Disaster Education

The Kumbakonam school fire tragedy is yet another indication that we, as a nation, are not good at averting disasters or at being prepared for unexpected emergency situations. This heart-wrenching tragedy that has consumed the precious lives of some 90 children should be read as a warning that we need to get our act together. The only meaningful tribute that we can offer to these innocent young victims of adult negligence and inefficiency is to educate all sections of our society on safety awareness and emergency preparedness in every sphere of life.

Such a “disaster education” may have two components: providing disaster preparedness information and offering hands-on training to deal with disasters. This educational endeavor should be a tool to create an awareness of disasters with basic information about various types of disasters. It should also contain action tips that help people reduce the risk of injury or loss in an actual disaster. These action tips should prepare the people for all the three “before-during-after” stages of a disaster strike.

While ‘before-the-disaster’ training prepares the people to be conscious of basic safety requirements in a public building or other places and to keep a constant watch on the safety dynamics of life, ‘during-the-disaster’ guidance readies the trainees to face a disaster with a clear set of ‘what to do’ list under various types of emergency situations. The ‘after-the-disaster’ component of training would train people about the mop-up operations at the disaster site and other follow-up procedures. This kind of comprehensive disaster preparedness will certainly minimize the human cost of disasters and mitigate its impacts on the victims.

This disaster education should be made mandatory for school and college teachers, vehicle operators, police officers, health professionals, marriage hall managers and staff, temple priests, hotel and restaurant workers, building janitors and others. In fact, such a disaster education should be made mandatory in government and private offices, banks, post offices, railway stations and all other institutions also.

With the help of educational presentations, slide-shows, cartoons, documentaries and other such audio and video material, disaster education should also be taken to villages and towns, to self-help groups, women’s organizations, farmers’ associations, trade unions and other such groups. Governmental departments, NGOs, religious institutions, media outfits, private volunteers, and other sections of the civil society should join hands in this task of communicating disaster preparedness to the public.

Disaster education cannot and should not be a once-in-a-life-time affair but a life-long commitment to one’s own and the fellow human beings’ safety and security. Hence setting up displays and bulletin boards at workplaces and public areas, and providing updates and other relevant disaster-related information on a regular basis must be made part of our popular culture. It is also quite important that all the agencies involved in such an effort provide consistent disaster safety messages and not contradictory or conflicting ones.

Disasters can be both nature-made and human-made. Natural disasters include thunderstorms and lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, earthquakes, landslides and so forth. The human-made disasters can emanate from certain acts of commission or omission. While bomb threats, terrorist attacks, vehicle bomb explosions, counter-terrorism strikes, mailing dangerous chemicals such as anthrax, and bio-terrorism are of the deliberate ‘commission’ variety, power outages, building collapses, hazmat (hazardous materials) spills, dam safety and flood control issues, radiation exposures, food and water contaminations and other such disasters constitute the irresponsible omission disasters.

Although private operators’ greed and negligence contribute to many of the woes in various walks of life such as education, transportation, entertainment, and family functions etc., the governmental responsibility cannot be wished away for today’s sad state of affairs in our country. For bribes and favors, rules and regulations are sidestepped, licenses and permissions are literally sold, and safety and security concerns are flagrantly violated. The most disturbing thing, however, is the media, that is supposed to be the watchdog of our socioeconomic-political failings, losing track of its social commitment and falling prey to sensational news and profiteering. Issues of the underdogs are nudged out of the newsreel space by ritzy, glitzy news of the globalizing world.

When it comes to disaster, it has been our remarkable cultural trait to lock the barn after the horse has bolted. We somehow fail to understand that an ounce of prevention does more good than a pound of cure. Leave alone the “ordinary citizen” who is preoccupied with all kinds of daily life concerns; even our state apparatus, political leaders, media outfits, scientists and others are haughty and complacent.

Koodankulam nuclear power project is just one example for this carelessness and callousness. Setting up a nuclear power plant anywhere in the world would merit a lot of information exchange and public debate. But in our country, the Department of Atomic Energy and the government of India can actually get away with withholding the Environmental Impact Assessment, site evaluation study and safety analysis report. Not even the mandatory public hearing has been done. But has any government official, political party, public figure, newspaper bothered to question this? No.

A society that is marked by apathy, officers’ corruption, private operators’ greed, and lack of democracy in information sharing and decision-making cannot be expected to foster an effective safety culture. After all, public safety is not just a physical concern but also a political consideration. Safety comes when enough information is shared with the public and people’s basic human rights such as right to information and right to life and livelihood are respected. Thus public safety and democracy are closely intertwined. Only this combination can bring about respect for human life.

To foster respect for human life, concerted ‘disaster education’ efforts should be carried out along with the structural changes discussed above. Each and every institution and installation in the country, public or private, must be required to store the emergency response materials that are devoted to safety and health enhancement and injury and fatality prevention. Besides survival supplies such as first aid kits, potable water, and basic food storage, they must also be required to have emergency plans, emergency management procedures such as evacuation plan, including special arrangements for children, the elderly and the disabled. Each of these institutions should be required to display publicly the appropriate checklists related to their operations: emergency equipment checklist, emergency action plan checklist, emergency preparedness and response checklist, hurricane checklist, flood checklist, bomb threat checklist etc.

Guides and other publications to create emergency plans, maps, reports, fact sheets and other materials that help create disaster response plans must be made available in every public and college library. Similarly, earthquake maps, flood maps, wind maps, solar radiation maps and other such maps should be made available in these libraries. As disaster mitigation involves government departments, relief agencies, private volunteers and others, avenues and opportunities that are available from governmental services, NGOs and private parties should be made available for the public.

Such an overall rescue culture should also have access to other disaster mitigation processes and information such as insurance agencies and policies, list of social workers and mental health workers to help the victims deal with the losses and traumas, and to offer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) guidance. Information on public health department and workers is also equally crucial to handle cadavers, sanitation, waste management, and to ward off water contamination, food contamination, infectious diseases and epidemic outbreaks.

News reports on Kumbakonam school tragedy indicate that the teachers had asked the children to stay put in their classrooms, that the panicky teachers did not know how to react to the situation, and that some children actually ran back into the burning classrooms to collect their bags or to look for their missing siblings. None of them had any idea about or exposure to disaster handling. If only the school management and the government authorities had given half-a-day training to the teachers in fire-fighting and conducted a mock fire drill for the children, we would not be this sad and sorry today.