A ripple in development? - Channel Research

There is an issue also with the “last mile” of the warning system.
Although there has been good progress in the south of Sri Lanka with
the erection of tsunami warning towers, only one of the planned six
towers have been erected in the east of the country. Members of the
affected population there denied ever having received any tsunami alert
since 2004, whereas those in the South have received three warnings.
However, the National Disaster Management Centre acknowledges
that progress in the East has been slow due to the previous security situation
there, but that quickly progress is now expected.
As well as the formal early-warning system, there is an informal
warning system in operation. Every time any earthquake is reported in
Indonesia, people get phone calls from relatives and contacts overseas to
warn them about the tsunami risk. People also pass on tsunami warnings
to each other. This led to the situation in October where a false
alert in the South quickly spread through the area and had to be officially
denied with media announcements and SMS messages.
Asking people about which types disasters they feel better prepared
for now illustrates this strong concentration on preparation against tsunami
hazards, both for Sir Lanka and for Indonesia.
The Indonesian Red Cross has initiated a new community based
risk reduction programme that seeks to increase communities’ capacities
to deal with disasters and reduce risk. Trained Indonesian Red
Cross staff goes to the communities and offers training. If there is an
interest, a village committee is established with up to 20 persons. They
are trained to develop a hazard, vulnerability and capacity assessment,
and a risk map. However interest in undergoing the training, as detected
during the field visit for this evaluation, is very variable, probably
because the two weeks needed for the training represents a huge opportunity
cost for most villagers.
When one compares the preparedness of communities for different
risks, it becomes clear although most of the disaster preparedness training
was concentrated on tsunami risks, that people have been able to
analyse this and see that some of it could also be applied to other disaster
types.
5.7 Significance of impact
The lack of well-documented major disasters in the tsunami-affected
zone 79 since the tsunami means that the theoretical proposition (that
comprehensive DRR limits the extent of disasters) could not be tested
conclusively. However, the research did highlight some points around
the linkages between changes in vulnerability and development.
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There were serious floods in Aceh in late 2006, but these primarily affected the interior rather
than the tsunami-affected coastal strip. Barron, P., Clark, S., Daud, M., Fahmi, A. Z., Hasibuan,
Y., Mawardi, A., & Rusli, M. (2007). Aceh Flood. Damage and Loss Assessment. Banda Aceh:
World Bank.
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