Raising public awareness and encouraging individual preparedness are essential to building a resilient society in the face of natural disasters and geopolitical challenges, experts said at a Presidential Office forum yesterday.
“It’s about raising the awareness [that] all households, all citizens ... have to be able to take care of themselves” during emergencies, Finnish National Emergency Supply Agency Director Aki Laiho said.
Laiho emphasized the need for people to take responsibility for their own preparedness, highlighting Finland’s “72-hour concept” that urges households to stock enough food and key supplies to survive at home for at least three days without relying on outside services.
Photo: Screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Flickr page
“Everybody needs to be able to take care of themselves and the family and the people near them for a while,” and should only call the government in when “critical services get interrupted,” he said.
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Administrator James Barros echoed the same view, adding that “getting our citizens to understand that” was difficult.
“I can tell the families that aren’t ready for a natural disaster. They’re the ones that run to the store, and they buy toilet paper and rice, and that’s it. That’s their get-ready for a disaster,” Barros said.
He said that in Hawaii, where 95 percent of food arrives by ship from the US mainland on five-to-seven-day journeys, authorities urge residents to stockpile two weeks of supplies, including food, water, power sources and medicine.
“We’re constantly pushing that [message] out in every way we can,” Barrow said, adding that awareness campaigns extended from movie theaters to newspapers.
Liu Te-chin (劉德金), a National Security Council adviser, acknowledged the difficulty of persuading Taiwanese to regularly stockpile, and replenish food and other essential supplies, given the easy access to such goods in normal times.
However, he said that increasing household food storage directly contributes to strengthening the nation’s overall food resilience.
Liu said the government was exploring the use of drones to deliver goods to remote and rural areas, where residents still rely on government rations for certain necessities.
At the same time, the government is also working with convenience stores to ensure access to essential goods, such as providing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
Jas Huang (黃士杰), head of Taiwan FamilyMart Co’s Membership and Data Innovation Research Department, said the company is upgrading its food production and logistics systems to ensure it can maintain operations for a limited period using backup power and alternative sources during outages.
FamilyMart is Taiwan’s second-largest convenience store chain by market share, in a market of more than 13,000 stores.
Yesterday’s forum was held on the first anniversary of the Presidential Office’s Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee, an ad-hoc advisory body focusing on civil defense.
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