PREPARING FOR DISASTERSWe Rarely Hear About the Disasters Which Were Avoided – but There’s a Lot We Can Learn from Them
We frequently see headlines about disasters. But where are the headlines covering the good news of lives saved and damage averted when disasters do not happen? Our work, now published, offers examples we can learn from.
When a huge cyclone slammed into East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh) in November 1970 it caused water in the Ganges Delta to rise by 10 metres. Entire towns were submerged. At least 300,000 people died – it remains atop lists of the deadliest known tropical cyclones.
Something similar happened in 1991 – another 139,000 deaths. Bangladesh has a long list of cyclones with five or six figure death tolls.
These days, Bangladesh has a much larger population and is still getting hit by huge cyclones and widespread flooding. These storms are getting stronger. But these more recent cyclones have each led to only dozens of deaths.
This is what prompted our research project on “Disasters Avoided”. We frequently see headlines about disasters. But where are the headlines covering the good news of lives saved and damage averted when disasters do not happen? Our work, now published, offers examples we can learn from.
We started by seeking examples of disasters that had been avoided. There had to be a major environmental hazard – such as a tornado, earthquake, drought, wildfire, pathogen, landslide, volcanic eruption or heatwave – that didn’t lead to major casualties or disruption. And that had to be because disaster prevention actions were completed before the hazard struck.
In total, we looked in-depth at a dozen examples covering every inhabited continent. Some of the examples we found were very local. For instance a poorly extinguished campfire ignited a wildfire in the mountains of Colorado in July 2016. No one died, but 2,000 people were evacuated and eight houses completely burned.
Eight other houses in the torched forest survived. They were all certified by an NGO called Wildfire Partners as having taken its advice on using fire-resistant materials, removing fire-prone vegetation and storing woodpiles away from the house. While one homeowner was able to reoccupy their house immediately, their neighbour had to start rebuilding from scratch.
Other examples are wider-scale. The reduction in cyclone deaths in Bangladesh was thanks to a long-term education, preparedness, warning, evacuation and sheltering programme. Actions included making schools a relatively safe place for people to shelter in, and giving volunteers megaphones to cycle around villages warning people. The death count should still be reduced much more, but the improvement over time is clear.
