View disaster management as a core development issue, says expert

Disaster risk management should be viewed as a core development issue. This would require strengthening institutional systems as well as empowering communities to become more resilient. Development of disaster response system at taluk and block levels would help in effective risk mitigation, according to Kamal Kishore, Member, Ministry of Home Affairs.

Inaugurating the second international conference on ‘Disaster Management and Mitigation 2015,’ held at PSNA College of Engineering and Technology here on Thursday, he said that all states have State-level disaster response system. Of the total 675 districts, about 500 have the response system. Efforts were on to extend it to the rest of the districts also.

“Despite significant improvement in disaster response, though we have been successful in savings the lives of people, we have failed in saving their livelihood. It was essential to quantify the risk on social and economic aspects besides, physical risk, for social good. We should understand the risk scenario after considering all aspects,” he added.

Stating that the Nepal earthquake gave tremendous opportunity to learn, he said investment in risk reduction, preparedness, prevention and planning would certainly pay, were the lessons learnt from it.

Disaster and response plan would be meaningless, unless it is practiced regularly involving all sections of the society. That the involvement of the affected people would be more useful as they could provide effective support in the search and rescue operations were the other lessons learnt from this disaster, he said.

“We need to take naturalness out of the natural disasters. We must not see disasters as one-off events.”

Civil engineering students – the future architects of the country – should learn more from disasters and find options and solutions to tackle it, he advised.

In his special address, Collector T.N. Hariharan said that building structures became the cause of destruction and death during natural disasters. Building codes were not followed properly. In developing countries, only 30 per cent of built infrastructure were constructed as per building codes, while semi-permanent and other buildings did not follow any plan. “We need to be well-equipped with latest technologies. But we cannot avert the situation, but can mitigate its impacts. The civil engineers need to keep themselves updated about latest research and developments in construction technology, advances in construction materials and design procedures,” he said.