Preparing for the Last Disaster - Literature review Example

Preparing for the Last Disaster 29th, September Preparing for the Last Disaster It important to predict disasters because, natural disasters can wreck communities, destroy lives and resources. The impact of natural disaster cannot be ignored as it destroys resources and lives. Planning for its resilience is a key to access possible risks occurrence, which is like eating a healthy diet to be less vulnerable to health risks. The government should plan for future disasters to protect the public from the effects that emerge from disasters. Indeed, disaster is a prime concern in today’s society and continues to increase at a high rate. While natural devastation and egregious human errors are well documented, less is discussed on disaster preparedness. People spend much time on the recent disasters and focus less on the potential threats that would birth countless disasters. In fact, the government should allocate resources at the identified threats from the most recent events, which would be beneficial in eradicating future disasters. Following this, the main subject of this essay is that we should continue to plan for the last disaster. OConnell records various disasters in the past, which set the alarm of being responsive to last disasters. 1 In his research, the author gives instances where over 200 people were injured, and 12 died from an explosion of a metro station in Belarus. He continues to highlight more on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as memorable disasters that occurred in 2005. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were recorded to have been the worst disasters in the American history that caused extensive damages in the affected areas including Mississippi and Louisiana with New Orleans. The break within the levee system attributed massive flooding that preliminary damaged resources worth $100 billion, destroyed over 275, 000 homes, and 1, 800 people died from the disaster. In October 2005, when many thoughts Rita and Katrina was over, Hurricane Wilma attack struck Florida, resulting to a considerable storm and widespread damage worth billions of money. The disaster traumatized the state having encountered four serious hurricanes within that period. From O’Connell’s research, one can affirm that disaster occurrence is a substantial threat and concern to a nation. Therefore, nations should evaluate ways of best dealing with future disasters. Governments should focus more on potential threats rather than spend time evaluating the recent disasters. Although governments have the primary role to augment national response to disaster, the humanitarian should support governments’ initiatives. In turn, the two groups would form a strong team that aims at preparing for the last disaster. Focusing on the potential threats, would minimize predicted disasters that destroy a lot of resources and many lives. In this regard, nations should take to heart the need for disaster planning to eradicate frequent disaster cases. Whilst not all events can be totally avoided, a nation can have peace of mind preparing for disaster to avoid loss of resources and lives. Globally, disasters are real occurrences that ultimately contribute to massive losses to a nation. Disaster preparedness can reduce anxiety that occur from such situations. One can effectively take care of the disaster with less anxiety and stress by comprehending the required resources to act on the disaster. For instance, a nation can utilize its resources to act on the predicted disaster thus, reduce huge effects of disaster. It is worth noting that, disaster preparedness assists a nation to react appropriately with the right equipments, procedures, and required supplies during emergencies. Lastly, it can eradicate the impact of the disaster by being knowledgeable to what may occur and eventually take initiatives to reduce the impact of the situation. Familiarizing with different types of disasters that may occur creates a strong platform of being equipped with sufficient knowledge to respond to emergency cases. As argued by Elliott, planning a comprehensive response to disaster may be demanding and costly. 2 To expound on this research, it is obvious that the framework of disaster preparedness may be costly; thus, governments should distribute resources more on potential threats than spend time closing the barn door on the present disasters. Working more on potential threats is paramount as it minimizes chances of future disaster occurrence. Recent disasters should set an alarm on what should be done to protect potential hazards that may attribute to other future disasters. The following appendix is a summary of the framework of disaster preparedness, which the government should distribute its resources. Disaster Preparedness Framework Vulnerability Assessment: This summarizes the recent threats and outlines its likelihood occurrence in the future. Planning for disaster preparedness. Institutional framework that highlights organizations that may respond to the attack Information systems that majors on distributing information that may assist in preparing for the last disaster. Resources base that highlights the required resources in disaster preparedness. Creating warning systems in the detected disaster that determines the need for emergency intervention. Response mechanisms: Identifying specific communities or geographical areas predicted to have disaster occurrence. Training and Public education: These include means of informing the dynamic people that are prone to the risks and hazards towards understanding the potential threats. Working on the plan towards minimizing the disaster occurrences or minimizing its effects. An accurate vulnerability assessment is crucial for disaster preparedness as it inform decision makers on the chances of disaster occurrence in a given area. It is an effective preliminary point to construct an overall plan of disaster preparedness. To sum, developing the database through vulnerability assessment should be the basis for constructing an effective disaster planning process. Planning is the main purpose of the disaster preparedness plans whose primary goal is to have implementable plans, resources, and commitment in place. It reflects on the systematic required activities towards disaster preparedness and assigns tasks and responsibilities to the involved parties. Normally, Disaster preparedness plan focus on ways that address and deal with a particular hazard. It not alarmed with the recent disasters but its main focus is to respond to the early warnings of the disaster. As a result, the plan deal with prevalent problems such as predicted droughts, floods, and fire in vulnerable areas. Often, the officials and the emergency management professionals over-react to most recent disasters instead of responding to the early warnings of the disaster occurrence. Many spend more time dealing with the recent disasters but spend less time predicting future disasters. With this in mind, it is paramount to prepare for the worse so that when such occurs one has a clue of how to respond, deal, and eradicate the probability of the attack occurrence. In his research, Anderson affirms that planning for the worse ensure that one has open lines of solutions and communication in place. 3 Planning assists in aligning duties and responsibilities in various tasks and ensures that everyone is responsive to the ultimate needs of assessing the disaster. Planning determines what kind of disaster a given area might encounter, which might be floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes and eventually assess principal areas that need assessment and improvement. In doing, planning minimizes the effects of the disaster or its occurrence by effectively planning for it. One potential benefit of preparing for the last disaster is that it equips one with the required knowledge to respond to different scenarios or one that helps to minimize its occurrence. It is not an easy task to engage the public into disaster preparedness. Arguably, few people take steps for their own safety in the event of disasters. Despite massive effects attributed by disaster, institutions, businesses, nations, and residents do less in preparing for the last disaster. In today’s society, disaster is a prime concern that many nations are vulnerable to its effects. This creates the need of being responsive to the last disaster. Preparing for the worse is an ideal chance to engage the public towards detecting early signs of possible disaster occurrence. Focusing on the potential threats is beneficial as it diminishes the likelihood of disasters occurrence that destroys a lot of resources and many lives. Predicting different types of disasters that may occur creates prepare one to be equipped with sufficient knowledge that assist in emergency cases. Lastly, the main focus of disaster planning is to respond to the early warnings of the disaster that helps to deal with prevalent problems. Following this, it is evident that is significant to plan for the last disaster. Bibliography Chris, Anderson. 2006. "Planning for the Worst." Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, Feb 05, 1-1. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/461437794?accountid=45049. Robert, Elliott. 2006. "Masters of Disaster." Security Management 50 (1): 86-91. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/231200936?accountid=45049. Kim, OConnell. 2006. “When disaster strikes”. Waste Age, 37(3):78-80, 84. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/219231905?accountid=45049. Read More