KATHMANDU, June 10: The situation after the April 25 earthquake and subsequent aftershocks was unrelentingly traumatic marked with death and devastation. With the vagaries of nature, the resource-stripped country and its citizens had to cope with multiple challenges and crisis.
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The nature, very indeed, was erratic at the moment and created chaos. However, the human-induced factors including a dearth of emergency response made the natural crisis worse and cost dearer to the survivors and denizens of the quake-hit sites.
In the wake of the earthquakes, people became so fragile and feeble that a small piece of information – whether true or false – shook their base and made them psychologically wrecked. Wide spreading rumours and baseless remarks from different quarters unleashed more terror than the disaster did in fact. The truant play on human sensitivities was abominably visible at the grief-stricken hour deepening survivors' pains.Burglary, rape, emotional black-mailing, uneven distribution and politicking of relief materials, black-marketing and cartelling, substandard food supply and other anarchic activities, aggravated the life-threatening crisis.
All these were the human-induced factors contributing to fuel the pains and plights of people who were already in abyss of shock due to the natural crisis. Though natural disaster as such cannot be averted the human factors contributing to increase its intensity and magnitude can be checked.
"Crisis communication is s very important measure to minimize human-induced elements and flow authentic information to help relieve people's pain in crisis through reliable channels", says Dr Sudhamshu Dahal, Assistant Professor, School of Arts, Kathmandu University.
Streamlining and disseminating authentic and reliable information to prevent aggravation of natural crisis is the thrust of crisis communication. Referring to the effort of the Tamil Nadu State of India which was rocked by the Tsunami in 2004, Dr Dahal said the state government then had responded to the crisis effectively by setting up Crisis Communication Centres. This could have been a good example for Nepal as well. "One-door system of disseminating information in crisis is very important as even minor information can save the lives of disaster affected citizens", he added.
In the absence of proper dissemination of disaster related information the image of Nepal was negatively portrayed. Against this backdrop, properly processed information could have worked to mitigate citizens' mistrust on the State mechanism provided reliable information was disseminated from a one-door system.
Dr Dahal suggests that a tracking communication system enabled with a team of human resource having experience in crisis should be mechanized in the state central system in Nepal to strategically respond disaster. "There should be a strong communication cell within the Disaster Management Authority being mooted by the government to tackle man-made challenges in the wake of the earthquake," added Dahal, who served in the Potential Fishing Zone Project in Tamil Nadu as a media sociologist for three years from 2009-11.
Likewise, echoing the need of standby crisis communication structure, SSP at Nepal Police Rajib Subba shared that the security body set up crisis centre instantly after the disaster and start working to assess vulnerability and lessen potential damages.
"Citizens need true and prompt info in crisis to get aware of the situation", SSP Subba said, adding the telecommunication towers, therefore, should be strongly erected so that it will not fall apart and keep people's communication alive any time. "Our security personnel had provided information from field within one-and-a-half minute after the first quake and promptly started responding to crisis based on the data".
As an exemplary deed, Nepal Police had brought into operation SMS service to help people in emergency. "We instantly received 700 SMS asking for rescue and relief response. Next day we opened crisis communication facebook page and twitter accounts to collect people's complaints and grievances", he shared, adding the network effect was very functional to monitor, follow-up and take action against perpetrators panicking public in crisis.
Acting on a passenger's tweet, we impounded a bus moving to east from Kathmandu in Sindhuli and took action for charging high fare, he shared an example of communication centre's success.The twitter effect of Turture incident of Tanahun is also interesting as a tweet by SagarWagle, a local, prompted police headquarters to have the local police units monitor the quake-triggered damage and send report to concerned authority.
As of June 6, Nepal Police twitter has 21,000 followers and 861,167 facebook friends.
Bearing in mind the future need, the government is also mooting to give premium to leverage telecommunication for emergency communication in crisis and expand mobile towers for airport communication.
The Post Disaster Need Assessment (PDNA) being prepared by National Planning Commission has proposed a future proof communications infrastructure and service sectors that will serve the needs of emergency response. "The reconstruction effort should be anchored on a future proofed approach that ensures increased investments in the telecommunications sector, the establishment of a resilient public service broadcast sector and the convergence of the ICT sector", the yet to be published document states.
The communication effect can assuage the potential hazards caused both by nature and human factors in crisis. Thus, the time is ripe for developing effective crisis communication centres to respond emergency situation as crisis never comes with an alarm bell. And given the vulnerability of Nepal to natural disasters, we will need it any time soon, with the monsoon just around the corner.
