Preparedness in Disasters

Preparedness is a collective effort by the different stakeholders to enable individuals and groups to anticipate, respond and recover from the impact of forthcoming disaster by building their physical and psychosocial competencies. These are actions designed to organise and enable timely and effective rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts post-disasters.

Preparedness Cycle

Plan: Planning is a continuous and sequential process. Planning has to focus on the preparedness activities that need to be done, who are the target population, how and when it can be done. Principles of disaster preparedness planning include;

• Sharing of information on meetings.
• Conducting disaster drills, simulations and rehearsals.
• Developing techniques for conducting training and assessments .
• Creating mutual aid agreements.
• Sharing of education to community in the planning process.
• Positioning and preserving appropriate resources.
• Forming connections with formal and informal groups.
• Disseminating information on upcoming dangers and hazards.
• Forming structural and organisational disaster plans and reconnecting with public emergency plans.

Organise: Grouping of resources, technology, people and skills that are essential to execute the plan.

Train: Building capacity of individuals, families and communities on preparedness.

Individual Level Preparedness

• Being informed about the possible hazards, risks and vulnerabilities.
• Enhancing social support.
• Having adequate knowledge on escape. routes and early precautionary measures.
• Maintaining an emergency kit.
• Having the habit of saving (food, money and other essentials).
• Maintaining emergency resource directory.
• Enrolling in insurance schemes.
• Safeguarding important documents.
• Understanding personal and community capabilities and vulnerabilities.
• Being trained on first aid.

Family Level Preparedness

• Identifying physical vulnerabilities at home and correcting them.
• Informing family on disaster preparedness.
• Ensuring participation in mock drills and other community activities.
• Developing an emergency family evacuation plan.
• Understanding the needs of vulnerable groups in the family.
• Make plans for livestock or pet management.
• Maintaining an emergency essentials kit for family.
• Orienting family on response plans and responsible usage of resources.

Community Level Preparedness

• Formulating a community preparedness plan.
• Identifying evacuation routes and safer settlement places.
• Participating in field exercises, psychosocial and routine mock drills.
• Understanding the hazards, risks and vulnerabilities in the community.
• Identifying community resources and plan resource management.
• Instilling community we feeling and oneness.
• Congregating as a community to discuss about the community needs and concerns and devising systems to deal with them.

Government Level Preparedness

• Installing mechanisms to dispense early warning systems.
• Devising plans and programmes aiming at disaster preparedness.
• Establishing monitoring and evaluation systems to oversee and refine preparedness plans.
• Investing on capacity building of the community on disaster preparedness.
• Identifying stakeholders and fostering communication and coordination among them.
• Enabling livelihood preservation and enhancement programmes.
• Responding promptly to the needs and concerns of the community.

Exercise: This focuses on testing of plans, protocols and capacities, and identifying strengths, weakness, threats and opportunities. This should aim at the existing institutional structures, policies and schemes related to preparedness, resources available, preparedness measures on board, capacity of the community on disaster management or disaster risk reduction, involvement of the stakeholders and intersectoral collaboration.

Making a Preparedness Plan

Prepare a telephone tree: The tree must contain contact details of disaster response teams, first responders, mental health professionals, administrators, volunteers and other stakeholders.

Identification of supplies, services and experts: Resources available in the community, available manpower, systems and costs involved. Community's utilization of resources and steps taken to preserve and enhance resources.

Purchase and distribute in-house supplies: Supplies needed for effective response and plans for distribution and maintenance of the same. Measures taken to purchase the resources, stakeholders responsible for purchase, distribution and maintenance.

Preparedness Documentation: Disaster response plans, information on preparedness, emergency services, emergency exit maps, ready reference guides, HRV analysis and resources.

Write an elaborate disaster plan: Basics, examples, guidelines and constantly updating plan based on the emerging needs. The plan must be clear, have adequate reliable information and must be updated on time.

Capacity Building Programmes: Responsibility sharing, open meetings, usage of effective communicative tools, training programmes on responding to disasters and preparedness.

Evaluate and improve: Revising the plans and protocols to fill in the identified gaps and strengthening individual, family and community roles in timely execution of preparedness plans. The evaluation should help in revisiting the policies, laws, stakeholders responsible for preparedness activities in disasters based on the identified hazards, risks and vulnerabilities. These help in effecting workable hazard, risk and vulnerability mitigation plans. Understanding on resources help in installation of resource management systems, improving early warning signs, disaster communication mechanisms and need for capacity building programmes

Psychosocial Preparedness in Disasters

Psychosocial preparedness aims at capacitating individuals, families and communities on psychosocial competencies that help in minimising the impact of psychosocial issues that arise with the disaster, build better coping abilities, better psychosocial response and adaptation. Psychosocial preparedness in disaster prone communities can be nourished by ensuring the following:

• Understand their psychosocial issues, prevailing coping abilities and resources.
• Improving social support systems.
• Creating opportunities for disaster prone communities to enrich psychosocial competencies.
• Instilling community spirit and oneness (understanding the cultural, linguistic and other social differences, accepting one another despite differences and coexisting).

Principles of psychosocial preparedness

• Collective response - refers to integrated multisectoral psychosocial preparedness policy, plans and programmes. The response should be from nodal as well as line departments, institutions, civil society organisations, volunteers and the communities.
• Freedom of expression - each individual contributor have liberty and freedom to stake/opinion in planning, designing and implementing psychosocial preparedness.
• Non-discrimination - during the psychosocial preparedness phase, where all the members of the community are respected and treated equally irrespective of their age, gender, caste economic status, education, for an inclusive psychosocial preparedness.
• Community participation - every psychosocial preparedness plan must involve the participation of all it's constituent (individual family, community, govt., non-govt., volunteers, organisation, association, groups, first responders, professionals, spiritual organisations) members.
• Effective resource utilization - optimal use of (internal and external) structural/human, utilising existing and creating new resources, capacity building and training of various stakeholders needs to be balanced.
• Community determination - the impact and response of the community towards psychosocial preparedness is determined by the inclusive participation of community.
• Collaboration and coordination - effective psychosocial care preparedness requires robust collaboration and coordination between various stakeholders (individual family, community, govt., non-govt., volunteers, organisation, association, groups, first responders, professionals, spiritual organisations).
• Community advocacy - sustained community advocacy on psychosocial care preparedness including rights-based opinion, awareness campaigns, and
  community outreach.

Source : National Disaster Management Authority