Life-saving potential

Many human lives are lost during disasters due to lack of preparedness — not just on the part of the government but also the community and civil society.

Among the five basic emergency management steps including prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, the most important is preparedness.

There have been several incidents recently, where many human lives were lost due to irresponsibility or negligent behavior of the individuals.

The pandemic is the best example. A simple behavioral protocol of wearing a mask and maintaining physical distance in public places is not practiced, and the blame of rising death is solely shifted to the government.

Another horrendous example is the stampede on the eve of New Year at Mata Vaishno Devi Temple in Jammu. The incident occurred due to an argument among devotees and later resulted in pushing, followed by stampede, which resulted in death of 12 and injuries to 15.

It is not the question of siding with the government but, as civilised individuals, it is necessary for the people to own up responsibility for our actions in public. Why don't we have responsibility for our life? Why are we losing patience? Why are we not prepared to save our own life?

It is time for civil society to come forward to increase and deepen its engagement with the government and shoulder the responsibility of meeting new, emerging challenges of disaster management. It can play both a facilitating or collaborative role with the government.

In a panic situation during disasters, civil society can help the community to cope up. Owing to their proximity with the people, civil society can play a credible and crucial role in providing response and relief to the disaster-affected persons. That is why the role of civil society assumes such significance in disaster management.

During the first wave of the pandemic, a panic situation was created initially due to lack of awareness about the Coronavirus. During the second wave, short-supply of Remdesivir, and later of oxygen cylinders, resulted in panic buying and hoarding.

In such instances, the civil society did pitch in — helping people face the situation with a degree of confidence.

In a similar vein, there are emergent challenges that seem to have the potential to trigger such panic situations in the not-too-distant future. For example, climate change will bring in severe heat waves and sudden downpours. It's the responsibility of each individual to keep themselves safe and healthy and support the government in extending the services for the vulnerable and needy.

In the changing, evolving situation, civil society has a greater role in dealing with disaster management. While government agencies extend all help, civil society can meaningfully contribute to the mitigation of the impact of disasters, besides reducing the response time.

It is time that civil society is alerted well in advance to gear itself up to prepare for a looming crisis. It has a role cut out for it, of coping with the emerging challenges by ensuring that the community adheres to guidelines of disaster management.

Climate change is triggering massive problems like floods, droughts, heatwaves, cold waves and epidemics. This can be seen in the form of urban flooding, or drought affecting the agricultural sector.

Urban flooding is a phenomenon that has taken people by surprise only in the recent past. An unexpected rain suddenly intensifies, leading to urban flooding. Be it Mumbai or Chennai, during such urban flooding, it is the common people who suffer the most.

This is something that can be prevented, or at least the severity of the impact can be minimised, with help from civil society.

The looming crisis could take other forms as well, like heatwaves. For instance, some predictions suggest that during the summer, temperatures could soar to as high as 50 degrees Celsius. This kind of extreme heat wave conditions could cause severe panic among people.

Strangely, focus is shifting once again on to the need for tackling natural and man-made calamities. Perhaps there is a need to focus on evolving newer strategies to combat this new menace.

There is an imperative for civil society to come forward to supplement governmental efforts in formulating effective response. The civil society and NGOs can, and must, plan and prepare an architecture for prevention, mitigation, preparedness and response.

Primarily, civil society can prepare a community for any impending disaster. This can be done by sensitising the community on the primary guidelines to be followed in specific situations. These can be related to heatwaves, urban flooding, or even crowd management in large religious gatherings, where there is potential for stampede. What is worse in such situations is that even those who survive and escape, continue to be haunted by the trauma for a long time.

Now, with the help of civil society and NGOs, such a situation could have been tackled in advance.

Panic spreads easily and may lead to stampedes in places of huge gatherings.

In fact, streamlining the crowds can save precious human lives. Civil society has a vital role in preparing the people at the community level for such situations.

The incidents of youngsters trying out selfie and video shoots at life-risk places without any precautions have led to loss of lives.

Civil society and NGOs can join hands for preparing and putting in place perspective plans, which help lay persons to cope with such challenges. Preparation of such prospective plans could help in not only suggesting effective mitigation mechanisms, but also in sensitising public opinion on coping with such new and emerging challenges.

Civil society has a major role in speedy mobilisation of volunteers for rescue work. It can connect with individuals and instill a sense of confidence in them. Furthermore, in damage assessment, mobilising funds and in distribution of relief, civil society can play an important role as well. This helps in providing benefits directly to disaster-affected persons.

Civil society outreach programmes can help to stem the panic and go a long way in saving precious lives.

There is an urgent need to have an emergency alert system to disseminate emergency alerts and warning messages to the public.

Simultaneously, as responsible individuals, we should be aware of misinformation/disinformation before forwarding a message from an anonymous source during an emergency.

There are a number of ways for dealing with the situation. For instance, the school syllabus must include training for students on saving lives in various emergency situations.

A common distress hand signal is required to indicate need for rescue, especially during a kidnap, or forceful detention.

The media, which is part of civil society, should support in creating awareness programmes that indicate the ways and means to protect one's life.

Views expressed are personal