Early warning must start at community level Study

Katherine Baldwin
REUTERS/LONDON

Five years on from the Indian Ocean tsunami, the region has its own early warning system but experts say the new technologi will not save lives unless local communities are more involved in planning how to respond.The 230,000 people killed in Africa and Asia by the 2004 tsunami received no formal warning of the approaching waves.

Since then, millions of dollars have gone into building a vast network of seismic and tsunami information centres, setting up sea and coastal instruments and erecting warning towers.But studies show diat the closer the warning gets to those it is designed to help, the more it fades out, and much more needs to be done to connect the technology to the people.

"The weakest link remains at the interface between the early warning system and the public, and in ensuring theres enough preparedness at the local level to react appropriately," said Bhupinder Tomar, senior officer for disaster preparedness at the International Federation for the Red Cross (IFRC) in Geneva.

In terms of technology, the region has made great strides since Dec. 26, 2004, and is much better prepared, experts say.Warning centers in Japan and Hawaii receive seismological and tidal data and send out alerts to national agencies in Indian Ocean countries. These agencies then warn the population, via SMS, radio, television, watch towers and loud speakers.

By 2010, regional centers in Australia, India, Indonesia. Malaysia and Thailand are set to take over primary responsibility from Hawaii and Japan for issuing the warnings.Many relief workers believe the systems design is too top-down and that local communities should be the starting point, not the end point, in any early warning network.

Local people should be the "first mile" in early warning, rather than the "last mile" as they are often called, the workers say."You need to start with the people and move outwards," said Han Kelman, a senior research fellow at CICERO, the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

In a June 2009 report, the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction found community participation in the decision-making process was insufficient.Oxfam found in a recent report. Collaboration in Crises, that disaster-affected communities wanted the chance to play a more decisive role in programmes designed to help them.

Evacuation routes and drills need to be integrated into communities day-to-day activities, experts say.
Other community-based measures that need to be developed further include the teaching in some schools of "Shake, Drop, Run" - when the earth shakes, drop everything and run.

Teachers and children must be taught what most fishermen know, that when the sea recedes you should run, said Kelman."We dont want to see panic, we dont want to see people taking the wrong action. So getting the words right, getting the message right and getting it delivered are key components," said Al Panico, head of the tsunami unit at the IFRC.