DEVELOPMENT: Vulnerable Cities Can be Protected From Disaster

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 9 1996 (IPS) - Emergency planning, the effective application of legislation and skillful use of advanced technology could reduce damage caused by natural disasters in urban areas, according to experts here.

Although it is impossible to prevent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or hurricanes “we can avoid the loss of many lives and much destruction,” said Olavi Elo, director of the Secretariat of the International Decade for the Reduction of Natural Disasters (1990-2000).

“In reality, there are no longer reasons to be fatalistic with respect to natural disasters,” he said in a statement timed to coincide with World Disaster Reduction Day, Oct. 9.

Reducing the impact of natural disasters in urban centres will be a gradual process. But with joint efforts by politicians, citizens groups and disaster prevention organisations in applying early warning systems, emergency plans, legislation and technology, many natural disasters – like flash floods and landslides “which arise from our own errors”- could even be eliminated, Elo said.

The rapid and enormous growth of cities puts them more than ever at risk from floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves. “At least one quarter of the earth’s population already lives in high risk areas, a proportion that is rapidly rising,” Elo warned.

He noted that the world is witnessing an inexorable rural exodus that will result in more than half the total world population of six billion living in urban centres by the turn of the century.

By year 2000, 17 of the world’s 20 largest cities will be in developing countries. Eighty percent of urban areas will be in developing nations by 2025 — places prone to earthquakes, floods, landslides and other disasters, Elo pointed out.

An ideal recipe for urban disaster includes dense populations, the settlement of dangerous areas like unstable hillsides, ravines and riverbanks, and a high concentration of poorly built and maintained buildings.

During earthquakes, 80 percent of deaths are caused by the collapse of buildings. The most frequent disasters today are floods, of which rapid urbanisation is the key risk factor.

Flash floods are caused by a reduction of absorption of water due to concrete and the compacting of land in cities, a decrease in open spaces in increasingly congested urban centres, changes in the courses of rivers and weakened urban drainage.

‘Natural’ disasters are “often the consequence of human error”, said Elo. The main victims of such phenomena are the poor. The expert recalled an earthquake that cost 1,200 lives and left 90,000 homeless in Guatemala in 1976. It was known as “the earthquake of the poor” because nearly all the victims lived in rundown hilly areas of Guatemala City.

Pushed out of rural areas by unemployment and poverty, millions of people occupy land prone to disasters in cities or on their outskirts. Local governments cannot keep up with the human flood and are unable to protect them.

Since 1960, the number of people affected by natural disasters has grown at an annual rate of six percent, according to Elo.

Meanwhile, natural disasters have increasingly serious economic consequences. While only one billion-dollar disaster had been registered up to 1987, since then 15 disasters have caused over one billion dollars in losses. The earthquake that hit the Japanese city of Kobe and left 6,300 people dead caused 100 billion dollars in losses.

In spite of the growing cost in human lives and economic losses, “much can be and is being done to reduce the loss of lives and the damage caused by natural disasters,” said Natalie Domeisen, an expert with the Secretariat of the International Decade for the Reduction of Natural Disasters.

Domeisen recommended that maps detailing risk areas be drawn up for consultation when construction projects are to be undertaken. Also needed, she said, are emergency plans to be prepared with the participation of community groups, and early warning systems.