It's not enough

Recently I got an opportunity to participate in the psycho-social training provided by Israeli Trauma Centre, where we did so many interesting activities to take ourselves and other out of post-disaster trauma. Among so many important activities, one that made me occupied was being prepared for the next disaster.

Yes being prepared for something unpredictable is something weird. How can we exactly be prepared for the disaster? The question strikes. But the fact is it's true that no one can predict when disaster befalls but what we can do is that we can reduce the disaster risk. Reducing disaster risk is about reducing the underlying causes of risks which are closely related to vulnerability. For this we need to look at what is available and accessible to individuals, families and communities and building on those existing capacities, which can be done only through a sustained effort. This sustained effort can be termed as disaster-preparedness plan.

In the training, we made the plan for our family and the plan included various things like what materials we do need during emergencies, how we should start working as soon as it happens so that more life and property could be saved and many more. It took a lot of hours simply to brainstorm about it, but when it completed what I felt was that if only we would have researched about and thought about that before April 25, we could have reduced a lot of risks.

Then I thought why didn't we ever think about that?

I realized, this was our very first time when we had been exposed to this kind of disaster. That may be the reason we never thought in any part of our life we are going to face it.

Is that the same in case of our motherland? Is this the first time our country has faced this kind of disaster?

No, we have heard some awful stories from our grandparents. Then had our country got that disaster-preparedness plan?

Well, maybe it had but what we could see just after the 7.8 shook Nepal was a chaos, with lack of immediate management during emergencies and more than that the problem of distribution of relief materials. What we could hear was the shameless answer of our government bodies that no one can predict the disaster, so we are doing whatever we could do in our relief work. Here, I think I don't have to mention how unsatisfied were the people on the capability of our government on those relief works.

Though, we didn't know the exact date, what we already had the knowledge is that with its unique geo-physical settings and socio-economic conditions, Nepal is highly vulnerable to disasters. We are prone to disasters due to a number of factors, both natural and human-induced. On account of its multi-layered vulnerability Nepal has witnessed an increase in the frequency and intensity of disasters in the past.

Also the lack of management we got to see post the earthquake has raised the questions also on our Natural Disaster Relief Act, 1982, which got amended twice in 1989 and 1992.

Humanitarians point to a 2008 flood in the River Koshi, which killed several hundred and displaced nearly 60,000 families, as a turning point for Nepal's disaster mitigation and response work. The Koshi disaster inspired changes such as the Armed Police force establishing a disaster-training centre in 2011, the Nepal Police creating a disaster division in 2013, and the Nepal Army opening its disaster directorate in 2014. This also led to the preparation of a Disaster Management Bill but seven years on, the draft is still waiting untouched to be tabled in parliament.

Disaster data for the past three decades show the increasing disaster trends, both in the number of events and impacts. UNDP/BCPR study in 2004, ranked Nepal, in terms of relative vulnerability to earthquakes, as the eleventh most at risk country in the world, and thirtieth with respect to floods. Another report of World Bank classifies Nepal as one of the global 'hot-spots' for natural disasters.

In this context, proper plan on managing disasters requires a concerted as well as integrated national effort which needs to be coordinated well. Mentioning all this what I should not forget to mention is that may it the governmental or the non-governmental institution or the international bodies investments and efforts have been made by them for the disaster management due to which it's mechanisms have shown definitely some improvement in recent years. Here, the point is these investments and efforts aren't being effectively managed and with the latest chaos I can confidently say that whatever is done till now, it's not enough.