Gujarat experience; learning from sustainable recovery

Disasters always leave a negative impact on the poor and marginalised in society and create lasting devastating effects on all aspects of their lives. In the absence of proper income levels and reserved capital, the loss makes the poorest of the poor even more vulnerable to such disasters.

Conflicts and disasters often result in the loss of lives and property. Therefore, when these events do occur, it is necessary to launch programs which could positively transform the social and economic life of the people.

India's Disaster Mitigation Institute (DMI) in Gujarat has successfully achieved this. It has stepped in to mitigate various situations after natural disasters, conflicts and riots in Gujarat. The State of Gujarat is prone to many disasters. The disasters vary from droughts, floods, earthquake, cyclones, riots and so on. On an average, droughts occur every third year. The threat of cyclone is present every monsoon season. Water logging and flooding across towns often create havoc.

DMI has learned through experience, that the amount of money and resources spent for risk mitigation and preparedness efforts is negligible in comparison to relief or rehabilitation. If funding is not available for disaster recovery, a community cannot be expected to learn, plan or conduct mitigation activities against future disasters - as stated in DMI's annual report 2003/04.

It stresses that for successful and sustainable recovery, there should be long-term recovery planning and activities rather than short-term injections of relief.

There are two distinct approaches to disaster mitigation in the humanitarian sector. The dominant perspective states that disaster or conflicts are isolated events or aberrations in the normal path of development. Interventions are to be made after the event occurs and the objective of the intervention is to return the population and environment to status quo.

One of the major strategies of DMI is to work with communities to help them prepare for inevitable disasters. The goal is to make the community infrastructure stronger so that after a disaster occurs they can recover rapidly and with less dependency on external aid. DMI also conducts research and gather information to better identify the basic needs of the people, before and after disasters.

This information is widely used to help communities rebuild and strengthen as well as to make them more resilient to future disasters. Their aim is to mitigate loss, damage and disruption when disaster occurs and to facilitate rapid and sustainable recovery.

When the Gujarat earthquake killed nearly 20,000 people and destroyed or damaged 900,000 houses, the DMI research found out that the widespread damage was due to the bad condition of the buildings. Some of the buildings were extremely old, with little repairs and few having any seismic safety measurers incorporated into the buildings' structure. Additionally most modern buildings were constructed without seismic safety measures and in many cases built with poor specifications, quality control, building material and design, according to the annual report of DMI.

Most of the people lacked awareness on the risks of earthquakes and basic safety measures. And the affected cities' administration found it impossible to respond appropriately to such a large scale disaster in the complete absence of emergency plans, recovery equipment or trained emergency response personnel.

Although, many organisations and Governmental agencies quickly responded to the victims needs, most of the agencies left after the initial relief and rehabilitation phases.

However, DMI continued with relief work and assessment, with programs focused on long-term sustainable recovery.

Even three and half years after the disaster in Gujarat, DMI continued to give support to the victims of the earthquake. This is a clear indication to demonstrate its commitment towards the affected communities.

DMI continues to be an innovator in the field of disaster mitigation in South Asia by documenting and publishing lessons learned through its activities in the Kutch district. The organisation hopes that this research will aid others in future earthquake preparedness activities.

The organisation has data on seven categories of disasters, 92 different projects, covering more than 3,060 communities. Although it is a challenge and a difficult task to manage such vast amount of mitigation data, DMI has been successful in maintaining such data in the past.

DMI does not believe that earthquakes are simply a tragic event, but an opportunity for the community to accelerate development. Giving immediate post disaster relief to the victims is only the first step to sustainable recovery. It works with communities and partners to change traditional attitudes of people, so that they will become aware of the true dangers of earthquakes and are willing to undertake preventive activities.

Its plan is to ensure that communities can independently mitigate any disaster in the future successfully. (CJ)