free download - University Press of Colorado

Ben Fitzhugh
Understanding Hazards, Mitigating Impacts, Avoiding Disasters
Statement for Policy Makers and the Disaster Management Community
Hazards exist everywhere, and in many cases it is impractical to avoid them.
The question to ask is, how can lessons from the past help us see what succeeded
and what did not What worked in the Kurils was a deep historical
knowledge about the frequency and potential extremes of hazardous events
so people could live in the least vulnerable places, maintain capacities for
flexible response to catastrophes when they occurred, and maintain resilient
and redundant infrastructures. Extrapolating from the archaeological Kuril
situation to modern communities, with their higher population densities,
heavier infrastructural requirements, and critical dependencies on non-local
resource distribution networks, we can conclude that hazard planning has
to include capacity building for decentralized response systems. Families,
households, and local communities need to have the ability to respond creatively,
with decision decentralization supported by higher governmental
institutions so responses can scale with capacity. This also requires systems
for rapid and decentralized information sharing.
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