Herramientas de CASE

Integrating disaster risk reduction and restoring the capacity to recover from disaster belong to the aims of post-disaster early recovery in humanitarian programs.

Reconstruction Assistance on Yolanda (RAY) also mentions improving disaster preparedness as one of its goals. This chapter will give answer to the third sub question about disaster preparedness in post-disaster early recovery.

There was no adequate evacuation center in Salvacion, but during the typhoon people evacuated to the higher mountain areas where a new housing relocation site would also be built. A year after the devastating typhoon people did not have a clear picture of where to evacuate in case of a new disaster but most of them would only search for higher places.

Some of the respondents mentioned that they had heard about plans to construct a new evacuation site to the mountain area by ACT Alliance. That information was confirmed by the ACT Alliance field coordinator although the construction had not started yet because according to him the strategic location for the evacuation site needed to be decided first.

Barangay Sawa did not have an evacuation center either, and during Yolanda people stayed in two-storied houses, school buildings or church. Some of the residents in Sawa also went for their relatives in further barangays. For the elderly the church (as it is located in Basay proper) is bit a too far so in cases typhoon would come and there would not be enough time they would have to stay home and “hold on to anything they could hold on to”. The residents in Sawa in general had not heard of any plans as to where they can evacuate so it was up to them as to where they would be going if there was a new typhoon.

Ferreras was lacking an evacuation center as well and the place where people could evacuate was the mountain where the relocation area would also be built. Another possible evacuation site that was mentioned was a health center in the barangay however it is just a tiny building and therefore not spacious enough for everybody. Some of the respondents had also heard of an evacuation site that would be developed to the mountain area in the future. It was clear that the residents of all three barangays did not have a decent understanding of the evacuation plans and they had not been taught on where to evacuate in case of a new typhoon.

I think that it would be better if somebody would build an evacuation center in the mountain so people would know where to go (Male, 61, Ferreras).

Because of the country’s tendency to experience natural disasters it has developed early warning systems over the years. Strengthening the early warning system is an important part of post-disaster early recovery and disaster preparedness. The Guidance note on Early Recovery suggests strengthening community-based early warning systems. Early warning system is not only a warning system but besides the warning technique it includes more functions. There are four functions that make the early warning system effective, which are risk knowledge, monitoring and warning, dissemination and communication and response capability (UNISDR s.a.).

The warning systems in these three barangays differed a bit but usually people received warnings either from television and radio or barangay or municipality officials that would go around the areas to warn people. In Ferreras there was a siren that would scream when people needed to evacuate. Ringing the church bell was used to warn people in Salvacion.

All the respondents in every three barangays answered that they had been warned about the typhoon Haiyan and they knew that it was coming. Nonetheless they were not prepared and they did not have a sufficient understanding of the volume and the intensity of the typhoon. Consequently the communication and information provided was not clear enough and people did not understand what all the terms meant, such as storm surge. Storm surge means a change in the sea level and it is caused by a storm. High winds push the sea water towards the shore and it easily causes flooding. Storm surges are particularly dangerous for people living in coastal areas and they are often the cause of the casualties in tropical storms (Met Office 2014).

The response capability of the residents in Salvacion, Sawa and Ferreras was also inadequate since many of them were not ready to react to warnings. The evacuation should have been done earlier and people should have been better prepared as to know where and when to evacuate and what to pack with them. Most of the people felt that they were now, after Haiyan, more alert if another typhoon would approach the region. Nonetheless they were not necessarily better prepared mainly because lots of people were still living in temporary shelters that would not withstand new typhoons. However it felt like there had been a change in the attitudes of people and they were mentally more prepared to evacuate if ever there was a warning of a strong typhoon. Some people had also their clothes, basic accessories and some emergency stuff such as food items ready packed. Yet there was a really poor family that I met and the husband told that it would not be possible to evacuate immediately even in the case of a new typhoon warning since they would have to continue with their usual things in order to have even a little bit of money to be able to buy food.

The very poor housing with a bad location and lack of income made them socially as well as physically vulnerable for disasters and lessened their capacity to tolerate the disasters.

The guidance note on early recovery emphasizes increasing community awareness of existing hazards and strengthening local level emergency response mechanisms in the affected areas. Risk knowledge is also mentioned as one of the four elements of effective early warning systems. Therefore I wanted to inquire if there had been any trainings or discussions in the barangay on how to prepare to natural hazards and in which ways the local residents are advised to prepare. In Sawa most of the respondents had not heard of any trainings, except some that had participated in the development session by 4Ps program or a discussion with CARD cooperative. The 4Ps session contained talks about climate change and discussion about the response capability. The discussion by CARD also handled the same themes.

In Ferreras respondents had different information about trainings. Some people had not heard of any trainings, some had but could not remember the organiser, some had heard but were not on the list of people who can participate, and some people remembered that there were trainings organised by the municipality. Also a development and humanitarian organization Food for the Hungry had organised training in Ferreras months before the typhoon. One respondent told that there had been assemblies in the barangay on what to do and where to go in case a new typhoon would be approaching the region.

The question about risk knowledge and trainings was not asked from all the respondents since I just realized the importance of it when I had transferred to the second barangay and it was not possible to go back and find the same respondents in Salvacion again. So this data about risk knowledge and trainings only covers the latter two barangays, Sawa and Ferreras. However it seems like there were more trainings with more variety in Ferreras compared to Sawa. It is also interesting to notice that most of these trainings were organised by public sector since the 4Ps programs is a government program. International agencies were mainly covering all the other sectors but they had not started the disaster preparedness trainings, at least not in these two barangays.

Although DRR related programs were not very noticeable in the studied barangays the key informants from the humanitarian agencies confirmed that it is just about the time when the NGOs and agencies are doing their DRR assessments and planning the orientations and trainings. However I was told in the key informant interviews that all the organizations are doing separate orientations and DRR plans that are not standardized. One of the key informants claimed that it will be a “massive disaster” if the DRR programs will not become standardized and there will not be any cooperation between the organizations.

5.3. Disaster resilience

This chapter seeks to find an answer to the third research question about the resilience systems of the crisis-affected people. It derives partly from people’s own resilience systems that refer to social capital and partly from the contributions of humanitarian aid. Although humanitarian aid has a significant role in people’s recovery from disasters, people’s own resilience systems should not be forgotten. As this study is made from the perspective of the crisis-affected people I want to highlight the potential of the communities. I presented a figure about community resilience in theoretical framework that highlighted four main factors contributing to community resilience, which are economic development, information and communication, community competence and social capital. The first two are more or less covered in the previous chapter about post-disaster early recovery, but the last two will be covered in this chapter. Especially social capital will be in focus.

In the next chapter I will present what are they ways in which individuals and communities increase their own preparedness and utilize their own response systems. In the following chapter I will provide an answer to what are the ways in which humanitarian aid has

supported the communities to create an enabling environment for building disaster resilience.