admin January 15th, 2010
As the news this morning reports rising anger in Haiti at the ongoing failure of aid and relief supplies to arrive on the island, one thing is clear – the world was not ready.
That is not to say that we should all have foreseen a ‘once-in-200-years’ event. Or that we should have known that it was going to happen this week on Haiti. And it is not to underplay the devastation to an already weak infrastructure that has been caused by the earthquake. The level of devastation is such that it clearly makes it even harder to get such goods as are available onto the island.
But it is still true to say that we were not ready. There were not sufficient stockpiles of basic goods and medical supplies nearby, or even in the same hemisphere. None of this is the fault of the aid agencies who are, as always, achieving miracles with the resources that they have available. But the way that the emergency relief system operates works against them.
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Tags: cyclone, earthquake, Haiti, Human Development Index, Myanmar, natural disasters
admin January 10th, 2010
Northern Malawi was hit by a number of earthquakes in the course of December, with 4,600 families needing assistance. Now Madagascar is bracing itself for the probable arrival of tropical cyclone Edzani, which is being forecast will hit the island on January 14th.
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Tags: cyclone, earthquake, Madagascar, Malawi, UN
admin October 14th, 2009
The sheer scale of the devastation caused by the cyclones that hit the Philippines continues to shock and amaze. The cyclones left 648 dead, with many still missing, and affected more than six million people, some 300,000 of whom are still housed in makeshift evacuation centres.
Now the UN is to revise its appeal made on 7th October. Initially it called for $74m, but now it says that this “was clearly not enough” and the UN is stressing that this number would be revised upwards when more detailed reports come in from the field.
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Tags: cyclone, earthquake, Floods, Indonesia, Philippines, Samoa, South East Asia, tsunami, UN