Let’s get earthquake relief aid moving

A STATE of emergency has been declared for the Highlands’ earthquake disaster areas in Hela, Southern Highlands, Western and Enga.
The Government, through its authorities, can now move into the areas and start the process of rescue, providing relief supplies and restoration.
Earlier this week, there was confusion between the relevant entities on what they could do and not do with the limited finance they had.
On the ground, those affected are already frustrated with the no-show of essential support.
That bewilderment, tinged with anger towards officials at local and national level, was shared at the scene of the disaster as witnessed by The National.
Officials seem to have been taken by surprise by the breakdown in communications, in every sense of the word, with mobile phones and landlines not operating.
The scenario is an indication that any form of disaster response is plagued by bureaucratic and at times political obstacles.
It is incredible, that there is no evacuation or emergency operation plan.
Most countries have had a successful response to emergencies based on planning around the management of six critical areas – communications, resources and assets, safety and security, staffing, utilities, and clinical activities.
So what went wrong with the relief effort?
Why, days after the earthquake struck, is there still chaos in terms of rescue, evacuation, distribution of relief supplies and assessment?
Still no relief supplies – shelters, canvases, and blankets.
Most of the affected people, are obviously sleeping outside because of the aftershocks
and the fear that the buildings left standing will collapse.
They will need cooking equipment as many have been buried and destroyed when their houses collapsed.
Basic medicine – painkillers and dressings for lacerations; solar lights/chargers – power remains off in many areas and lights have been badly damaged.
Phone contact network is limited and that is needed to be maintained during the response and many people in the affected region report their chargers becoming damaged or lost in the wreckage.
All emergency vehicles and assessment teams will need fuel to move around.
The call for the setup of care centres must be taken into account as the centres will become the assembly point that offers essential services such as – temporary accommodation, the distribution of used clothing, distribution of food, specialised services devoted to health, psychosocial support and personal care.
Disasters often strike with limited or no warning, and by definition they result in large-scale death, destruction and mass hysteria.
They often have long-lasting and large-scale economic, political, and psychological effects.
The questions which remain are how the current system came to be, what our expectations of the system should be and how we ought to shock the political bureaucracy into action to repair the obviously ailing system.
Changes to this point have unfailingly stemmed from the opinion that failure was a result of poor leadership, poor individual decisions and inexperience.
These “improvements” are restricted from the evident fact that the system would work better if each participating organisation were better equipped, better trained and more highly funded.