Natural Disaster and The DMB

Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country of an area of about 1,47,570 sq. km. with population around 160 million. Bangladesh is a worst victim of natural disaster causing colossal loss of lives and properties.

Definition of Disaster:

An event, natural or man-made, sudden or progressive, that seriously disrupts the functioning of a society, causing human, material, or environmental losses of such severity that the affected community has to respond by taking exceptional measures. The disruption, (including essential services and means of livelihood) is on a scale that exceeds the ability of the affected society to cope with using only its own resources.

Disaster Management: 

Disaster management includes all aspects of planning of and responding to disasters. It refers to the management of both the risk and the consequences of disasters, and includes both prevention and preparedness measures taken in disaster-prone areas in anticipation of the known hazards – often referred to as “pre-disaster” and long-term rehabilitation.

Normal Phase (normal time):

A period when there is no immediate threat but long-term actions are required in anticipation of the impact, at some unknown time in the future, of known hazards.

Alert and Warning Phase:

The period from the issuing of an alert or public warning of an imminent disaster threat to its actual impact, or the passage of the threat and the lifting of the warning. The period during which pre-impact precautionary, or disaster containment measures are taken.

Disaster Phase:

The period during which direct impact of a natural calamity is felt. Disaster phase is long in case of slow on-set disasters (droughts, normal monsoon flood) and short in case of rapid on-set disasters (flash flood, cyclone, earthquake, fire, industrial accident, landslide etc).

Recovery Phase:

The period, following the emergency phase, during which actions are to be taken to enable victims to resume normal lives and means of livelihood, and to restore infrastructure, services and the economy in a manner appropriate to long-term needs and defined development objectives.

The adverse impacts of various natural hazards affecting socio-economic condition need to be reduced for sustainable development. On realization of this reality, the Government of Bangladesh has undertaken a lot of plans and programs for risk reduction through disaster management.

Click to read the other post about the Disaster Management Bureau – DMB.

Roles and Responsibilities of DMB:

The main role of the Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) is to provide support to disaster management decision makers, planners and practitioners at all levels in Bangladesh by acting as a small dynamic professional unit at a national level to perform specialist functions in the field of disaster preparedness, local level disaster action and contingency planning, awareness training, facilitating improved information collection.

• During Normal Time
• During an Emergency
• During Post-Disaster Recovery

During Normal Time: 

• Developing a National Disaster Action Plan, and associated practical guidelines for those   responsible for its implementation.
• Helping line ministries and agencies to develop and test their own contingency/action plans.
• Helping district- and thana / upazila-level authorities to develop and test their own disaster preparedness plans.
• Working with local authorities, BDRCS / CPP, NGOs and others to help union councils and village communities in high-risk areas to develop their own contingency plans and increase their own coping capacity.
• Collaborating with existing training institutes, training materials development units, and NGOs already engaged in relevant training activities, to co-ordinate and promote the production of curricula and relevant training materials for various target groups.
• Collaborating with line agencies, local authorities, existing training institutes, and relevant NGOs, in planning organizing training for a wide variety of government personnel, elected officials and others.
• Establishing facilities, information systems operating procedures, and telecommunications systems, for a national emergency operations centre (EOC) control room, for immediate use when an emergency arises.
• Establishing arrangements for the mobilization of additional personnel for the EOC and to assist local authorities in the field, when required.
• Providing a documentation and information services on disaster management for line agencies and others.
• Working with the Planning Commission and concerned line agencies to increase awareness of disaster risks and ensure that such risks, and possibilities to reduce them, are considered and appropriate measures incorporated in development planning.
• Monitoring and reporting to the Government/Parliament on the risks faced, the vulnerability of people and economic assets to known hazards, the status of preparedness in the country and any delays/bottlenecks in the implementation of disaster prevention/preparedness programs and project.

 During an Emergency:

• Ensuring the effective dissemination of appropriate warnings, of flood, cyclones (through collaboration with BMD, BWDB, CPP, Radio, TV, and authorities in particular). Activating and operating the national EOC (control room), receiving, analyzing, storing, incoming information, arranging rapid reconnaissance and assess mission, where needed.
• Providing secretarial services and expert advice to the National Disaster Management Council (NDMC) and Inter-ministerial Disaster Management Co-ordination Committee (IMDMCC)
• Providing information to and liaising with ERD concerning requirement international assistance, and with Ministry of Information.

During Post-Disaster Recovery:

• Co-operating with the Planning Commission and line agencies, as required in compiling data on reconstruction requirements and in coordinating the preparedness of an integrated reconstruction program
• Ensuring that risk reduction measures are built into all reconstruction programs as much as possible
• Undertaking a final evaluation, or at least a "post mortem", on the overall operation, drawing lessons and feeding them back to the IMDMCC training activities and up-dated guidelines.

DDM - Department of Disaster Management

Thanks,

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