Recently Typhoon Megi inflicted massive damage on Yilan County, especially on the Suhua Highway, where a tour bus full of tourists tragically fell into a ravine.
Rescue efforts are continuing, but the central and Yilan County governments are blaming each other for the poor disaster relief response. Accidents and natural disasters are common under such extreme weather conditions; instead of arguing, we need to identify what went wrong with the existing disaster prevention and relief reporting system.
Disaster prevention and relief reports are now an accepted part of such work, reviewing performance in the wake of natural disasters and seeking improvements.
If pre-disaster warnings and self-help awareness played the role they should before the reporting stage, then the risks associated with the transmission of information during the reporting process would be lowered.
When discussing problems with the reporting system, these can be divided into three broad categories: pre-disaster warnings, self-help and reporting.
First, let’s look at the pre-disaster warning system. This mainly provides advance information about areas considered to be high-risk.
It is therefore worthwhile looking at whether government officials and citizens have enough disaster and prevention training to know where to send and obtain information and interpret warnings.
If we are really serious about making optimal use of pre-disaster information, all government departments and their personnel should be able to interpret disaster warning information, not just firefighting departments. This latest storm showed that our disaster warning system could be improved, otherwise there would not have been so many tourists trapped in buses on the Suhua Highway.
Second is the issue of self-help. If something goes wrong, self-help becomes very important. The way the driver of a tour bus trapped on the Suhua Highway and the tour group’s leader ensured the 21 tourists in their care left the area in an orderly manner is truly commendable.
In some ways it can be likened to how the 33 miners trapped in a mine in Chile for 69 days were organized by their boss, who ensured they led a disciplined life while trapped underground, helping them with everything from food to work, daily life and their final escape.
This is a successful example of self-help. It also indicates the efficiencies to be gained from disseminating knowledge about how to avoid panic and cooperate when trapped.
Government, local communities and civic groups would be better able to provide people with information to help themselves if they knew which areas were most prone to natural disasters, and this could potentially prevent tragedies.
The third aspect concerns disaster-reporting systems. The problem here is that our reporting systems are not integrated. For example, the police, firefighting and health authorities each have their own systems which means there is no guarantee information can be passed between them.
People in charge need to be able to ascertain whether information is correct in a timely fashion, because failure to do so makes optimal use of disaster prevention and relief resources impossible.
Furthermore, those caught in a disaster area, members of the public or officials who have not received professional training are not necessarily able to provide quick, accurate information. The urgency and strong emotions experienced during such events only further exacerbate the lack of clarity.
For example, the Tourism Bureau was the first government agency to be informed that a bus was trapped on the Suhua Highway. Unfortunately, perhaps because they lacked experience or specialized knowledge in disaster prevention and relief work, officials there apparently did not know how to process this information or recognize the urgency of passing it on to agencies responsible for rescue work.
The main reason for this was that basic disaster prevention and relief knowledge is currently limited to fire fighting departments.
Perhaps communications problems prevent us from knowing the full extent of the damage, or maybe people are unaware how or where to sent pertinent information.
According to media reports, during the response to the situation on the Suhua Highway, the Directorate General of Highways stressed that personnel from its Fourth Maintenance Office had taken up positions in Yilan’s emergency operation center, where they ensured the county government received the latest information.
There were also reports that the Tourism Bureau reported to the Central Emergency Operation Center.
However, the main issue is how the central government and local governments carry out follow-up disaster prevention and mobilization for relief work. I believe that although mobilization was not delayed during the recent crisis, things could be improved. I say this because past experience has shown us that blind spots exist within the disaster relief reporting system and that on occasion the mobilization system itself can be part of the problem.
Especially in large-scale disasters or situations where several disasters occur at the same time, effective disaster prevention and mobilization of relief personnel severely tests the competence of central and local government leaders. It is also a challenge for the mobilizing mechanisms of disaster prevention and relief systems.
This reminds me of the Wanan Air Raid Drill and Han Kuang military exercises held to practice disaster prevention and response mobilization at the beginning of this year. Judging from what happened during Megi, the disaster prevention and relief drill conducted during these exercises were just that, drills. There is still quite a long way to go before we achieve the goal of mobilizing Taiwanese society as a whole to take part in disaster rescue efforts.
Yang Yung-nane is a political science professor at National Cheng Kung University and its Graduate Institute of Political Economy.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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