My answer to What is the importance of disaster management?
Answer by Desmond Last:
Now more than ever Disaster Management must not be under-resourced or under-developed. But this does not mean employing consultants to evaluate and make recommendations which only add to cost and not effectiveness. Nor does it mean putting a high-vis jacket on well-meaning but inexperienced civil servants.
It is also something that cannot be left to Governments Minister who are badly advised.
Disaster Management is no longer just a response. It is an industry. Like any Industry it has a value. But it is also subject to those who seek to corrupt that value.
Disaster Management must be very careful of the ‘latest equipment at the highest cost’.
Climate Change is bringing Disaster Management to the fore of Government attention.
Senior Military have not yet displayed the forward thinking that is expected of them. The military will become the front-line of Climate Change.
They will need to begin training with Government Emergency Services and Communities, if we are to reduce the deaths and destruction that will be caused by Climate Change.
Disaster Response at the International level is a mess and a costly mess.
The scale of the disasters we will experience because of Climate Change are such that to describe them would lead to accusations of fanciful imagination.
Nevertheless I have written a new system for dealing with Disaster response. No doubt I am not the only one who considers Disaster Management at the International Level to be wholly inadequate.
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