Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

44 PERSISTENT PROBLEMS, PROMISING SOLUTIONS AND BENEFICENCEPlanningTrainingEquippingTHE PREPAREDNESSLIFE CYCLEMitigationEvaluationExerciseFigure 1: Diagram of the preparedness life cycle (Walsh 2005).and feedback with error correction and remediation,preparedness activities will not be as efficient as theycould be (Walsh 2005).Mitigation is any activity taken to eliminate or reducethe degree of long-term risk to human life and propertyfrom natural and human-made hazards (Morrisey 2004).It refers to activities, planning or codes developmentthat lessen the severity of an incident. These actionsmay occur before or during an incident and may be theresult of lessons learned from previous or similar events.Mitigation activities are an important element ofpreparedness. They provide a critical foundation acrossthe incident management spectrum, from prevention toresponse and recovery.Response is any action taken immediately before, duringor directly after a disaster event to save lives, minimizedamage to property and enhance the effectiveness ofrecovery.Recovery involves short-term activities undertaken toreturn vital life-support systems to minimum operatingstandards and long-term activities undertaken to returnconditions back to normal.Policies and victim services in Indonesia’s disastermanagementIndonesia is a disaster-prone country. Vitchek (2007)writes that Indonesia has replaced Bangladesh and Indiaas the most disaster-prone nation on earth. For instance,whenever the word “Indonesia” appears on the list ofheadlines on the Internet site Yahoo News, chancesare that another enormous—and often unnecessary—tragedy has occurred on one of the islands of thissprawling archipelago. Airplanes disappear or slide offrunways, ferries sink or simply break apart on the highseas, trains crash or get derailed, landslides take cartonlikehouses into ravines, earthquakes and tidal wavesswallow up coastal cities and villages and forest firesfrom Sumatra create smoke that chokes huge areas ofSoutheast Asia.The scope of disasters is on a scale so vast that theycannot be discounted simply as the nation’s bad luckor as the wrath of the gods or nature. Some of thedisasters that have struck Indonesia are human-made,many are preventable, and in all cases, the possibilityexists of reducing the human toll. Vitchek (2007)underlines that earthquakes alone do not kill people.Poor construction of houses and buildings are theculprits, together with the lack of preventive measuresand preventive education.The number of victims and other losses that results fromdisasters in Indonesia, either human-made or natural, isquite tremendous. Since December 2004, Indonesia haslost some 200,000 people in various disasters, excludingautomobile accidents, ethnic-religious conflicts andconflict between the state and the people. Indeed, manyIndonesians are experiencing lives as dangerous andhazardous as those in war-torn parts of the world. Onclose scrutiny it becomes obvious that people die due toalmost non-existent efforts to prevent the loss of life anddue to a lack of basic education.Ferries are sinking not “because of high winds andwaves;” they are sinking because they are overcrowdedand badly maintained or, more precisely, because theyare allowed to be overcrowded and badly maintained.Everything is for sale, even the safety of passengers.Companies care only about their profits, whilegovernment inspectors are mainly interested in bribes.The Indonesian airline industry has one of the worstsafety records in the world. Since 1997, at least 666people have died in eight major airplane crashes inIndonesia. On average, a deadly train accident occursevery six days in Indonesia, many caused by the lackof gates at its 8,000 level crossings. More than 80people die per day on Indonesian roads, mostly dueto the terrible state of the infrastructure and poor lawenforcement(Vitchek 2007).The Indonesian Parliament enacted the DisasterManagement Act (Undang-Undang PenanggulanganBencana No. 24/ 2007) on 29 March 2007. Prior tothis newly enacted bill, the existing regulations fordisaster management were Presidential Decree No. 3,2001 on the National Coordinating Board on DisasterManagement and Refugee Handling (Badan KoordinasiNasional Penanggulangan Bencana dan PenangananPengungsi), Presidential Decree No. 111, 2001 on theamendment of Presidential Decree No. 3, 2001 andthe National Coordinating Board Secretary Decreeon Common Guidance in Disaster Management andRefugee Handling.Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows