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Disaster Prevention Needs More Than Technology |
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| SWITZERLAND: January 13, 2005 | ||
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GENEVA - Countries at risk from disasters like the Asian tsunami must invest in educating people about the threats and not just in technologies such as warning systems, the world's largest relief agency said on Wednesday.
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In the aftermath of the giant waves, which struck 12 Indian Ocean states on Dec. 26 and killed over 150,000 people, much has been made of the fact that few people got any warning to flee. But the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said sophisticated earthquake and tsunami monitoring systems, such as those used successfully for decades around the Pacific Ocean, were not enough. Countries at risk needed effective internal information networks to get news fast to local communities, which might lack telephones and other forms of communication. The communities themselves also needed to know how to respond. This was the message that it would be taking to a United Nations' conference on disaster prevention in Kobe, Japan, starting on Jan. 18, the agency said in a statement. "We will first of all recommend that people don't look only at external early warning systems but (also at) ... putting a system in place where you can work with volunteers who are trained beforehand, who can alert the local populations," said Eva von Oelreich, head of the agency's disaster response unit.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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