparedness provides us a platform to design effectively, more realistic and coordinated planning, reduces duplication of efforts, and increases the overall effectiveness of our response efforts. It is a continuous and integrated process covering wide ranging activities and resources. Disaster preparedness is not achievable from the efforts of an individual agency or sector; it requires the contributions of all players. 

A number of gaps need to be addressed to build capacity on many fronts. The NWS, for example, needs to have the necessary capacity to collect climatic data, and analyse them. 

This will allow it to predict disasters and devise early warning systems. Lack of climatic data has been an ongoing issue for some time and this cannot go on forever. This data is essential in our planning and response efforts in vulnerable areas.

Provinces and LLGs need to establish resource centres which can provide necessary farmer training on crop/livestock production including irrigation, food processing and storage and to multiply planting materials to distribute to communities for agricultural rehabilitation during post-drought.    

Following the 1997/98 El Nino-La Nina, over 100,000 families were in need of planting materials

Developing a drought preparedness and response plan by all concerned becomes handy. This off course should tie up with the national disaster plan. Such a plan is essential to guide all concerned, including their roles towards mitigation, preparedness, and response efforts. 

Local communities must be engaged at all stages. Their participation will ensure our efforts are felt at the community level.

Food shortage becomes a major concern in any disaster situation. Unfortunately, we do not have food reserves (food banks), something which is very essential and exists in many countries. It may not possible to look in this soon but certainly is something we should consider in the long run. This is necessary because food aid may not be forthcoming in the future where   donor countries may not have such surplus.

An El Niño will impact many rural communities. 

Lack of or poor infrastructure will make access to many rural communities difficult. These could affect responses efforts, either not reaching them on time or not at all. 

More than 1.3 million people were affected to varying degrees mainly due to lack of food during the 1997/98 incident. 

This is expected to be higher with the increase in population (seven million) compared to that time. Our efforts will require improvement to meet the increase. Cost is expected to be higher than US$9,173,000 as reported for 1997/98. 

The task is enormous but can be achievable if all concerned work together. 

It is essential to prepare and plan ahead, review experiences of past encounters, and identify where we need to improve.