Lessons of Two Disasters: Building Resilience from Within

 

 

 

Lessons Learnt: Regional Response

Indeed, one important lesson in this episode is that a regional disaster mechanism can now be easily activated to complement the relief assistance of the international community. A six-man ASEAN Emergency Rapid Assessment Team (ERAT), which included four Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officers, was deployed prior to the onslaught of Hagupit.

 

The team comes under the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA). Its critical function is to provide rapid assessment and determine the critical resources – such as tents, medical kits, and sanitation facilities – required for the areas affected by the typhoon. ERAT helps ASEAN and the international community identify what needs to be delivered to affected communities.

 

Working with the AHA, Singapore has also deployed its Swift Emergency Evaluation Deployment (SEED) team, a nationally-organised needs assessment team to assist the Philippines in getting a comprehensive analysis of the situation in the affected areas and enhance information-sharing. This helps facilitate decision-making by armed forces, for instance, by directing them to affected areas most in need of disaster assistance.

 

Engaging Local Communities

Another key takeaway in the aftermath of Hagupit is the importance of getting communities involved to boost community resilience. While both local and national governments prepared themselves to protect communities, the people had already inculcated the habit of cooperating with authorities in the massive evacuation efforts.

 

Local governments credited the cooperation of communities to ensure quick and orderly evacuation which undeniably saved thousands of lives. People are also now more informed of the possible deadly consequences of Hagupit should they refuse to heed authorities.

 

Indeed, natural disasters are now regarded as a major security threat affecting communities regionally. Powerful typhoons such as Haiyan and Hagupit are no longer just one-off events, but yearly occurrences due to worsening climate change. As this kind of disasters affect millions of lives irrespective of political boundaries, it is essential to assist communities to be more disaster-resilient, primarily through coordinated efforts of national and multilateral actors.

 

 

Mely Caballero-Anthony and Julius Cesar I. Trajano are respectively Head and Senior Analyst with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University