Disaster Management

THE DPSG INTERNATIONAL

SOCIAL SCIENCE PROJECT

TOPIC:-

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

INDEX:-

Disaster managementTypes of disastersDisaster preventionDisaster preparednessDisaster reliefDisaster recoveryAir India Express Flight 812Newspaper reportCauses

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

• Disaster management can be defined as the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters.

Types of Disasters:-• There is no country that is immune from disaster, though vulnerability to disaster

varies. There are four main types of disaster.• Natural disasters- These disasters include floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and

volcano eruptions that can have immediate impacts on human health, as well as secondary impacts causing further death and suffering from floods causing landslides, earthquakes resulting in fires, tsunamis causing widespread flooding and typhoons sinking ferries

• Environmental emergencies- These emergencies include technological or industrial accidents, usually involving hazardous material, and occur where these materials are produced, used or transported. Large forest fires are generally included in this definition because they tend to be caused by humans.

• Complex emergencies- These emergencies involve a break-down of authority, looting and attacks on strategic installations. Complex emergencies include conflict situations and war.

• Pandemic emergencies- These emergencies involve a sudden onset of a contagious disease that affects health but also disrupts services and businesses, bringing economic and social costs.

Disaster Prevention

• These are activities designed to provide permanent protection from disasters. Not all disasters, particularly natural disasters, can be prevented, but the risk of loss of life and injury can be mitigated with good evacuation plans, environmental planning and design standards. In January 2005, 168 Governments adopted a 10-year global plan for natural disaster risk reduction called the Hyogo Framework. It offers guiding principles, priorities for action, and practical means for achieving disaster resilience for vulnerable communities.

Disaster Preparedness

• These activities are designed to minimize loss of life and damage – for example by removing people and property from a threatened location and by facilitating timely and effective rescue, relief and rehabilitation. Preparedness is the main way of reducing the impact of disasters. Community-based preparedness and management should be a high priority in physical therapy practice management.

Disaster relief

• This is a coordinated multi-agency response to reduce the impact of a disaster and its long-term results. Relief activities include rescue, relocation, providing food and water, preventing disease and disability, repairing vital services such as telecommunications and transport, providing temporary shelter and emergency health care.

Disaster recovery

• Once emergency needs have been met and the initial crisis is over, the people affected and the communities that support them are still vulnerable. Recovery activities include rebuilding infrastructure, health care and rehabilitation. These should blend with development activities, such as building human resources for health and developing policies and practices to avoid similar situations in future.

• Disaster management is linked with sustainable development, particularly in relation to vulnerable people such as those with disabilities, elderly people, children and other marginalized groups.

AIR INDIA EXPRESS FLIGHT 812

• Air India Express Flight 812 was a scheduled passenger service from Dubai to Mangalore which at around 01:00 UTC on 22 May 2010, overshot the runway on landing, fell over a cliff and caught fire, spreading wreckage across the surrounding hillside. Of the 160 passengers and six crew members on board, only eight passengers survived.

• With its 158 fatalities, the accident was the third deadliest aviation disaster in India, after the 1996 Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision which killed 349, and the 1978 crash of Air India Flight 855, which killed 213. It marked the first major Indian aviation accident since the July 2000 crash of Alliance Air Flight 7412 in Patna. At the time, the accident was the deadliest crash of a 737 aircraft (all series) and the eighth hull loss of a Boeing 737–800 aircraft. The crash caused the highest number of aviation fatalities in 2010 and was the second of the year to involve a 737–800. It was also the second time that an aircraft had overshot the runway at Mangalore

Newspaper Report On 22nd of this month, it will be one year after the tragic crash of Air India Express IX-812 at

Mangalore that killed 158 people.It seems the last major news break related to the accident was duly celebrated by the media with the submission of the investigation report by the Court of Inquiry (COI) on 26 April 2011, 10 months after it was constituted. Thanks to the selective and somewhat precisely scheduled leaking of certain parts of the report to the press, now everyone is aware that the crash happened because the ‘Serbian’ commander of the aircraft was asleep for the first 100 minutes of the flight.Though the relatives and dependents of more than 100 dead passengers are yet get compensation, the public already has accepted the crash as a well concluded story.

So there shouldn’t be much left to write an anniversary story.But no news reporter who had followed the story from the beginning can leave it thus.It never was something as simple as an expatriate pilot causing a horrific crash by simply

sleeping at the controls.There were many, many things the public was never properly made aware of, about the crash.

The incomplete, erroneous way the court of inquiry conducted the investigation too should have been laid bare before the people of India.

The aviation reporters of the country by now should already have asked themselves why the manufacturer of the crashed craft was never questioned or investigated.

The media should also have investigated Capt. Zlatco Glusica in his home country.

• Air India Express and Air India the parent airline too were never sufficiently subjected to unbiased scrutiny of the mass media.

• It was a phone call from a ‘law maker’, as they say, of the country, that made me to start worry about the whole business of the COI which was appointed by the govenment of India on 3 June 2010.

• Soon after the COI was constituted, three of the members of the COI had flown to US to ‘decode’ the content of the two back boxes- the DFDR and CVR- at the facility of NTSB.

• It was after two weeks of their return to India that I got the call.That was in July.He was very excited. He said one of the pilots had fallen asleep during the flight and his snoring and all was there in the CVR. Loud and clear.That sure was news.But I had to be sure. Okay, how he came to know about it? Well, that was simple. It was a fellow lawmaker, who happened to own a major private airline who revealed that to him. One of the members of the COI was an employee of that particular airline and after hearing the CVR in US, he right away told his boss all about the unbelievable content.

• But the Associate Editor of the Daily where I was working was not that adventurous to print this explosive exclusive straightaway.

• No proof- he calmly pointed out. So let us wait.• And our wait prolonged well in to first week of September 2010.

Coinciding with the second hearing of COI at the national capital from September 6 to 9, this particular info was leaked to the press. All channels broke the news for the whole day. Dailies celebrated it on 8th.

• Though many veteran pilots who testified in that session of the hearing told the COI that sleeping in the cockpit, was not that alarming or dangerous, that never was got prominently reported. Some commanders had even pointed out that it was a healthy practice for the pilots to sleep taking turns under ‘controlled conditions’. A little sleep would only raise the level of alertness.On their part, the COI too seemed to be agreeing with those observations. Many of the experts who attended the hearing too had noted that. It was a kind of reassurance for them that the investigation was proceeding in a scientific, unbiased manner.

• But the fact remained that one of the members of the COI who was pledged to secrecy, had way back revealed this sensitive info in a very callous manner to his boss who was the owner of rival airline of Air India Express.And the way the ‘sleep news’ was planted in to selected national media too was reason to worry.Especially because the taped conversation between the pilots of the aircraft and Mangalore ATC too had found it way to some media as early as June 2 , well before the COI’s first hearing at Mangalore airport from August 17-19.

• None could fail to notice that leaked content of both the tapes were highly incriminating Capt. Zlatco Glusica, the Commander of the crashed flight.

• A pattern was beginning to emerge, for those who were closely watching the investigation.

CAUSES The contributory factors (of the crash) were:

(a) In spite of availability of adequate rest period prior to the flight , the Captain was in prolonged sleep during flight, which could have led to sleep inertia. As a result of relatively short period of time between his awakening and the approach, it possibly led to impaired judgment. This aspect might have got accentuated while flying in the Window of Circadian Low (WOCL).(b) In the absence of Mangalore Area Control Radar (MSSR), due to un-serviceability, the aircraft was given descent at a shorter distance on DME as compared to the normal. However, the flight crew did not plan the descent profile properly, resulting in remaining high on approach.(c) Probably in view of ambiguity in various instructions empowering the ‘co-pilot’ to initiate a ‘go around’, the First Officer gave repeated calls to this effect, but did not take over the controls to actually discontinue the ill-fated approach.

Tsunami in Tamil Nadu• Almost all the countries situated around the Bay of Bengal were affected by the

tsunami waves in the morning hours of 26 December 2004 (between 0900 – 1030 hrs IST). The killer waves were triggered by an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale that had an epicenter near the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. The first recorded tsunami in India dates back to 31 December 1881. An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter believed to have been under the sea off the coast of Car Nicobar Island, caused the tsunami. The last recorded tsunami in India occurred on 26 June 1941, caused by an earthquake with magnitude exceeding 8.5. This caused extensive damage to the Andaman Islands. There are no other well-documented records of Tsunami in India.It was all quiet on the waterfront on the Sunday morning after Christmas in 2004 at Kanyakumari, the famous Marina Beach in Chennai and elsewhere on the Kerala coast and Andaman Nicober Islands. There was the excitement of a holyday with an offbeat mood with swarms of people on the sea front: children playing cricket and man and women on their morning work at the Marina. Elsewhere, fishermen were putting out to sea for the day’s catch. Then all on a sudden, a curious thing happened. The holidaymakers at Kanyakumari were awestruck when the sea receded from the shores.

•

• In the present tsunami, India was the third country severely battered after Indonesia and Srilanka. In India the State severely affected by tsunami are Tamilnadu, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Andaman and Nicober Island. The following Table.1 shows the average scenario of tsunami devastation in the respective areas.

• The state of Tamil Nadu has been the worst affected on the mainland, with a death toll of 7,793. Nagapattinam district has had 5,525 casualties, with entire villages having been destroyed. Kanyakumari district has had 808 deaths, Cuddalore district 599, the state capital Chennai 206 and Kancheepuram district 124. The death tolls in other districts were Pudukkottai (15), Ramanathapuram (6), Tirunelveli (4), Thoothukudi (3), Tiruvallur (28), Thanjavur (22), Tiruvarur (10) and Viluppuram (47).Those killed in Kanyakumari include pilgrims taking a holy dip in the sea. Of about 700 people trapped at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial off Kanyakumari, 650 were rescued. In Chennai, people playing on the Marina beach and those who taking a Sunday morning stroll were washed away, in addition to the fisher folk who lived along the shore and those out at sea. The death toll at Velankanni in Nagapattinam district is currently 1,500. Most of these people were visiting the Basilica of the Virgin Mary for Christmas, while others were residents of the town. The nuclear power station at Kalpakkam was shut down after sea water rushed into a pump station. No radiation leak or damage to the reactor was reported

Tsunami damage in India

FACTORS Andhra

PradeshKerala Tamilnadu Pondicherry TOTAL

Population affected

211000 2470000 691000 43000 3415000

Area affected (Ha)

790 Unknown 2487 790 4067

Extent of penetration

0.5-2.0 1-2 1-1.5 0.30-3.0

Reported height of Tsunami

5 3-5 7-10 10

Dwelling units

1557 11832 91037 6403 110829

Cattle lost 195 Unknown 5476 3445 9116

Causes of tsunami

• An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter believed to have been under the sea off the coast of Car Nicobar Island, caused the tsunami.

GOVERNMENT RELIEF

• The World Bank has approved the Emergency Tsunami Reconstruction Project to repair damaged houses and provide for multi hazard resistant houses, reclaim agricultural lands, strengthen fisheries infrastructure.

• About 57 new habitations have been formed in 18 Town Panchayats through reputed NGOs and other organizations with the overall supervision of the District administration. These habitations have been provided with basic amenities and infrastructure facilities such as internal and approach roads, electricity house service connections, street lights, storm water drains, public utility buildings such as community halls, anganwadi buildings, buildings for Self Help Groups (SHGs), cremation sheds, bus shelters and library buildings.

• In order to ameliorate the loss caused by the aftermath of Tsunami, various restoration and reconstruction works have been taken up. Livelihood restoration, repairs and up gradation of roads, buildings, water supply, sanitation and solid waste management infrastructure have been taken up under Tsunami Emergency Assistance Project (TEAP) and basic amenities in the newly constructed Tsunami habitations have been provided under ETRP at a total cost of Rs.7993.10.

• TWAD Board has taken up construction of underground sewerage systems under ETRP at the newly constructed tsunami habitations adopting a Single Point Intermittent Sand Filter (SPISF) Technology in 25 habitations, Decentralized Waste Water Treatment (DEWATS) technology in 20 habitations and Fluidized Bed Biological Reactor (FBBR) Technology in 5 habitations comprising an interceptor tank (collection from house-holds), a sewer grid and a filter bed with an underground drainage system in 10 Town Panchayats. The works based on SPISF Technology have been taken up in 8 habitations and are under progress.

TSUNAMI WARNING

• Present status of Tsunami Warnings in India: There are no codal provisions of tsunami warnings in India as yet. However, there is a good seismological network in India to record any earthquake within the country and its neighborhood. The need of a Tsunami Warning Centre (TWC) in India is now being conceptualized at the Government of India level.

• The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is working on a proposal to set up a real time earthquake monitoring system in India. The Department of Ocean Development in collaboration with the Department of Space and the IMD under the Department of Science and Technology is evolving a plan of tsunami warning system in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. Data from observation points to Warning Centre's) will be sent through satellite links, specific systems called Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) using bottom pressure recorders, acoustic modems, acoustic release systems, and battery packs bolted to platform and float action and recovery aids will be deployed

• International Status of Tsunami Warning and Communication System: There are a number of initiatives at the international level for setting up Tsunami Warning Systems for the Indian Ocean region. Present techniques of tsunami prediction are severely limited. The only way to determine with certainty if an earthquake will lead to a tsunami is to note the occurrence and epicenter of the earthquake and then detect the arrival of the tsunami at a network of tide stations. While it is possible to predict when a tsunami will arrive at coastal locations, it is not yet possible to predict the wave height, number of waves, duration of the hazard, or the force to be expected from such waves at specific locations.

• A tsunami warning system is based on the concept that tsunamis travel at much slower velocity (500 to 700 km per hour or 0.20 km/sec) as compared to seismic waves (6 to 8 km per second). Seismic waves therefore move 30 to 40 times faster than tsunami waves. Thus, after the occurrence of a damaging earthquake and quick determination of its epicenter, warning time of a few minutes to 2 to 3 hours is available depending upon the distance from the epicenter to the coastline. This time can be utilized for warning the coastal community if quick detection and rapid communication systems are established

Bibliography www.wikipedia.comwww.google.comSocial Science book

THANK YOU…!

MADE BY:- SANCHIT JAIN

& VANSHIT YADAV

8TH-A