Emergency management is a broad topic, but in specific it is represented by “the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters” (FEMA). This in summary means that when a disaster occurs within a city, state, or country, it can be a threat to the loss of life, property, and the environment in many different ways. That is why it is important to be prepared, mitigate the possible risks, and understand the importance of the response and recovery processes. Therefore, the emergency management operations have to be specific to the each local areas’ specific characteristics and needs. This is the instance in all three of these disasters: the Haiti Earthquake, Myanmar Cyclone Nargis, and the Japan Tohoku Earthquake.
The first event is the Haiti Earthquake in 2010, which impacted the Republic of Haiti with a strong magnitude 7 earthquake. This was centered near the city of Léogane, and resulted in major infrastructure damage and many displaced without food, water, and shelter. Pre-disaster, the country, had poor conditions which left the cities defenseless to the spreading of disease and other vulnerabilities. After the earthquake, a disease known as Cholera, spread rapidly throughout leaving many traumatized or dead. The local emergency managers were challenged with hazards left behind in the rubble, the large displacement of citizens, and extending vulnerability to the disease Cholera (DesRoches et al., 2011).
These unique characteristics were important to the specifics of how the emergency management structure would play out. Some of the local elements that influenced this were where Haiti is located and the weak government institution. In a poverty-stricken area, these factors can be the driver of the disaster and contribute to the consequences. The first phase of emergency management, mitigation, is deeply influenced by poverty, especially since efforts usually involve money and time. However it can create safer communities with higher building codes and stronger infrastructure.
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In Haiti, the local government and its citizens were spread thin with economic resources. This caused the mitigation phase to be neglected therefore causing much of the infrastructure damage, along with sick and displaced citizens following the earthquake. This could have been avoided by investing money into the mitigation and health plans so that they could break the never ending cycle of destruction. The next phase, preparedness, allows citizens to prepare for disasters with procedures and proper equipment. With better preparedness Haiti could have curbed any health problems and infrastructure issues. The local areas did not have stable health care and medical professionals due to poverty and educational shortages.
Only about half of the Haitian population was prepared with efficient health care and medical access, which was beneficial for the more fortunate during the Cholera outbreak. Even before the earthquake on a small percentage of citizens had access to potable water and caused many people to drink from rivers that were likely contaminated leading to far more diseased citizens (Tappero & Tauxe, 2011). Within better preparedness tactics in play the state of Haiti could have made the outbreak not necessary inevitable, but less extreme. Though these tactics and resources are hard to come by in a poverty-stricken country. Next, response in Haiti was not neglected, but slow and hindered by the poor socio-economic standing.
Due to the extent of the damage, both the government of Haiti and international responses had massive challenges. They had limited access to the nearby ports and airports, and did not have a certain protocol of response to natural disasters to follow. The Port-au-Prince and Carrefour were damaged by the earthquake due to poor infrastructure and in response led to a hindered response by other countries. The main groups to play a key role in the response of Haiti was the UN, U.S. Armed Forces, and Haitian government officials.
Later in the response, it was clear that the Haiti government and officials were not prepared and too weak for such a disaster. This allowed for the other groups to take a role in providing food and shelter to victims, providing relief services, and taking over airport operations. This clearly bled over to the recovery efforts of the Haitian government as well. They were not well equipped due to the poverty, and could not be fully in charge. This last branch of emergency management was neglected, but should have been in place to gain strength back the communities infrastructure and employment while having some normalcy.
The UN Habitat decided that the best way for the country to gain this normalcy was to resettle the displaced Haitians in the same area they once lived. This will allow citizens to return to their homes in the daytime and continue the efforts of rebuilding, but during the night time they went back to where they are displaced. People preferred to stay in the tents at night due to the uncertainty of the infrastructure levels, and due to economic issues this continued a year after the disaster. Due to disaster aid agencies providing the necessities of clean water and food, the diseases dropped after the earthquake.
Though the response and recovery efforts were mostly without the Haitian government it is shown that due to the economic and infrastructure issues this caused some heartache and slowed efforts (DesRoches et al., 2011). Some of the unique characteristics of Haiti such as where it is located, how poor the country was, and the weakened government played a large role in the emergency management efforts.
The second event, the Myanmar Cyclone Nargis, which struck the city of Myanmar in May of 2008 was a category three cyclone. This affected more than just the surrounding cities, but also the environments and ecosystems. The impacts included Yangon, the country’s largest city, and is known as the worst natural disaster in history. This is due to the insane amount of deaths by both storm surge and inadequate emergency management (United Nations Environment Programme, 2009). The unique characteristics to Myanmar that influenced the local disaster relief was the already weakened environment and socio-economic turmoil of the city. The country was known as a high-risk, low-income developing area due to the issues prevailing for many years (“Another Nargis Strikes Every Day”, 2014).
The surrounding communities in the Myanmar area did not mitigate or prepare to the extent that was needed to suffice in a natural disaster. There was a huge lack of awareness and knowledge about cyclones and the importance of natural resource management. Before the cyclone, most of the communities had little to no access to this due to lack of human and financial resources. There was also a major lack in investing in technology and education. There was also a lack of non-governmental organizations needed to fill the gaps of educating the citizens.
These elements combined with poverty and lack of access to resources led to an ill prepared country. The deterioration of the environment also did not help in preparing the area for natural disasters, but increased the risk to the communities. There was major soil erosion, deforestation problems, and lack of natural resources. The unsuitable areas of erosion not only placed the area under threat for seawater intrusion, but also allowed vulnerability to storm surge. The storm surge was one of the elements leading to the cyclone’s cause of destruction and death.
The mitigation and preparedness efforts were far and few between due to the previously existing resource degradation, which led to the poverty and socio-economic turmoil. Though following Cyclone Nargis, the government had decided to implement a natural disaster preparedness plan that will allow long-term planning and mitigate the risk factors of the country (United Nations Environment Programme, 2009).
Due to independence issues and a slowly declining economy, there was a lack of reaction shown in the response efforts as well. There were great tensions and issues with the government and their international allies, which arose when they refused disaster aid and international response efforts. Citizens had to push the Myanmar government to realize that they had all run out of the needed resources in response to the disaster. This negligence from other countries lasted about a week, before finally allowing resources into the country.
The major issue though is that only the resources were able to enter the country, not the workers. Even with little resources and help, communities came together to make an effort to get their villages and country back to normal. Though not having aid was a huge setback for the response and recovery phases for Myanmar (Burma, 2011). In the recovery phase, the government began to step in to help out the villages surrounding the neglected environment. The government realized that the mangrove deforestation hindered protection of the villages from the cyclone’s affects. This caused the government to take steps to rehabilitate the environment so that this is not the case in the future.
Due to these pre-existing conditions and others, the cyclone caused damage in many regions and the government had to move quickly in its recovery efforts. Even with the little aid from outside regions, the aid that was used was critically important in the aftermath. Post-disaster aid ended around 2010, but held huge importance to the recovery of Myanmar (“Another Nargis Strikes Every Day”, 2014). Overall with the poverty-stricken communities and lack of environmental protection, this led to challenges in the emergency management process of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Lastly, Japan, a country that is known for tsunamis and adequate emergency management, endured an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. The earthquake hit at the center of Tokyo as a magnitude of 9 and wreaked havoc on the citizens. It caused a large amount of damage on infrastructure and many deaths due to the earthquake, tsunami, and many aftershocks (Norio, Ye, Kajitani, Shi, & Tatano, 2011). Not only was there many natural disasters in one area at one time, but also this resulted in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear accident.
All of the damage that resulted was due to many of Japan’s unique characteristics, and caused havoc for the cities and emergency managers. Some of the local elements that influenced the disaster were being located on an island close to the Pacific, weak infrastructure, and lack of safety requirements of the plants. Each of these influenced the structure of emergency management such as: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Though they could have been stopped with better processes and preparing for an earthquake of this magnitude.
Effective mitigation skills were taken on by citizens in Japan, who were well equipped in knowing to quickly evacuate from their homes when an earthquake and tsunami strikes. Though, they did not realize to stay evacuated until the hazards have ceased in the areas. Also, some of the citizens did not take the warnings seriously, as they usually go through earthquakes often. This created some of the casualties that could have been saved. They also used seawalls, tsunami gates, and controlled forests to mitigate the flood waters that are connected to tsunamis.
These were not all properly kept up to date and did not withstand the high water levels and quick moving water. The mix of flood water and debris caused widespread outages to the cities. This could have been mitigated better by allowing for routine checks on the seawalls and higher tsunami gates. The next idea was that they chose to build houses upon higher land, to mitigate the risks of flooding and other tsunami hazards. However, with increasing populations in Japan, most of the newer structures were built on the low-lying lands, which were ultimately destroyed by the tsunami waters.
A way that the country prepares its citizens for the next tsunami or earthquake to hit is with community education and drills. These trainings happen throughout schools and businesses, so that citizens are prepared in the wake of another disaster. These disasters happen often to Japan and this allows for the country to be well-prepared in the wake of the next to come. The country, however, did not prepare their infrastructure for the level of destruction to come with such a strong tsunami.
To save money, they built light-weight wooden structures which are great for earthquakes, but they do not withstand the high impact of water from the following tsunami (Suppasri, et al., 2012). This allows as a reminder that Japan’s emergency management plans and building codes are not strong enough for the natural disasters. With being so close to the Pacific, tsunamis are always a possibility and Japan has to take many actions to prepare. The response to the tsunami and earthquake was inadequate, as that was the result of the Fukushima Dai Incident, a nuclear accident.
This caused devastation and radioactive contamination to the areas surrounding the power plants. The other issue that led to the nuclear incident was the lack of safety requirements in the plants (Norio, Ye, Kajitani, Shi, & Tatano, 2011). The main coordinators in the field in Japan to respond was the municipal and prefectural authority of the local governments. The coordinators in the coastal areas lacked experience and did not know how to properly make use of their volunteers. One of the biggest mishaps was when a shipment of food came into the refuge and evacuation camps there was not enough for everyone. Instead of allowing the food to be rationed, they threw it out into the trash. Japan, a very industrialized country with very good welfare did not know how to handle the mass amounts of disaster aid from all over their own country and internationally.
This created havoc and emergency managers to become overwhelmed at the response efforts. The other issue was that the emergency response teams and the Tokyo Electric Power Company did not have proper communications during the time of responding. This caused the failure to remain organized and efficient, which in return led to poor decisions about the power plant failure. Then, this all played a part in how the recovery process would go. The rebuilding after the disaster was not only about both having to do the aging population and declining economy, but also very inefficient. The rapid recovery was challenged by the demographics of the destruction. There was an absence of public service which caused vulnerable populations and problems within communities as well (Hasegawa, 2013). Many local characteristics affected the mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery within Japan.
Looking at the disasters of the Haiti Earthquake, Myanmar Cyclone Nargis, and the Japan Tohoku Earthquake, showed that each came with their own elements. These elements, such as: the demographics, weakened economies, and rugged environment all led to the way that the emergency management process was sought out. Each process of emergency management is important in the success of the country and how well the disaster response plays out. This is why it is important to shape the processes around the individualized characteristics of the country. In each of these events, there were some successes and some downfalls of their localized emergency management. Though after each disaster the countries continue to better suit their own emergency planning and management.
References
- Another Nargis strikes every day: Post-Nargis social impacts monitoring five years on. (2014). Yangon? Myanmar: Enlightened Myanmar Research.
- Burma: UN and U.S. Agencies Assisted Cyclone Victims in Difficult Environment, but Improved U.S. Mentoring Needed (July 2011). GAO Report to Congressional Committees.
- DesRoches, R., Comerio, M., Eberhard, M., Mooney, W., & Rix, G. J. (2011). Overview of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Earthquake Spectra.
- Federal Emergency Management Agency. (n.d.), Emergency Management – FEMA Training [PDF File], Retrieved from: https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/docs/emprinciples/0907_176%20em%20principles12x18v2f%20johnson%20(w-o%20draft).pdf
- Hasegawa, R. (2013, May 13). Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. Retrieved from IDDRI: https://www.iddri.org/sites/default/files/import/publications/study0513_rh_devast-report.pdf
- Learning from Cyclone Nargis: Investing in the Environment for livelihoods and disaster risk reduction (2009). A Case Study: UNEP.
- Norio, O., Ye, T., Kajitani, Y., Shi, P., & Tatano, H. (2011). The 2011 eastern Japan great earthquake disaster: Overview and comments. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 2(1), 34-42. doi:10.1007/s13753-011-0004-9
- Suppasri, A., Shuto, N., Imamura, F., Koshimura, S., Mas, E., & Yalciner, A. C. (2012). Lessons Learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami: Performance of Tsunami Countermeasures, Coastal Buildings, and Tsunami Evacuation in Japan. Pure and Applied Geophysics, 170(6-8), 993-1018. doi:10.1007/s00024-012-0511-7
- Tappero, J. W., & Tauxe, R. V. (2011). Lessons Learned during Public Health Response to Cholera Epidemic in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Emerging Infectious Diseases.
