Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Are we as prepared for disasters as we are for terrorists

It is very harrowing too see the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the devastation that has been left in its wake.  What I find more disturbing is the slow response and the lack of humanitarian aid getting through to the people who right now are desperate for this aid.

A disaster like this anywhere in the world needs an immediate response from the government and all the organisation that help in other parts of the world when such disasters happen.  Such responses must be fast so that the people caught up in such incidents don't think they have been forgotten about.

When the rest of the world looked on in horror at the tsunami disaster in Asia, help was immediately dispatched from all corners of the world to try and bring back some kind of normality to the area. This was so that the people there could start rebuilding their lives as soon as was possible, even though it will take many years for the people caught up in that disaster to get back what they have lost.

Lives can never be retrieved, so the main emphasis must be to help the living and the people who are desperate for food, water and shelter.  The slower it takes for this help to get through the more likely it is to cause lawlessness, and a fight for the survival of the fittest is bound to begin as people struggle to survive.

Over the years the scientists have been telling us that the weather is changing and many people have noticed that the seasons of the years are maybe not what they should be.  We happen to be in a period of time where this happening, and there is no quick solution to change that.  But one thing governments should be doing is preparing for these changes.  We've had enough time and warnings, and it may be something that we have been ignoring and not paying any attention too.

Over the last few years we have become well prepared for terrorist attacks, and the emergency services response times have been fantastic in preparing for these eventualities.  But it seems when a disaster like the one we are seeing in New Orleans and the Southern states of America happens, we seem to be totally unprepared for it.

As disasters of this magnitude become more frequent, governments need to pay attention and to plan for problems like this.  Because if they don't there will be a breakdown in society.  Disasters like this can happen anywhere in the world and it may be that not enough government planning has gone in to the possibility of something like this happening in their countries.

In Japan, they have regular exercises for earthquakes and other types of disasters. The children are taught what to do from a very young age on to how to deal with these natural events.  Whereas it may be that our governments have become sloppy by thinking disasters like this only happen in other countries.

Well they don't.  Disasters like this can happen anywhere in the world, and no one is infallible from the forces of nature as we have seen with the tsunami disaster in Asia and hurricane Katrina along with the many disasters before them.

Now is the time for governments to start getting organised so that the response can be fast and efficient.  They also need to inform the public how they should respond should such a disaster strike their part of the world.  Leaving people to their own devises just does not work, and it can't be expected too.

It's also the time for governments from all over the world to get together and start planning for the future of climate change and how to respond as fast as possible to events like this so that they can alleviate the suffering we are seeing right now.

This is an emergency that needs attention immediately.  But it's also one that has had a slow response time to it.  Action must be a lot faster if we are going to stop the suffering of so many people caught up in disasters like this.

Written by Andrew Murphy 2 September 2005

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