Wednesday, 4 June 2014 00:00
-
- {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
2014 marks 10 years since Sri Lanka faced its worst natural disaster in history, when the Boxing Day tsunami devastated two-thirds of the island’s coastline, leaving tens of thousands of fatalities in its wake.
The concept of disaster management and preparedness had seemed abstract until the scale of the tsunami destruction made it impossible to ignore its necessity any longer. Over the past decade, Sri Lanka has been hailed for its tsunami preparedness and early warning system that managed to evacuate coastal communities when another earthquake in Sumatra, Indonesia in 2012 raised tsunami fears again. The Ministry of Disaster Management that was set up soon after the tsunami tragedy in 2005 was mandated to preserve human life through effective prevention and mitigation of natural and man-made disasters.
It is all the more tragic then, that with the exception of timely tsunami warnings, State agencies tasked with issuing early warnings and evacuating communities in the path of impending disasters fail in their duty time and again, each time with tragic consequences, the most recent of these the 17 deaths resulting from floods and earth-slips with the onset of heavy monsoon rains in the western and south western parts of the island.
With the advent of the Disaster Management Ministry, the structural plan for emergency preparedness was issued, with different Government institutions mandated to monitor and issue early warnings in the case of different hazards. For example, Meteorology Department for weather-related issues, the National Aquatic Resources Agency (NARA) for Oceanic, Geological Surveys and Mines Bureau for seismological and National Building Research Organisation for landslides.
According to a study by the Colombo University, at the national level, there are seven national TV stations which have early warning units, seven national radio stations which have 24×7 emergency operation centres, 34 national early warning towers which pass the early warning signals to the Met Department and telephone call services are responsible to inform people about impending disasters. At the provincial level there are regional radio centres, telephone operators, disaster management coordinators, police and military communicators that are responsible for passing the message to the people. At the village level, telephone calls, early warning subcommittee and police vehicles are tasked with issuing the necessary early warnings to provide people with opportunities to evacuate or adequately prepare.
But not all of these methods and systems in place served their purpose when a bad storm claimed the lives of 50 fishermen in the Southern Province in June last year, or when the bad monsoon showers lashed at the western and south-western regions, claiming 17 lives and displacing several thousands of people in the past 48 hours. And in fact, despite the technological advances of the recent past, according to statistics from the Colombo University, over the past few decades, disaster losses in Sri Lanka have increased substantially and the country is increasingly prone to natural disasters caused by floods, cyclones, landslides, droughts and coastal erosion.
The loss of life from these early warning failures is tragic enough. But studies have also shown that the devastation caused by low-frequency, high impact events such as natural disasters have the potential to reverse years of development gains. It is necessary for State agencies tasked with the job to get the house in order on the early warning front and work to minimise tragic losses from nothing more than bad weather.
