Jakarta - Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB) berupaya mengedukasi dan mengingatkan masyarakat tentang kerawanan bencana di Indonesia lewat sebuah film bertajuk Nyanyian Musim Hujan. Film itu dirilis hasil kerja sama dengan Palang Merah Indonesia (PMI), Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction, Palang Merah Australia, dan Miles FIlms.

“Penting bagi masyarakat, terutama yang sering terdampak banjir, untuk meningkatkan kesiapsiagaan," kata Sekeretaris Jenderal PMI, Ritla Tasmaya, di sela-sela pemutaran film Nyanyian Musim Hujan di Gedung Pusat Perfilman Usmar Ismail, Jakarta, Kamis, 29 Januari 2015.

Film menjadi salah satu media yang dipilih untuk mengedukasi kesiapsiagaan warga terhadap bencana banjir karena sifatnya juga menghibur sehingga dapat mudah dipahami masyarakat.

Menurutnya, melalui film itu, permasalahan masyarakat di tengah bencana dapat menjadi sebuah pembelajaran sehingga masyarakat dapat bersiap diri saat banjir melanda wilayah mereka.

Kepala Pusat Data, Informasi dan Humas BNPB, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, mengatakan bahwa film seperti itu menjadi media strategis untuk mengedukasi masyarakat secara luas. Film itu dibuat atas berbagai peristiwa banjir yang melanda berbagai wilayah di Indonesia.

"Setiap permasalahan selalu ada pembelajaran untuk terus memperbaiki kesiapsiagaan masyarakat. Potensi bencana selalu dapat diminimalisasi risikonya. Jika kita sudah mengetahui bahayanya, sudah seharusnya kita dapat mengurangi risikonya," kata Sutopo.

Riri Reza sebagai sutradara film, menjelaskan bahwa dalam film berdurasi 65 menit itu berlatar belakang drama keluarga. "Dalam film kita bisa belajar," katanya. (ren) sumber: VIVA.co.id

Klaten: Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah (BPBD) Klaten, Jawa Tengah, memperkuat rumah sakit dalam mitigasi bencana. Hal itu dilakukan untuk kesiapan rumah sakit menghadapi bencana seperti gempa bumi, gunung meletus, dan kebakaran.

Kepala Pelaksana BPBD Klaten Sri Winoto kepada Media Indonesia, Kamis (19/2), menjelaskan, peran rumah sakit dalam mitigasi bencana sangat penting. Terutama untuk meminimalkan korban jika terjadi bencana alam tersebut.

"Klaten merupakan daerah rawan bencana gempa bumi, erupsi Merapi, banjir, tanah longsor, dan angin kencang. Maka, dalam mitigasi bencana, pihak rumah sakit juga perlu diberikan pelatihan tentang kebencanaan," katanya.

Menurut Winoto, personel rumah sakit perlu diberikan pelatihan kebencanaan untuk meningkatkan kapasitas dan kemampuan mereka dalam menangani korban bencana. Diharapkan, dengan pelatihan ini dapat meminimalkan korban.

Pada tahap awal, BPBD Klaten memberikan pelatihan 50 personel rumah sakit yang terletak di kawasan lereng Merapi, yaitu RS Islam Manisrenggo. Materi pelatihan kebencanaan itu meliputi gempa bumi, erupsi, dan kebakaran.

Sementara itu, Direktur RS Islam Manisrenggo Suharno mendukung pelatihan kebencanaan bagi personel rumah sakit. 

"Untuk pengurangan risiko bencana, SDM kami pun berpengalaman saat menangani korban erupsi 
Merapi," ujarnya.

sumber: Metrotvnews.com

SUMEDANG - Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah (BPBD) Kabupaten Sumedang, sudah menyiagakan para personel dan relawan siaga bencana berikut peralatan dasar penanggulangan bencana.

Upaya itu, guna mengantisipasi terjadinya bencana alam terutama banjir dan longsor di musim hujan saat ini. Selain itu, BPBD pun akan mengirimkan surat edaran kepada semua camat untuk meningkatkan kewaspadaannya terhadap ancaman bencana alam. Terlebih di wilayah Kabupaten Sumedang, ada beberapa daerah yang rawan pergerakan tanah dan longsor.

“Surat edaran kepada para camat tak lama lagi akan kami kirimkan. Dengan surat edaran itu, diharapkan para camat meningkatkan kewaspadaannya terhadap ancaman bencana alam. Sekaligus juga, memantau serta melaporkan apabila terjadi bencana alam di wilayahnya, terutama banjir dan longsor,” kata Kepala Pelaksana (Kalak) BPBD Kabupaten Sumedang, Ayi Rusmana ketika ditemui di kantornya, Kamis (12/11/2015).

Menurut dia, hingga kini baru ada satu laporan bencana alam dari Kecamatan Cimanggung. Bencana alam tersebut, yakni terjadinya pergerakan tanah di Dusun Cibulakan, Desa Sirnagalih.

Akibat pergerakan tanah tersebut, terjadi tanah retak sepanjang 20 meter dengan kedalaman 5 meter. Pergerakan tanah tersebut menyebabkan satu rumah warga rusak berat.

“Memang sampai sekarang, warga korban masih bertahan di rumahnya. Akan tetapi, kami sudah menyarankan kepada camat untuk segera mengevakuasi warga korban ke tempat aman, khawatir terjadi pergerakan tanah susulan,” ujar Ayi.

Kewaspadaan terhadap ancaman bencana alam banjir, pergerakan tanah dan longsor, kata dia, harus lebih ditingkatkan. Sebab, pergantian musim dan iklim tahun ini dinilai ekstrim. Sebelumnya, terjadi musim kemarau yang berkepanjangan dengan suhu udara yang cukup panas.

Kini, berganti dengan musim hujan. Perubahan cuaca yang ekstrim ini, bisa menyebabkan pergerakan tanah, terutama di daerah yang kondisi tanahnya labil. Pergerakan tanah itu, bisa memicu terjadinya longsor. “Jadi, masyarakat harus berhati-hati,” katanya.

Dikatakan, di Kabupaten Sumedang ada beberapa daerah rawan bencana banjir dan longsor. Untuk banjir, terjadi di wilayah Kec. Jatinangor dan Cimanggung. Bahkan musibah banjir tersebut menjadi langganan setiap tahunnya pada musim hujan.

Sementara daerah rawan longsor dan pergerakan tanah, di antaranya di Dusun Singkup Desa Ciherang dan daerah Anjung Tirta Kelurahan Pasanggrahan Baru, Kecamatan Sumedang Selatan.

Selain itu, di Desa Sukamaju Kec. Rancakalong, Desa Sukamukti Kec. Tanjungmedar, Desa Cipeundeuy dan Desa Cimanintin Kec. Jatinunggal serta Desa Banyuresmi Kec. Sukasari.

“Bagi warga yang ada di daerah rawan bencana ini, mesti meningkatkan kewaspadaannya. Para camat juga perlu melakukan monitoring langsung di lapangan untuk melakukan berbagai langkah antisipasi,” kata Ayi.

Lebih jauh ia menjelaskan, selain akan mengirimkan surat edaran kepada para camat, BPBD pun terus berkomunikasi secara intensif dengan sejumlah relawan siaga bencana.

Misalnya, relawan Jercy (Jatinangor Emergency Response Community) yang selalu siaga membantu penanggulangan banjir di Jatinangor dan Cimanggung dan Gares (gabungan relawan Sukasari) yang siaga mengantisipasi bencana longsor di wilayah Kecamatan Sukasari.

“Dengan para relawan di lapangan, kami selalu berkomunikasi. Bahkan mereka sudah terlatih dalam melakukan penanggulangan bencana,” ujarnya.

Ayi menambahkan, untuk persediaan logistik dan berbagai peralatan dasar penanggulangan bencana sudah disiapkan. Untuk logistik, di antaranya persediaan beras, sembako, selimut dan baju seragam.

Sementara peralatan dasar, seperti tenda darurat, pelbed, perahu karet dan alat komunikasi. Bahkan kendaraan multi fungsi yang dilengkapi dapur umum, sudah disiagakan. “Jadi, berbagai langkah antisipasi dan penanggulangan bencana alam di musim hujan saat ini sudah kami siapkan,” ucapnya. (Adang Jukardi/A-89)

sumber: PRLM

KOBE –January 17, 1995, 05:46. This was the moment 20 years ago that the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake struck and resulted in 6,434 lost lives, 200,000 destroyed buildings, 300,000 people made homeless, and a staggering economic cost then calculated at 2.5 percent of Japan’s GDP (approximately $100 billion).

As for all disasters, the human toll, including the psycho-social impact on survivors, is the greatest tragedy. It reminded us of the constant need for communities, cities, and nations to enhance prevention and preparedness, to ensure that response systems are efficient, and that communities build their resilience to withstand and cope with any future disaster.

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake ushered in a new era of volunteerism in Japan, and highlighted many lessons on how to prepare for disasters arising from hazards of all kinds, improve care and support for the survivors, as well as to rebuild cities and their health systems. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, and so many other natural disasters in the past two decades across the world, illustrated the need to continuously apply past lessons.

The number of people affected by emergencies and disasters continues to increase year after year, with climate change further exacerbating the frequency and magnitude of climate-related hazards. Underlying all efforts is the need to reinforce the role of communities, for which lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake are being transmitted through the concept of “kizuna” (human bonds).

The Ebola emergency in West Africa has once more demonstrated the need to ensure that preparedness is in place and response plans are up-to-date, disease surveillance, health facilities and health systems are operational in any circumstances, health education is implemented, and social mobilization and risk communication plans are available in case of an emergency.

Investing in health systems is critical to ensure that all countries can prevent, detect and respond to known and emerging health threats, as well as to ensure increased resilience and response and recovery capacity. A key part of this is emphasizing that hospitals and other health facilities are safe and operational in times of disasters to deliver life-saving care, for which the World Health Organization and its partners are supporting through a global Safe Hospitals Initiative.

All of these experiences further increase the urgency to focus on vulnerable populations, such as the aged, disabled, women and children, and the poor, across the continuum of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery from disasters.

For example, understanding the risk context of various communities, subpopulations and the nature of inequities can help local actors form social mobilization strategies for more effective preparedness and response. Knowing where people live, coupled with effective early warning systems, can help ensure that first responders can locate populations and save lives. An increasing aged population and people with life-threatening chronic diseases also introduces new challenges to ensuring the continuity of care for survivors.

The spirit and determination of the people of Kobe and other municipalities in Hyogo Prefecture inspired the world on how to “build back better” that ensures that post-disaster recovery, including social and health rehabilitation and reconstruction, provides the opportunity to reduce future risk and make communities safer and better places to live and work.

This spirit, and the vision of former Gov. Toshitami Kaihara (who recently passed away), and of the former director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, inspired the creation of the WHO’s Kobe Center in the aftermath of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, a commitment continued by Gov. Toshizo Ido and Mayor Kizo Hisamoto to this day.

Among the key legacies of the Hyogo and Kobe experience had been the incorporation of their experience into the ground-breaking Hyogo Framework for Action, 2005-2015, Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, which defined global action for disaster risk reduction.

Ten years later, this framework will be discussed with all nations and updated at the upcoming World Conference on Disaster Reduction on March 14-18 in Sendai.

For the good of all citizens worldwide, there is an urgent need to expand international, national and local efforts to reduce disaster and health emergency risks, to put a greater focus on prevention and community-centered action, to increase preparedness capacity, and response and recovery when needed.

 –January 17, 1995, 05:46. This was the moment 20 years ago that the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake struck and resulted in 6,434 lost lives, 200,000 destroyed buildings, 300,000 people made homeless, and a staggering economic cost then calculated at 2.5 percent of Japan’s GDP (approximately $100 billion).

As for all disasters, the human toll, including the psycho-social impact on survivors, is the greatest tragedy. It reminded us of the constant need for communities, cities, and nations to enhance prevention and preparedness, to ensure that response systems are efficient, and that communities build their resilience to withstand and cope with any future disaster.

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake ushered in a new era of volunteerism in Japan, and highlighted many lessons on how to prepare for disasters arising from hazards of all kinds, improve care and support for the survivors, as well as to rebuild cities and their health systems. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, and so many other natural disasters in the past two decades across the world, illustrated the need to continuously apply past lessons.

The number of people affected by emergencies and disasters continues to increase year after year, with climate change further exacerbating the frequency and magnitude of climate-related hazards. Underlying all efforts is the need to reinforce the role of communities, for which lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake are being transmitted through the concept of “kizuna” (human bonds).

The Ebola emergency in West Africa has once more demonstrated the need to ensure that preparedness is in place and response plans are up-to-date, disease surveillance, health facilities and health systems are operational in any circumstances, health education is implemented, and social mobilization and risk communication plans are available in case of an emergency.

Investing in health systems is critical to ensure that all countries can prevent, detect and respond to known and emerging health threats, as well as to ensure increased resilience and response and recovery capacity. A key part of this is emphasizing that hospitals and other health facilities are safe and operational in times of disasters to deliver life-saving care, for which the World Health Organization and its partners are supporting through a global Safe Hospitals Initiative.

All of these experiences further increase the urgency to focus on vulnerable populations, such as the aged, disabled, women and children, and the poor, across the continuum of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery from disasters.

For example, understanding the risk context of various communities, subpopulations and the nature of inequities can help local actors form social mobilization strategies for more effective preparedness and response. Knowing where people live, coupled with effective early warning systems, can help ensure that first responders can locate populations and save lives. An increasing aged population and people with life-threatening chronic diseases also introduces new challenges to ensuring the continuity of care for survivors.

The spirit and determination of the people of Kobe and other municipalities in Hyogo Prefecture inspired the world on how to “build back better” that ensures that post-disaster recovery, including social and health rehabilitation and reconstruction, provides the opportunity to reduce future risk and make communities safer and better places to live and work.

This spirit, and the vision of former Gov. Toshitami Kaihara (who recently passed away), and of the former director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, inspired the creation of the WHO’s Kobe Center in the aftermath of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, a commitment continued by Gov. Toshizo Ido and Mayor Kizo Hisamoto to this day.

Among the key legacies of the Hyogo and Kobe experience had been the incorporation of their experience into the ground-breaking Hyogo Framework for Action, 2005-2015, Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, which defined global action for disaster risk reduction.

Ten years later, this framework will be discussed with all nations and updated at the upcoming World Conference on Disaster Reduction on March 14-18 in Sendai.

For the good of all citizens worldwide, there is an urgent need to expand international, national and local efforts to reduce disaster and health emergency risks, to put a greater focus on prevention and community-centered action, to increase preparedness capacity, and response and recovery when needed.

source: japantimes.co.jp

Jakarta - Menteri Desa, Pembangunan Daerah Tertinggal, dan Transmigrasi (Mendes PDTT) Marwan Jafar meminta kepala desa, terutama di daerah rawan bencana untuk selalu dalam keadaan siaga. Musim hujan dengan curah deras disertai angin kencang yang menerpa seluruh pelosok tanah air, dianggap Marwan potensial menimbulkan berbagai ancaman bencana alam.

"Jadi kami instruksikan kepada seluruh desa yang rawan bencana, agar sedini mungkin siaga bencana, menyiapkan action plan untuk menghadapi bencana dan dampaknya" kata Marwan, dalam keterangan tertulis yang diterima Selasa (20/1/2015) malam.

Berdasarkan data Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB) terdapat 315 daerah dengan jumlah penduduk 61 juta jiwa masuk kategori rawan banjir dan 274 daerah dengan jumlah penduduk 124 juta jiwa yang rawan musibah longsor. Ancaman banjir dan longsor yang melanda berbagai daerah ini menjadi perhatian serius

Banyak sekali desa-desa yang mengalami bencana longsor atau banjir. Tidak terkira kerugian yang diderita desa akibat musibah tersebut. Mulai dari korban jiwa hingga hilang atau rusaknya bangunan dan kekayaan milik desa dan warganya. Belum lagi lumpuhnya kegiatan sosial, pendidikan dan ekonomi desa.

Belajar dari kejadian sebelumnya, longsor atau banjir bisa datang secara tiba-tiba mengakibatkan perlunya semacam posko desa siaga bencana. Posko bertugas memberikan penyuluhan kepada warga desa agar siap menghadapi bencana, juga mempersiapkan seluruh perlengkapan dan peralatan yang diperlukan baik sebelum, saat terjadinya bencana maupun paska bencana.

Semua hal tersebut harus sudah disiapkan sedini mungkin, supaya desa rawan bencana benar-benar siap menghadapi situasi apapun yang bisa saja terjadi secara tiba-tiba atau di luar apa yang sudah diprediksi.

"Pembiayaan posko dan berbagai kegiatannya dapat dimusyawarahkan bersama warga desa untuk dibebankan pada dana desa. Karena hal tersebut sifatnya sangat urgen bagi keselamatan desa dan warganya" ujar Marwan.

Lebih lanjut Marwan mengingatkan agar aparatur desa rawan bencana sejak dini mulai melakukan upaya perlindungan dan penyelamatan aset-aset desa dari dampak bencana. Seperti dokumen, kendaraan bermotor, bangunan, dan lain-lain.

"Supaya aset-aset tersebut tidak rusak dan tetap dapat digunakan, sehingga desa tidak perlu mengeluarkan banyak dana lagi untuk memperbaiki atau membeli lagi aset-aset tersebut," ucap politisi PKB itu

Dengan demikian, lanjut Marwan, dana desa dapat dialokasikan untuk membantu warga desa yang terkena dampak bencana, melalui program pemberdayaan masyarakat desa untuk mempercepat proses pemulihan ekonomi desa paska bencana.

sumber: KOMPAS.com

KARAWANG - Dinas Sosial Kabupaten Karawang mengaku telah mempersiapkan segala hal untuk menghadapi kemungkinan terjadinya bencana di daerah lumbung padi tersebut. Di antaranya mempersiapkan logistik para korban bencana.

"Segala sesuatunya sudah kami siapkan, termasuk logistik seperti beras dan mie instan," kata Kepala Dinas Sosial Karawang, Rokhuyun, di kantornya, Senin (19/1/2015).

Dikatakan, saat ini telah tersedia 200 ton beras milik Pemerintah Kabupaten Karawang yang siap disalurkan jika sewaktu-waktu terjadi bencana. Selain logistik, pihak Dinsos juga telah membina dan melatih warga agar tanggap bencana.

"Di daerah bencana, kami sudah menyiaplan kampung siaga, ada 10 titik. Warganya sudah dilatih untuk tanggap bencana," tutur Rokhuyun.

Disebutkan juga, selain menyiapkan logistik, pihak Dinsos telah mempersiapkan perahu karet 15 unit untuk mengevakuasi korban bencana banjir. Sementara Taruna Tanggap Bencana (Tagana) bentukan Dinsos yang aktif ada 45 anggota.

sumber: (PRLM)

The government says the regions need to set up more community based disaster preparedness units (KSBs) to empower those who live in areas prone to natural disasters.

"We have only 258 KSBs and we're preparing more in 2015," said Social Affairs Ministry social protection for disaster victims director Margowiyono as quoted by Antara news agency.

He explained that according the country's disaster-prone regional index, 453 regencies were prone to natural disasters, so the amount of units was still far from adequate.

Margowiyono encouraged local administrations and the private sector to help finance the units to improve residents' awareness of disasters.

See more at: <a href="http://news.asiaone.com/news/

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Claude Enrico survived the earthquake that hit Haiti five years ago and helped pull people from under the rubble in the flattened capital Port-au-Prince.

Now he is dedicated to saving more lives in the disaster-prone Caribbean country.

Lying on two fault lines and in the path of hurricanes, Haiti is among the countries most at risk from natural disasters in the world, including floods, tsunamis and drought.

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, which killed more than 220,000 people, was a wake-up call to the government and international aid agencies about the dire need to protect Haitians from disasters and build resilience among communities to withstand shocks.

"We have to learn to live with natural phenomena," said Enrico, 37, a civil protection officer with Haiti's interior ministry. "It's inevitable they will come year after year. So we must train people what to do in an emergency and ensure families have an evacuation plan."

NETWORK OF VOLUNTEERS

He belongs to a network of 3,000 newly trained volunteers and paid staff, created in the aftermath of the earthquake, who work across Haiti's 10 provinces.

Trained in first aid and emergency response, they are on the frontline of government efforts to ensure Haiti is better prepared to deal with disasters and can save more lives.

"We still lack equipment, firefighters and more people need to be trained. But communities are more aware about how to keep safe. One of our key messages is to tell people not to cross rivers during a flood because that's often how people get killed," said Enrico at the National Emergency Operations Centre (COUN) in downtown Port-au-Prince.

Built in 2010 following the earthquake, the center is where government ministries and aid agencies meet to coordinate disaster response. The center, which includes a warehouse stocked with water, mattresses, hygiene and food kits, has been put to the test.

A cholera epidemic broke out in October 2010, which has claimed the lives of more than 9,000 people, followed by several tropical storms, including Hurricane Sandy, which killed 54 and forced 100,000 Haitians to evacuate their homes in 2012.

"In Haiti, it's the back-to-back accumulation and combination of disasters that puts pressure on the government and the people," said Thomas Pitaud, chief technical advisor to the government on national disaster risk management systems.

Each year in parts of Haiti, homes and animals are washed away, fields inundated, and food crops and grazing land destroyed by storms and floods, pushing up food prices.

With 60 percent of Haiti's population of 10 million living on less than $2 a day, even a small increase in food prices can mean families cannot afford to put enough food on the table.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

Five years after the earthquake, aid agencies say progress has been made in preparing communities on what to do when a disaster strikes, including early warning systems, simulation exercises and identifying shelters.

Other projects include building flood walls and drainage ditches, along with embankment and watershed protection projects to conserve water supplies and lessen the impact of floods and landslides.

But such schemes, along with the efforts of Haitians like Enrico, can only go so far to reduce the high exposure to disasters Haiti faces.

Far less progress has been made on reducing the risk of disasters in the first place, and ensure all new homes, hospitals and schools being built are earthquake resistant.

"You have an environment that's very degraded," said Pitaud, who also works for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Haiti.

"We're constantly responding from one catastrophe to another, so it's difficult to focus on reducing risk over the long-term and get funding."

URBAN SLUMS

A lack of urban planning and high levels of urbanization have led to more than 60 percent of Haitians living in densely populated slums in Port-au-Prince, which magnifies the damage and number of casualties disasters bring.

Angelique Hilaire lives with her three children in a gray brick one-room home perched precariously on a hillside slum.

Hilaire is only too well aware that she is exposed to flooding and landslides but has no option but to brace herself for the yearly hurricane season.

"I can't afford to rent anywhere else," she said. "Every time it rains I pray to God for it to stop. But what can I do?

Even a short downpour can leave the capital flooded as piles of rubbish on the streets and debris filled canals block drains, which exacerbates flooding.

Natural disasters linked to climate change will only get more frequent and extreme in the future, experts say.

Decades of deforestation have left Haiti even more exposed to natural disasters, with less than three percent of its original forest cover still intact, according to the UNDP.

This causes soil erosion and reduces the ability of soil to retain water, making Haiti more vulnerable to flooding and landslides. During heavy rainfall, there are few trees to stop water washing down the bare mountains.

While 5.5 million tree seedlings have been planted in Haiti by the UNDP since 2010, not enough has been done to stop people cutting down trees in the first place.

Selling charcoal, which comes from burning wood, is used for cooking and is a key source of income for many Haitians living in the countryside.  

"One challenge is to provide economic opportunities so farmers don't have to cut down trees," Pitaud said.

Robin Murphy is a leader in the field of disaster robotics, having started working on the topic in 1995 and researching how the mobile technologies have been used in 46 emergency responses worldwide. She has developed robots that have helped during responses to numerous emergencies, including 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. As director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University, Murphy works to advance the technology while also traveling to disasters when called upon to help agencies determine how robots can aid the response. The center’s first deployment was in response to 9/11, which also was the first reported use of a robot during emergency response.

Emergency Management: Since 9/11, how have you seen the use of robots in disasters change?

Robin Murphy: We started out in 2001 and up until 2005 you didn’t see the use of anything but ground robots. Everything was very ground-centric, and I think that reflected the state of the technology. For years we had bomb squad robots, which were being made smaller and smaller for military tactical operations so that gave them a tool that was pretty easy to use. Starting in 2005, we saw the first use of small unmanned aerial vehicles that were being developed primarily for the military market and those were very useful. Those have really come up and, in fact, since 2011, I’ve only found one disaster that didn’t use an unmanned aerial vehicle and that was the South Korea ferry where they used an underwater vehicle. So we went from ground robots dominating to about 2005 and then we started shifting toward unmanned aerial vehicles. In about 2007, it became much more commonplace to see underwater vehicles being used. Then starting in about 2011, I think if you have a disaster and you’re an agency and you haven’t figured out a way to use a small unmanned aerial system, it’s kind of surprising.

EM: Is one of the issues that people are waiting for FAA regulations to use UAVs?

RM: Every single disaster since about 2011, but definitely since 2012, looking at the 46 disasters we’ve kept tabs on, have used unmanned aerial systems, including the ones here in the United States. I would not say the adoption problem is the FAA regulations. It takes very little time to get an emergency COA [certificate of authorization]. It does take time to get some of the paperwork in advance done to fly a regular COA but the FAA has given jurisdictional COAs. The emergency COAs take a very short period of time — it’s knowing the paperwork, like with any new technology.

The deterrent to adoption seems to have been the lack of money to flat out purchase them. They’re basically computers and you know how fast the technology for your cellphone and computer changes, you wouldn’t expect to have a computer that’s 10 years old, so you wouldn’t buy these the way you buy big equipment. We’re suggesting that agencies look at plans that allow them to lease the technology. And also because it’s a new technology, you don’t know what that means in terms of training and how it’s going to be integrated and that means they don’t have to recoup some of the training and maintenance costs right off the bat.

EM: What are you currently working on?

RM: I work mostly on the human factor side: How people actually use these. I am not worried about whether a UAV is going to fall out of the sky or a ground robot’s wheels will stop turning. In my book, Disaster Robotics, I go back over 34 disasters, of which I was in a bunch. If you look at the data that’s available, there were 13 terminal failures where the robots failed for some reason and that caused the mission to be aborted. In about 51 percent of the cases it was human error. When I go back and analyze that I see that it’s human error, but it was the designer — the designer didn’t give it an interface that allowed the user to have the right type of information to make a different or better decision. You can only see what you can see.

We’re also very interested in how these technologies change the way emergency response works. What we saw at the Washington state mudslide was that everybody’s thinking “these UAVs will be useful for ESF [emergency support function] 9 for urban search and rescue” but actually they’re more useful in that particular case, in a mudslide, for public safety and you can start thinking about ESF 14 and recovery. [Questions include:] How are you going to share that information? How are you going to do that without creating a data avalanche that just overwhelms different decision-makers who need to share, to plan, to interact with each other? And if I want to use this robot and you want to use it and we both want to point it in different directions, how do we handle that? So how do you get these interfaces that let people interact in real time and then process the data and share and work together?

We’ve got a group of students that have put together what we call the Skywriter interface that lets somebody with a tablet, laptop or mobile phone see what a UAV or robot is seeing and communicate to the operator or system what they want to do, like circle or draw an arrow, which indicates where to go, or follow my finger and track this.

EM: When you deploy to a disaster, what’s your role there?

RM: We’re always invited in, we do not self-deploy. Our center, this is something frankly that I am little disappointed that we’re still doing, I had hoped that at this point everybody would have robots, but we can provide robots. We can usually provide robots through our Roboticists Without Borders program where members train with us beforehand and then when we’re called out, they will donate their equipment and time. So we go out and our role is to first off see, what’s the right technology for what they’re trying to do? There are some times when a robot isn’t going to work because you can’t afford in a disaster to make anything worse, so we have to be conservative. We act as a dating service.

What we’ve found is that most responders prefer to work with us side by side. We’ll drive and you tell us what to do. We also do formal studies and what we’ve found is that in looking at the video data and the sensor data coming from robots, two heads are nine times better than one head. Having a team work together really takes off the cognitive load, one person will catch something that the other person didn’t and it just adds a vast improvement to performance. … With that said, I would love to be out of business, I would be just as happy for groups to have robots on their own. I would like the data though; I love learning from the practitioners what’s working and what’s not.

EM: Have you been working on anything in response to public health needs like for the Ebola response?

RM: We find that in Ebola a lot of people are thinking about clinical applications, like replacing the nurse. Nurses and doctors are hard to replace and duplicate; robots rarely are cost-effective at replacing what humans do. They’re often better at giving some capability that you didn’t have before. So in this case, rather than looking at clinical needs, we’ve looked at logistical needs and the fact that a lot of people involved in health aren’t really doing health work, they’re cleaning up messes, they’re hauling all of these sheets that are contaminated, they’re trying to move people around. So having one person instead of four doing that begins to be more of what the military calls a “force multiplier” and becomes much more efficient. There are things like that that exist. There’s general reconnaissance: How long is the line outside? What’s going on in the villages in the rainforest, do they seem empty? Is there dirt overturned that may indicate graves? That can indicate what’s going on.

We’re also looking at clinical but that’s going to be much more specialized. We like to work with the practitioners and find out what’s going to be the most bang for the buck. If there’s one thing to do to make your life easier, what would that be?

EM: Looking to the future, where do you see disaster robotics headed in the next five to 10 years?

RM: There’s that idea of adoption, which will hopefully continue to accelerate.

In the future, for the new technology, I expect to see three things: Better software on what we call emergency informatics; it’s how you share the data and how you visualize it. In ground robots, I am so excited at work at looking at burrowing robots. The big value in most big building collapses lies in the smaller the better, what do you do when there’s not an obvious void and can you get something to literally snake and nudge and worm its way through there. There are some animals that do that — there’s a sand lizard and types of snakes that navigate in the ground — so we’re doing some work with Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon on that. There are also some great advances being made in manipulation. Initially I would characterize the first decade of robots as having been all about allowing the responders to see at a distance, but now we’re seeing a shift. We can see at a distance but now we would like to poke things, we would like to move them over, we would like to drop off things. So we need to act at a distance and not just see at a distance. There’s some advances in robot manipulation that are coming up and are very exciting and we’ll be incorporating those into future work.

IN LESS THAN two months, the Atlantic hurricane season will begin. No one can accurately predict what it will offer; those living within its path can only expect the worst and hope for the best. The entire Caribbean chain which is exposed needs to be better prepared for any eventuality. The issue of preparation also applies to the next big disaster which could be awaiting us in Barbados or our neighbours, whether floods, chemical or gas leaks, oil spills, earthquakes or even a tsunami. Are we ready and prepared for any such eventuality?

The reality is that we must stop looking to the United States, Canada, Britain and other rich nations to be our salvation in times of disaster. So while the US Southern Command, which has planned major cuts, has the means to respond to any major disaster in this region, the reality is that we must show a greater willingness to do more for ourselves, long before the times of peril. We need to appreciate that the Caribbean simply does not rank too high on Washington’s agenda.

That means member nations must give the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) greater support, particularly financial. It is to be regretted that some countries have not been paying their dues.

At the local level, the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) and its equivalents across the region must also be well supported.

Just as important, we need volunteers in an active equivalent of the Neighbourhood Watch concept promoted by police, to be equipped to respond to the next big disaster.

The DEM and the Barbados Defence Force must implement the strategic goal of training community emergency response teams not only for every neighbourhood but all major employment centres.

We need to have certain safety fundamentals in place long before we think of asking or expecting external assistance. Perhaps before the start of the hurricane season an audit ought to be done to see how many houses are built or retrofitted to hurricane proof standards and how many householders know basic first-aid, rescue and/or firefighting techniques.

We also need to test the volunteers to determine what skills are most critical and what factors can stymie their effectiveness following a natural or man-made disaster and how best to apply these skills primarily within the community. It is a test to benefit every individual and corporate citizen.

Training will take money, regardless of who undertakes it. When the entire community is involved there is a great level of appreciation and it may be easier to find the funding even in difficult economic times. We need to become activists in disaster mitigation at the community level and promote the concept of self-help. We must not be seen as simply reaching out for alms.

See more at: http://www.nationnews.com

Berita Egatama — Puluhan karyawan Rumah Sakit Kharisma Paramedika mengikuti pelatihan pemadam kebakaran dengan instruktur dari Badan Penanggulangan Bencana daerah (BPBD) Kulonprogo. Pelatihan dasar ini selain melakukan antisipasi dari adanya bencana kebakaran, juga berlatih cara menggunakan Alat Pemadaman Api Ringan (APAR).

Hal ini disampaikan oleh Kasie Pencegahan dan Kesiapsiagaan Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah (BPBD) Kabupaten Kulonprogo Hepy Ekonugroho, ST saat ditemui Senin (19/1/2015) di ruang kerjanya. Puluhan karyawan RS Kharisma paramedika yang mengikuti pelatihan terdiri dari Perawat, Juru masak, Petugas Parkir dan Satpam. “para karyawan rumah sakit perlu mengetahui penyebab dari terjadinya kebakaran dan cara memadamkan api dengan menggunakan APAR” ungkap Hepy.

Rumah Sakit Kharisma Paramedika terhitung sudah dua kali melakukan pelatihan tersebut, mengingat rumah sakit menjadi salah satu lokasi yang cukup rawan dengan adanya kebakaran serta penyelamatan pasien menjadi hal yang utama saat terjadi bencana kebakaran. “hampir semua rumah sakit sudah kita latih cara menggunakan alat tersebut” tambah Hepy.

Dalam pelatihan ini, puluhan karyawan Rumah sakit juga diberikan materi antisipasi adanya kebakaran, mulai dari memilih lokasi saat menempatkan kompor, merawat selang gas, menggunakan kabel listrik yang standar serta teknis memadamkam ledakan saat terjadi kebakaran. “penyebab terjadinya kebakaran perlu juga diketahui sebab hal itu merupakan antisipasi” paparnya.

Selain itu, sejumlah lembaga pendidikan dalam hal ini sekolah, sudah diberikan pelatihan yang sama, terutama Sekolah menengah Kejuruan (SMK) yang memiliki jurusan Otomotif. Sementara Kepala BPBD Kulonprogo Drs, Untung Waluyo berharap, agar semua instansti maupun lembaga yang ada segera memiliki APAR, sehingga saat terjadi bencana kebakaran bisa dilakukan pencegahan agar tidak makin meluas.(bm)

4 February 2015 – As Member States accelerate efforts to finalize the successor to “the world’s most encompassing framework” on disaster risk reduction ahead of a critical United Nations conference in Japan next month, the role of health in building community resilience has suddenly come front and centre in the negotiation process, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) said today.

The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), the outcome of the 2005 World Conference on Disaster Reduction, is the first plan to detail the work required from all different sectors and actors to reduce disaster losses.

Looking to update that landmark agreement at the upcoming Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, world leaders will head to Sendai, Japan, in mid-March to broker the “HFA2” and chart a global course on disaster risk reduction for the coming decade. Sendai lies at the heart of Japan’s Tohoku region, which bore the brunt of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukushima meltdown.

But while measures to counter the devastation wrought by earthquakes and other natural disasters have formed the bulk of disaster risk reduction efforts until now, health issues are increasingly occupying a prominent space in global discussions.

“The human, social, and economic impact of epidemics such as Ebola, bird flu or HIV/AIDS can be as serious as an earthquake,” the UN agency explained on its website. “Health challenges also go hand in hand with other challenges that increase vulnerability to disasters, such as poverty and climate change.”

The establishment of health protections and awareness, UNISDR continued, can help communities strengthen their ability to weather the most comprehensive and forceful hazards and complement already outlined disaster risk mitigation efforts.

Last week, UN Member States met for a round of negotiations aimed at smoothing out differences in the HR2 draft ahead of the Sendai conference and reiterated four priorities to be detailed in the new framework, including understanding disaster risk; strengthening how institutions manage it; increasing investment in resilience; and enhancing preparedness to make response and recovery more effective.

In addition, delegates identified seven specific targets: reduce the disaster death toll; cut numbers affected by disasters; rein in economic losses; stem damage to critical infrastructure; scale up national risk reduction strategies; increase funding and international cooperation; and improve public access to early warning and disaster information.

Both the priorities and the targets, UNISDR said, would apply to health emergencies as well as other emergencies.

“We’ve never had quantitative targets before, and now we’re getting very close to such targets for economic losses and mortality,” Margareta Wahlström, Head of UNISDR, added. “There’s also an interesting discussion on defining affected people.”

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As economic losses from disasters rise around the world, more effort is needed to reduce the risks from extreme weather and earthquakes in every area, from infrastructure to health, the United Nations disaster prevention chief said.

Margareta Wahlström, head of the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), said in an interview that a new global plan to protect people and assets from disasters, due to be approved in March, aims to ensure "a much stronger link than we have had in the past between development and disaster risk".

"There is progress, but it is not wide and speedy enough to really tackle the increasing disaster losses in many parts of the world," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Geneva, where negotiations on the agreement are taking place this week.

Governments are mulling ways to measure improvements, including global targets for lowering deaths and economic losses from disasters, and how well key infrastructure like schools and hospitals is protected.

The world's existing 10-year disaster risk reduction plan, launched after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, did not include numerical indicators of progress.

But Wahlström said it had played a major role in pushing governments to set up institutions, laws and policies for dealing with disasters, and strengthening early warning systems.

"There is such an awareness now about how quickly risk is increasing," she said. But many countries still feel "they are moving very slowly" to manage it, she added.

PROTECTING INVESTMENT

One problem has been a shortage of funding to plan and implement disaster risk reduction efforts, whether during post-crisis reconstruction or in long-term development projects.

Most of what has been achieved has come from national budgets, Wahlström noted.

According to a 2013 report from the London-based Overseas Development Institute, the international community spent $13.5 billion on reducing the risk of damage from disasters in the past two decades - just 40 cents for every $100 of aid.

Wahlström said the new plan - due to be agreed at a conference in Sendai, Japan, in two months' time - was unlikely to contain a goal for the percentage of aid that should be spent on disaster risk reduction. Nor did she expect "huge new funding streams globally".

But she hoped the Sendai framework, which will not be legally binding, would lead to greater commitment among donor governments to manage and reduce the risk of disasters to all their development investments.

As climate change impacts worsen, efforts are ramping up to manage floods and prevent landslides, for example.

But poorer nations should also prioritize disaster risk in plans for areas such as health and education, Wahlström added.

In addition, big disasters that have hit rich nations in recent years, including Superstorm Sandy in the United States and the 2011 tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan, have highlighted inadequate sharing of expertise across sectors, she said.

Risks are rising fastest for infrastructure like power plants, subways, airports and communications networks, she noted.

"We become very dependent on systems that can also be touched by cyclones, flooding etc," she said.

Protecting those systems effectively "requires a lot of imagination, and a willingness to step out of your specialist environment and look wider", she added.

JAKARTA – Menteri Agraria dan Tata Ruang (ATR)/Kepala Badan Pertahanan Nasional (BPN) Ferry Mursyidan Baldan menyebutkan, pihaknya ingin berperan mencegah terjadinya sebuah bencana dengan menggarap tata ruang bencana.

Menurutnya, penanggulangan bencana sangat mendesak melihat potensi bencana yang tinggi di beberapa daerah. Khususnya, masalah relokasi warga dari wilayah rawan bencana, bukan cuma penanganan saat bencana terjadi.

Untuk itu pihaknya ingin menggandeng Kepala Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana Syamsul Maarif untuk menggarap tata ruang ini.

"Harus kita siapkan. Agar bisa minimalisir dampaknya," kata Ferry saat membuka Lokakarya 'Peran Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional dalam Mitigasi dan Penanganan Pascabencana di Pulau Jawa Bagian Selatan' di Kantor Kementerian ATR, Jalan Sisingamangaraja, Jakarta Selatan, Kamis (4/6/2015).

Bencana, kata dia, adalah fakta yang hadir di tengah-tengah masyarakat. Dia mencontohkan, longsor yang terjadi di Banjarnegara, Jawa Tengah pada Desember 2014.

Dari sana dia melihat perlunya tata ruang bencana ini kemudian dapat menjadi dasar untuk relokasi warga pascabencana.

"Kami diminta cari tanah yang jadi relokasi masyarakat. Ada tapi jaraknya 20 km. Bagi kita di kota tak terlalu jauh tapi Tetap tidak mudah," katanya.

The world can learn from the turnaround of the Philippines' disaster awareness as shown by its experiences with super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013 and Typhoon Ruby (Hagupit) in 2014, a US surgeon who took part in the response to both disasters, said.

Michael Karch, a surgeon with Mammoth Hospital in Mammoth Lakes, California, said learning lessons from Yolanda and applying them during Ruby may have saved the lives of some 1.7 million Filipinos.

"The preemptive actions of the Philippine government, military, medical, and civilian sectors should serve as valuable lessons for the rest of the world as we collectively begin to embrace mass casualty education and preparedness on an individual, national, and international platform," Karch said in a blog post.

Yolanda, which tore through the Visayas on Nov. 8, 2013, left more than 6,300 dead.

In contrast, Ruby - which, like Yolanda, packed powerful winds and posed a major threat - resulted in 18 deaths. The lower casualty count was in part due to massive evacuations in areas Ruby was projected to hit.

Karch said Yolanda's destruction had been described as the "Night of 1,000 Knives,” due to the flying debris that "wreaked injury and death on the Filipino population."

In contrast, he said, Ruby could be dubbed the "Night of a Million and a Half Flames" referring to 1.7 million plus people who survived the typhoon.

"Widespread public health and civil defense measures that had been established in the interim between Haiyan and Hagupit were initiated in the days before landfall," he said.

Karch, who said he served as a team leader in Civilian Mobile Forward Surgical Teams (CMFSTs) in the aftermath of both typhoons, found certain patterns that he said are reproducible.

"Valuable lessons can be taken from each and applied to the next. The initial differences between the disaster response to Typhoons Haiyan versus Hagupit are striking. The simple fact that the Philippine government was able to evacuate more than a million and a half million citizens out of harm's way is a testament to their dedication to learn and evolve as super storms occur on a more frequent basis," he said.

"Although the response to Hagupit was not perfect, it was much improved from that of Haiyan. The use of progressive communication through social media and Short Message Service (SMS) texting played a large role in this success," he added.

Karch likened the turnaround to super storms Katrina in 2005 and Sandy in 2013 in the US.

"As with Haiyan, the Hurricane Katrina experience was a glaring low point in terms of public opinion and confidence in governmental response to natural disaster. The government response to Hurricane Sandy showed marked improvement in pre-emptive planning and execution on the part of federal, state and city government," he said.

"The recent Philippine Hagupit experience provides us with another opportunity to learn. Although no system is perfect, if the motivation to continually improve our national disaster response is a driving force, we must study all storms, especially those with successful outcomes, and determine how we can apply these lessons to our own public health and disaster preparedness programs," he added. —Joel Locsin/JDS, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

The world can learn from the turnaround of the Philippines' disaster awareness as shown by its experiences with super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013 and Typhoon Ruby (Hagupit) in 2014, a US surgeon who took part in the response to both disasters, said.

Michael Karch, a surgeon with Mammoth Hospital in Mammoth Lakes, California, said learning lessons from Yolanda and applying them during Ruby may have saved the lives of some 1.7 million Filipinos.

"The preemptive actions of the Philippine government, military, medical, and civilian sectors should serve as valuable lessons for the rest of the world as we collectively begin to embrace mass casualty education and preparedness on an individual, national, and international platform," Karch said in a blog post.

Yolanda, which tore through the Visayas on Nov. 8, 2013, left more than 6,300 dead.

In contrast, Ruby - which, like Yolanda, packed powerful winds and posed a major threat - resulted in 18 deaths. The lower casualty count was in part due to massive evacuations in areas Ruby was projected to hit.

Karch said Yolanda's destruction had been described as the "Night of 1,000 Knives,” due to the flying debris that "wreaked injury and death on the Filipino population."

In contrast, he said, Ruby could be dubbed the "Night of a Million and a Half Flames" referring to 1.7 million plus people who survived the typhoon.

"Widespread public health and civil defense measures that had been established in the interim between Haiyan and Hagupit were initiated in the days before landfall," he said.

Karch, who said he served as a team leader in Civilian Mobile Forward Surgical Teams (CMFSTs) in the aftermath of both typhoons, found certain patterns that he said are reproducible.

"Valuable lessons can be taken from each and applied to the next. The initial differences between the disaster response to Typhoons Haiyan versus Hagupit are striking. The simple fact that the Philippine government was able to evacuate more than a million and a half million citizens out of harm's way is a testament to their dedication to learn and evolve as super storms occur on a more frequent basis," he said.

"Although the response to Hagupit was not perfect, it was much improved from that of Haiyan. The use of progressive communication through social media and Short Message Service (SMS) texting played a large role in this success," he added.

Karch likened the turnaround to super storms Katrina in 2005 and Sandy in 2013 in the US.

"As with Haiyan, the Hurricane Katrina experience was a glaring low point in terms of public opinion and confidence in governmental response to natural disaster. The government response to Hurricane Sandy showed marked improvement in pre-emptive planning and execution on the part of federal, state and city government," he said.

"The recent Philippine Hagupit experience provides us with another opportunity to learn. Although no system is perfect, if the motivation to continually improve our national disaster response is a driving force, we must study all storms, especially those with successful outcomes, and determine how we can apply these lessons to our own public health and disaster preparedness programs," he added

taken from: http://www.gmanetwork.com