Closer Links Among Thai Agencies Key To Better Disaster Preparedness

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SPECIAL

Closer links key to better disaster preparedness

By Pongphon Sarnsamak

The Nation

Severe flooding claimed hundreds of lives and caused billions of baht's worth of damage last year. It is therefore high time the country learned the lessons and prepared itself to better deal with such natural disasters.

The most integral part of any such preparation is close collaboration among the agencies concerned.

Currently, a host of organisations have responsibility for dealing with disaster prevention and mitigation. Most of them tend to work independently of each other and lack the close cooperation required for impressive performance.

Meteorological Department deputy director-general Somchai Baimoung said the technology for accurate forecasting and early-warning systems would be useless if there were no cooperation running in parallel with it.

Natural disasters are no small threat to Thailand, which faces severe storms, hailstorms and cold spells from time to time, besides regular unbearable heat, drought and flooding.

Two tropical depressions hit the country last year. They brought heavy downpours and then severe floods to many provinces, particularly Surat Thani, Nakhon Ratchasima, Lop Buri, Phatthalung, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Songkhla.

About 11.26 million rai of farmland in 74 provinces were ravaged by the flooding between August 1 and December 9.

This cool season, at least two people have succumbed during what has been a particularly cold spell. The Meteorological Department has forecast that temperatures will drop even further this month.

While many experts have blamed the "La Nina" weather effect for the recent natural disasters, Smith Dhammasaroj begs to differ.

The former director of the National Disaster Warning Centre (NDWC) believes the natural disasters would pose much less of a problem if the relevant agencies were to improve their performance. He is convinced that they currently work too slowly and are unable to deliver timely warnings.

"The calamities caused by heavy flooding in Nakhon Ratchasima and Hat Yai showed that the government's mechanism for coping with the situation had failed. There was no system to [effectively] handle the situation. Moreover, the government did not pay much attention to tackling the severity of the problem," Smith said.

He called for a review of the disaster-prevention-and-mitigation system in the country, adding, "Otherwise, natural disasters will become even more disastrous."

He said that while Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban chairs the NDWC board, he had never convened a meeting since taking up the post. The board has failed to take a sufficiently active role because it focuses solely on the immediate problem in front of it, he alleged.

Smith said the NDWC had sent many early-warning messages to agencies but when these failed to get passed on to the public, it had done nothing further. "This is the way they work," he added.

Somchai, however, said technological and budgetary constraints were also a problem. The Meteorological Department, for example, lacks up-to-date technology to deliver accurate weather forecasting at a very local level, nor can it predict what will happen over the next year, he said.

Anon Sanitwong na Ayutthaya, who heads the Southeast Asia START Regional Research Centre (SEARRC), also said no agency could exactly predict and identify the areas that would be flooded in the near future, as they lacked accurate information to analyse the situation.

"We have a lot of models to simulate the situation, but we don't have accurate input for analysis or forecasting. We need accurate information to manage natural disasters such as flooding," he said.

The Science and Technology Ministry's Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency has teamed up with the Interior Ministry's Royal Thai Survey Department to conduct a nationwide survey to create a high-resolution map that would help agencies to analyse the situation in flood-prone areas and send accurate early-warning messages to the public.

But this is not the only key mechanism for helping the public prevent the damage caused by natural disasters. Community-preparedness plans are also important in enabling local people to effectively handle disaster situations by themselves, said SEARRC academic adviser Suppakorn Chinvanno.

"A national master plan to cope with natural disasters alone would not help communities to deal with disaster situations. They should have their own plans, as they know the best ways to handle [local] emergencies," he said.

Suppakorn also suggested the government should set up a micro natural-disaster insurance fund to help people affected by catastrophes such as severe flooding and drought.

The government spends large sums to compensate disaster victims, but this has become a major financial burden. The proposed insurance fund would facilitate faster recovery and compensation than the current system, he said.

It should be subsidised by the government so that poor people, especially farmers, could afford the coverage, he added.

-- The Nation 2011-01-04