Rapid Assessment for Resilient Recovery and ... - GFDRR

Evacuation planning Whilst evacuation plans were in place during the floods, officials
expressed concern that the public was not willing to evacuate safely. One interviewed
official said: “people will not evacuate when they can, and want to evacuate when it is not
possible.” 214 Past experiences of relief being delivered directly to affected households,
and fear that household belongings would be stolen whilst they were away, were cited as
reasons residents were not willing to evacuate safely, with theft being the main reason in
urban areas. Once public nervousness about theft was understood, the FROC established
a peacekeeping, public safety and traffic committee, which should be considered as an
integral part of any preparedness plan and the future NDPMP. Stories of poorly-planned
and ad-hoc shelters also highlighted the need for comprehensive preparedness plans.
Community Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) Communities with strong
leadership and Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DPM) teams – comprised of DDPM
volunteers, rescuers and community volunteers – as well as greater engagement of civil
society organizations typically respond to and recover more quickly from disasters.
CBDRM training has been delivered in many communities and among community
volunteers. DDPM has identified 27,000 communities living in high-risk areas of which
5,400 have received CBDRM training from the DDPM. The DDPM’s ‘One Tambon- One
Search and Rescue Team’ (OTOS) program aims to train 77,000 people and establish
7,000 teams nationwide. Partnerships with local NGOs and civil society organizations
are often found to be successful at training, coordinating and preparing communities for
disaster risk management and response, and such partnerships could extend the reach
of government plans, and increase community awareness and preparedness. These are
excellent non-structural DRM measures that can be considered, in addition to structural
DRM measures.
5.4 Disaster Risk Financing in Thailand
The extent of the flooding may lead the international reinsurance market to reclassify
Thailand as a high-risk country subject to catastrophe risks for the next reinsurance
season starting on 1 January, 2012. This would imply limited reinsurance capacity, and/or
lower coverage limits and/or higher reinsurance premium rates. It will be critical to restore
the confidence of the reinsurance market on the capacity of the government of Thailand
not only to manage major floods, but also to have greater domestic capacity to absorb
losses when they occur. Without this, the international reinsurance market is likely to
assume that a similar level of loss may happen again at any moment, which will make
flood reinsurance either unaffordable or potentially unavailable.
According to the Office of the Insurance Commission, the vast majority (90–95 percent)
of property catastrophe risk insurance is underwritten by domestic insurers and reinsured
abroad. This means that the net retention of the domestic insurers should not exceed THB
10–15 billion. In this context, domestic insurers should be able to pay their claims in full,
though some may face significant depletion of capital.
214 Team assessment interview
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