When Nature Takes Its Toll On Us

DISASTER

Based on Medical, Public Health, Wikipedia; Disaster refers to any mishap or misfortune that is ruinous, distressing, or calamitous causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the natural environment of which requiring urgent management. It can be either natural or man- made hazard.

According to dr.Yudha Nurhantari, it's called mass disaster on the other hand, when involving the death of more than 12 victims in a single event exactly as what we can see from the tsunami and Merapi eruption events, or even plane crash.

Talk about disaster in Indonesia.. Indonesia is like a "supermarket" of disaster: Tsunami, flood, volcanic eruptions, earthquake- you name it. As the world's largest archipelago which spread across 17,500 islands, Indonesia are sandwiched by the world's most active seismic region, the notorious Pacific Ring of Fire and the world's second most active region, the Alpide belt.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia

Being precariously located above the grinding and mashing of several tectonic plates, and ringed by a chain of fire- breathing volcanoes explain how Indonesia experiences some of the strongest earthquakes and most powerful volcanic eruptions known on earth:( This situations definitely should be taken as a big responsibility on top of the shoulder.

THE PRINCIPLES OF DISASTER MANAGEMENT

The mind- map shown is the simplified Conceptual frame work of disaster and disaster Management by dr. Hendro Wartatmo. I would like to take Merapi 2010 eruption event as an example of disaster to elaborate this chart.

As you can see under the Resilience, there are absorbing capacity and buffering capacity.








The analogy of these are like what happen when I am downloading a song to play.

Let's put the song I want to listen as capacity.When I download the song from a website, it's absorbing capacity. Buffering capacity means to bringing in an extra amount of data till it's reach 100% to be played. One of the factors influencing is my internet connection.

Just like in a case of disaster. The capacity are provided through preparations and mitigation. When disaster happens, the capacity are absorb, so they can be used. But the network from where or who the capacity are located at or being with won't reach the victims or area of disaster in a blink of eyes. How fast it can be provided or distributed, or is there enough human resources as a response, influence the effectiveness of buffering the capacity.

 Click picture to enlarge

All these anyway are based on my personal understandings. Please let me know if there's any mistake.. Thank you very much.

There are 3 main points as to list the important aspects in Disaster Management:

1.Chain of command

The senior official or Investigator in charge as the head to control things. Effective control and co-ordination of the various activities will need at least 3 assistants, each responsible for a major aspect of the overall operations:

• a Director of Communications
• a Director of Rescue Operations
• a Director of Victim Identifications 

2. Communications

Communications center is extremely important. Whenever possible, an independent switchboard and additional communications channels such as radio, telex, facsimile and computer links should be provided.

3. Rescue operations

Rescue operations will be started immediately, often by survivors and members of the public in the vicinity of the incident. The community itself do play role in the rescue efforts.

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References:

• "Disaster Victim Management", lecture by dr. Yudha Nurhantari, Sp. F, Ph. D
• "Conceptual Framework of Disaster and Disaster Management", lecture by dr. Hendro Wartatmo, Sp, B- KB
• "Air Plane Crash", GROUP 8 TUTORIAL SESSIONS (Week 5)
• INTERPOL: Disaster Handling Procedures