Disaster either completely disrupts the normal life or it negatively influences the emergency systems Normal needs and processes like food, shelter, health, etc. are affected and deteriorate depending on the intensity. We tend to view disaster as an exceptional natural or technical event that interrupt “normal” development but in reality a wide variety of factors may increase the risk of a disaster.
When earthquake hit Gujarat on 26 January 2001and more than 20000 people died, we thought as a society we would learn to cope with disaster better. It seems that 20000 lives were not enough of a price to pay for shaking the bureaucracy and civil society to learn to cope with disasters with greater efficiency. Most disasters after the first 24 hours assume more or less typical characteristics in which the problems can be anticipated and response system can be put in place.One of the major problems in relief is that what is needed where is often not known to the people who want to provide support. The result is that lot of materials get wasted or misdirected. We need to put a spreadsheet immediately on the web pointing out village wise needs, contact person's names and addresses so that civil society efforts can be targeted more efficiently.
Finally, just would like to add that more emphasis in our country is on the rescue and relief operations and less on the preparedness to minimize the effect of a disaster.a big part of the northern India is in the seismic zone, prone to earthquake,Floods in Orrisa and Bihar are common and not to forget these bomb blasts !
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