The Disaster Management Cycle (Part 1)

Our televisions continue to be flooded with images of destruction and distress from Haiti and increasingly criticism of the international aide response is being heard. There are reports of critical planes being diverted to the Dominican Republic as other apparently less urgent planes are allowed to land in Port au Prince and of relief materials lying unused at the airport as logistics and priority foul-ups slow their urgent distribution.

The scale of the disaster in such a small area seems almost unprecedented with news reports this morning citing a figure of 150,000 bodies recovered so far in the capital alone. To put this in some perspective the terrible 1985 earthquake that impacted upon Mexico city is generally considered to have cost 9,500 lives; the Kobe, Japan quake in 1995, 5,500; Gujarat India 2001, 20,000; Pakistan 2005, 86,000; Sichuan Province, China 2008 88,000. Only the 2004 Sumatran earthquake and related tsunami has cost more lives (228,000) since an enormous quake in China in 1976.

The final total for the Haiti quake including areas outside the capital has yet to be estimated of course and its prominence in this terrible regard may yet worsen. What is clear however, is that the shallow nature of the quake, so near to a major population centre and in such a poor country are factors that have combined to devastating effect.

Today the international media has reported a senior Italian relief official as being highly critical of the response to date in particular with regard to the strategic approach and inter-agency coordination. Others are now questioning as to whether lessons have been properly learnt by the international agencies following the 2004 Tsunami and speculating whether the recovery and reconstruction phase will be any better managed.

What is being referred to here is the broader integrated response to disaster scenarios typically referred to as the disaster management cycle. In its most simple iteration this is considered to have four phases: i). Response, ii). Recovery, iii). Mitigation and iv). Preparedness.

This is often also referred to as the 4 “Rs” of disaster management (Response, Recovery, Readiness and Reduce).

In Haiti they are still very much in the response phase, though the time of active search for survivors has now officially ended, the medical response needs are still extensive and quite long term. Planning will however already be under way for the recovery phase, with funds being pledged and reconstruction programmes planned. Mitigation in the Haiti context will likely focus on matters such as: improved building codes, limitations on areas that can be developed for residential use to avoid higher risk terrain etc… Preparedness will focus on lessons to be learnt, e.g. How could the response have been managed better? How can the public be educated and thus better prepared to cope should such a catastrophe strike again? What plans and emergency protocols can be integrated into the local development and government sectors to minimize the impact of a future earthquake and so on…

Sadly reconstruction, mitigation and preparedness are not so “news worthy” and one can expect the CNN, BBC (etc…) camera lights to fall dark in Haiti soon enough. So we will not get such an insight in to that process except perhaps for a visit on the anniversary of the event. These stages are however vitally important if the loss of life is to be minimized in future events and hence do merit attention and coverage.

The GFDRR project just commencing now in Seychelles is directly addressing the mitigation and preparedness phases of the disaster management cycle and in future posts we will return to this topic and set the various project activities in this context.

Do check back periodically for updates.

Earthquakes

The news over the last week has of course been full of the tragic events in Haiti. The shallow epicentre of the quake right below a major population centre in such a poor country is proving to be a truly catastrophic combination. This has led many in Seychelles to look up at the densely populated hills around the capital Victoria and think of the impacts such a quake would cause in our context.


Seychelles, however, is blessed by its location in many ways: isolated from continental landmasses it is still thankfully devoid of several of the most problematic tropical diseases, it lies outside the cyclone belt and critically, in the context of seismic activity, a long way from the edge of the African tectonic plate (see image in sidebar).

The vast majority of seismic activity – earthquakes and volcanoes occur along the edge of tectonic plates (see sidebar). The earth’s surface is made up of a series of plates that are in constant motion due to the convection currents originating in the earth’s core. Plates may be:

• forced apart by a magma upwelling or “rift” such as is the case in the Indian ocean between the African and the Indo-Australian plate;
• forced together resulting, in oceanic situations, with one plate being forced (subducted) under the other and destroyed as the rock melts back to magma or in terrestrial situations the land may be forced and buckled upward as is the case in the formation of the Himalayas with the Indian plate, with the sub-continent at is forefront, forcing into the Eurasian plate.
• sliding past one another causing enormous frictional forces the energy arising from this being released by earthquake events. This is the case for Haiti, where the “small” Caribbean plate is surrounded by the enormity of the North and South American plates which are moving incrementally westwards relative to the Caribbean plate.

So the Seychelles is, as such, not vulnerable to such events though of course the 2004 Tsunami showed all too clearly how, even far distant, earthquakes can reach out their destructive power towards our islands. What many people do not realise is that this may occur more often than is generally thought as residents in Seychelles recorded the sea going in and out 17 times during the day following the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883!

For teachers or those wishing to investigate a little further there are some really good website facilities on the subject of seismic activity and earthquakes (including near real-time maps of seismic activity) try the following:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/   and  http://www.iris.edu/seismon

Addressing Landslides

Hidden beneath all the recent headlines about the big freeze in the northern hemisphere have been news items on the occurrence of land/mudslides in both Brazil and the Solomon Islands.


The slides in the Solomon Islands were following an offshore earthquake whilst those in Brazil were the results of very heavy rain. Now whilst freezing weather is clearly not a risk factor in the Seychelles, landslides are. The very steep terrain to be found in areas of the four main granite islands coupled with tropical rainfall provide the basic ingredients for landslide events.

The most famous natural disaster recorded in the human history of Seychelles is the landslide that occurred on the 12th October 1862 known locally as “La Valasse”. Accounts vary as to whether it was very heavy rain, brought on by a tropical cyclone, or a waterspout releasing its contents on the mountainside, either way, a huge landslide resulted. Originating from the east face of the Trois Frères mountains, sweeping down a swathe of land along the St Louis river valley, the boulders, mud and debris battered into the parts of the town of Victoria below. Many lives were lost and much infrastructure engulfed and submerged.

Looking at the photos of the landslide that took place at the beach resort of “Angra Dos Reis” on the island of “Ilha Grande” in Brazil I was struck by the similarity with the Seychelles scenario (see photo in sidebar). The landslide has occurred leaving the bare rock face – or glacis as we would call it locally – behind. Local readers will recall exactly the same thing happening, though on a much smaller scale, on the Beau Vallon Baie by-pass road a few years ago. What happens of course is quite simple, with very heavy rainfall the soil saturates and water actually starts to flow down the rock surface underneath the soil. This serves to lower the friction coefficient between the soil and the mountainside whilst increasing the weight of the soil. If sufficient water flows the soil and boulders can actually begin to slip down over the surface of the rock due to gravitational force.

A more gradual occurrence of this is one of the underlying problems affecting and causing great concern at the Vista-do-Mar estate in recent years.

One of the key activities of the GFDRR project in Seychelles will be a geological survey of the 3 main inhabited islands in order to assess the stability of steep hillsides in particular those that host or are above key residential and infrastructure areas. The findings of this work will enable better guidance to be provided to developers that are building in such areas and also allow the level of risk to be reduced or mitigated in existing developed areas.

These aspects of risk assessment and reduction are a key component of the raison d’etre of the Department of Risk and Disaster Management and the results of this study, when undertaken, should help provide a risk baseline upon which their other activities can be designed and targeted.

Seychelles’ Disaster Preparedness and Response Project Receives National Press Coverage

The Seychelles Nation Newspaper carried an article on Monday January 1st regarding the New DRDM GFDRR project.

To read the article, simply click on the image below to enlarge it.

Alternatively the article can be accessed on the Nation website by following the below link and then using the search tool for articles published on the 4th January 2010.

Seychelles Nation Website