Realizing the importance of the preparation, some hundreds of youth from Kirtipur and Lalitpur are now working hand in hand to prevent the disasters from incurring heavy tolls in their communities.
These youth are taking initiatives in their communities to not only aware the locals about the importance of taking the precautions, but also teach them how to do so. They visit households in Kirtipur and Lalitpur every week to educate them to adopt necessary strategies and precautions in the wake of any disaster in the future.
Smriti Bajracharya, 25, is one of the members of the Disaster Management Committee (DMC), formed in each ward of Kirtipur municipality which makes various disaster risk mitigation efforts at the community level. A resident of Kirtipur, Smriti says they tell the locals how having an emergency ‘Go Bag’ with food, general medicines, and torch lights amongst other basic things handy in their home can save their lives in the aftermath of the disaster. “We also tell them what to do and what not to do if any natural disaster, particularly earthquake, takes place. Although these sound like trivial solutions, considering these can significantly reduce the damage,” she says.
“While many locals were unaware about the basic preparedness for the disaster earlier, our efforts have, to some extent, educated them on issues like standard building codes, first aid and other measures necessary to cope with earthquakes,” says Smriti, who has been working as a DMC volunteer for the past few years. She’s also trained for the ‘search and rescue’ operation, which she believes will help minimize casualties in the aftermath of the disaster.
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The DMC committee was formed as part of the ‘Urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Preparedness and Community based Disaster Risk Management Project’ implemented by Lumanti, Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) and Oxfam, upon the funding of UKAID.
The committee also comprises various task forces like Light Search and Rescue, First Aid, Damage and Assessment, and Wash, among others.
“Besides generating awareness and teaching locals about precautions, we are also trained on how to rescue and search victims buried in the debris of buildings crumbled by the earthquake,” explains Smriti, adding that many other youth in her community are trained to provide first aid service to the wounded before carrying them to nearby hospitals or the open space of Tribhuvan University (TU) for further treatment.
For the emergency rescue during the period of a large-scale disaster, the government has designated 83 open spaces in Kathmandu including the TU premise, Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) in Lalitpur, and Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA). These open spaces will serve the purpose of providing shelter as well as storing food, drinking water and other commodities needed in the aftermath of the disaster.
“Our government has become cautious and has been preparing, albeit slowly, to mitigate the damages of earthquake after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and the subsequent outbreak of cholera there which devastated the whole country,” says Shri Bhakta Basnet, senior program coordinator at Oxfam Nepal. Highlighting the fact that Nepal is an earthquake-prone country that has been experiencing large-magnitude tremors occurring in the gap of every 50 years, he opines that youth should be at the forefront of the disaster risk management.
“We want to ensure that the community maintains water sanitation and hygiene upon their own efforts. We’ve even built an earthquake-resilient deep boring drinking water and treatmet plant in Kirtipur which will serve as the drinking water source after the disaster,” he informs.
Sobina Lama, disaster program manager at Lumanti, says that around 2,500 youths in Lalitpur and Kirtipur are directly engaged in the preparedness of the disaster.
“These youth we collaborate with mostly come from local clubs, Nepal Red Cross Society and individually from their communities,” adds Sobina.
Twenty-year-old Elisha Shrestha, also from Kirtipur, says that they took the initiative to train and educate the local community members, particularly youth, on disaster management so that they can be prepared to rescue and search victims after the disaster has occurred. “The police or military may carry out the search and rescue operations, but what if the roads are all destroyed by the disaster? This might create obstruction for the rescue team to arrive, and it might be too late. So, trained community members can immediately start the operation without waiting for the police or military to arrive,” she explains.
Campaigners of disaster management in Kirtipur have been even working to persuade local residents to remove flower pots from the rooftops as part of the disaster management campaigns. “Realizing that these could cause more casualties during earthquakes, many households have already removed flower pots from the rooftops. Many households now are aware that non-structures of the building like televisions, mirrors and other such objects should be fixed properly so that they don’t fall down easily during tremors and injure people,” Elisha says.
Suma Maharjan, a 25-year-old campaigner of disaster management in Lalitpur, laments the government’s reluctance to recognize their attempts to reduce the risks of disaster. “While we’re trained to search and rescue during the disaster, we may not be allowed to work when we really have to because we don’t have any certificate or recognition of the completion of the training on search and rescue. The government should give us an identity card to allow us to work in the forefront of the disaster along with the government-certified rescuers,” opines Suma.
