Using information
Published by Yazad Jal January 14th, 2005 in GovernanceThere’s a lot of talk about an early warning system after the tsunami. Jayaprakash Narayan tells us out that the key point is not the information, but how that information is disseminated.
It is the height of insensitivity and complete failure of imagination to say that even if the authorities knew, they could not have alerted people. This would have been true 20 years ago. But today, we have several 24-hour satellite news channels—global, national and local. The earthquake occurred not in the dead of night, but in the morning hours when people are hungry for news. With some 150 precious minutes between the tremors and the tsunami, Indians and Sri Lankans had a fair chance.That lives could have been saved by advance warning is not mere conjecture. Take the 70,000 villagers on the island of Simeulue in Indonesia, 60 km south of the quake’s epicentre. Amazingly, only five people died on the island, and all of them in the quake. Although the tsunami destroyed 90% of the buildings, not one person died. The miracle was possible because people ran to the hills the moment the earthquake struck. We do not require a global warning system to anticipate a tsunami when an earthquake hits the ocean bed.
He then goes on to tell us exactly where the problems lies. And if not learnt, we would be wasting the money spent on an early warning system.
If we judge our public servants by three yardsticks—integrity, competence, and commitment, most would only get a ‘C’ or ‘D’ grade. The reasons for this woeful failure are many. There are no real incentives for excellence, as good performance is rarely rewarded, and bad performance never punished. Actually good behaviour is fraught with risks, and bad behaviour is often rewarded! Then we have a culture of lazy policy and poor execution. Witness free power as a substitute to sensible farm policies and a search for panaceas to combat poverty instead of doing some painstaking work to improve education, healthcare and infrastructure. Finally, we have no real sense of priorities, and the urgent always swallows the important. Public work which is regarded as glamorous—revenue, police etc—is often a symbol of power finding its expression as nuisance value. But the truly important areas — saving lives, healthcare, education—are often unglamorous, and examined only when catastrophe strikes. (Emphasis mine)
Jayaprakash Narayan is National Coordinator of Loksatta and I admire him for having the courage to follow his conviction.
While Mr. Narayan’s general sentiment is valid, his belief in the effectiveness of warnings alone is likely overstated.
As noted in our blog, if Tsunami warnings had been issued on the 26th (say on radio & TV), there would have been a panic and tens of millions of people would have tried to get out of the way. We are no public safety experts, but we know this much: there is no way that this mass of people would have made its way to safety in two hours (the time they had) because the capacity of roadways comes into play. They would have been stuck in traffic jams, and many would then be easy victims of the coming Tsunami. Many were, in fact, better off staying in their homes (especially those who live in sturdy buildings).
If the Tsunami warning system is to work, we need more than simply warnings — we need detailed plans for evacuation of large numbers of people. This requires a great deal of coordination between various branches civil administration. It also requires that people be made aware of what specifically they are to do in face of warnings — just warning them without this information is like telling them a meteor is about to crash into the Earth; its not clear what one might do in that circumstance.
As illustration, see the detailed information Oahu (Hawaii’s largest island where Honolulu is situated) provides its residents — this includes maps of shelters, use of public transportation, emergency contact information etc. This is not rocket science, but unless people are prepared like this, in advance, warnings have no meaning.
Primary Red, you have a point, but I still think a mere warning might just have saved lives.
Having spent days wandering through the area, I’d say traffic jams are really not an issue. A lot of the victims (while not necessarily poor) did not have cars and the like. Besides, the land is generally flat, and you don’t need to stick to the roads to escape.
If people simply ran in response to a warning, even if panic set in, I think lives would have been saved. If that happened, even if just a few lives were saved, I’ll take panic over the wholesale deaths that happened.
In fact, we actually met some people who did run when they saw the wave, and got away. See, for example, this that I wrote while in TN.
There is no way that this mass of people would have made its way to safety in two hours.
Primary Red, that isn’t quite true. Barring places like Nagapattinam, most of the damage along the coast was within 200 to 500m of the coastline, and 10 minutes would have been enough to run to safety. In town after town we went to, the entire town was a picture of normalcy barring the strip right by the coast. There is no question that many lives would have been saved by a warning system.
The bigger question is about the logistics of such a warning system, which I briefly discuss here. I can’t help wondering, if someone, anyone, had made a solitary phone call to the kind of person Malcolm Gladwell describes as a connector, how far and how quickly would the response have spread? Valid as Narayan’s comments are, I think private initiatives by citizens are far more likely to save lives in situations like these - though that’s no excuse for the government not to get its act together.
The learning I take from JP’s article is that we don’t need expensive solutions when we could do with simple methods to get the info out quickly. I’m glad both Dilip and Amit who were at the scene of the tragedy agree.
Again, one size does not fit all. :-)
While Amit and Dilp’s statements [and JP’s article] are true for the regions that they visited, the problems described by Primary Red could be prevalent in other areas.
The case of the Hawaiian town of Hilo is one example. The govt has implemented a complex system of warnings that was coupled with training, dry runs and exercises described by primary red in his third paragraph since there is a single road leading up to the safe areas (a mountain). [To prevent repeat episodes of the chaos caused by traffic jams]
I think this is one of those harder-than-it-looks problems. Rather than seeing why we failed during the tsunami, we should look why we failed during the Orissa cyclone of 1999. A tsunami may occur once in ten lifetimes. A cyclone will occur next year.
I remember that it was known at least two days in advance that the cyclone would be one of the worst in living memory. I remember reading about the death and devastation with a sick feeling in my stomach, thinking why, if so much warning was available, people didn’t take steps to save themselves.
I think the problem is much more complicated than just announcing it on TV. Perhaps the people think the information is not reliable with too many false warnings. Perhaps we overestimate how many people actually watch TV for the news. Perhaps the information leaves them just bewildered and doesn’t give them clear instructions on what to do. Perhaps their situation is so desperate that they just have to take the risk and not do anything. Perhaps superstition is involved.
If we can prepare for the next cyclone, we will probably be prepared for the tsunami too. If we just study the tsunami, it may never be any practical use.