Disaster and its effects
Disasters devastate lives, destroy livelihoods and affect hundreds of millions of people every year. When disasters strike, years of development can be wiped out in a short space of time. Often, already fragile public services - such as health, water and sanitation - are further weakened.
Due to the extreme weather conditions in South Africa; flash floods, droughts, strong winds and sudden cold spells, are frequent and major causes of disasters. Due to rapid urbanisation, the fringes of the cities have high population density areas where fires and floods are major hazards. The nature and positioning of informal settlements are often potential health hazards and disasters often threaten a breakout out of communicable diseases such as cholera, as these areas have no health facilities, poor roads, poor drainage and inadequate sanitation facilities.
These localised disasters erode the development capacity and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people every year and weaken their coping and survival capacities. Rapid urbanisation will continue in South Africa and in the future, climate changes may be a key trigger for more frequent occurrences of disasters involving droughts, floods and other hydro meteorological phenomena.
As a result, disaster Management remains one of the core programmes for the South African Red Cross and includes disaster preparedness, disaster response and the restoration of family links.
The goal of the Disaster Management Programme is to have the capacity to ensure adequate and timeous responses to disaster situations by strengthening disaster preparedness, planning and response mechanisms and by educating the community and the public on disaster mitigation.
Disaster preparedness
Disaster preparedness constitutes the actions taken by people and institutions with the aim to minimise the adverse effects of a hazard through effective precautionary actions, and to ensure timely, appropriate and efficient organisation and delivery of emergency response following the impact of a disaster.
SARCS Disaster Management project targets the preparedness of the vulnerable communities and SARCS own preparedness.
Project Actions
- Conducting Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments in communities and areas vulnerable to disasters.
- Training key community members and volunteers in basic disaster management and first aid.
- Raising community awareness and public education on disaster prevention and response.
- Training staff and volunteers in disaster management.
Disaster response
Despite efforts to mitigate the risk of natural and man-made disasters, the frequency and impact of disasters are expected to increase worldwide. The South African Red Cross Society has recognised that it is well positioned to respond to those disasters by capitalising upon the advantages of being a national organisation on the ground before, during and after a disaster.
Project activities to ensure that this is possible include:
Effective Disaster Response Teams are in place throughout SARCS structures.
Disaster Response plans are in place and are integrated with the government’s disaster response plans at all levels.
Networks are established and able to respond when necessary. This includes response from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies if needed.
Improving the speed and effectiveness of co-ordination mechanisms.
Ensuring that adequate human and technical resources are accessible when required.
Adequate disaster relief stocks (food and non-food) are available in emergency situations.
Restoring family links
The need for human beings to re establish lost contact with their loved ones and to maintain such contact can be considered to be as important as the need for food and shelter.
Loss of contact can occur for many reasons, e.g. disaster and famine, but the main reason is conflict. With ongoing conflict and instability in many African countries, South Africa has become a refuge for thousands of displaced people. For many of these people the fate and whereabouts of their families are not known.
Many refugees who flee from neighbouring African countries, affected by conflict or instability, come to South Africa in search of freedom, peace and stability in our young democracy.
Tracing is a core programme of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. SARCS’s Tracing Department forms part of the powerful international communication network of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement with the Central Tracing Agency (CTA) in Geneva, through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), directing and co-ordinating all activities related to restoring of family links, reuniting families and searching for missing persons. South African nationals can also benefit from the tracing service in cases that conform to SARCS’s tracing criteria.
The Tracing department assists in situations where
- There has been loss of contact resulting from a situation of armed conflict or internal disturbance and their direct consequences and
- There is loss of contact in the event of a natural or other disaster
Tracing department activities include
- Getting news from affected zones and organising the exchange of family news by way of Red Cross Messages.
- Gathering information and/or registering data on persons affected by the conflict or a natural catastrophe.
- Protecting unaccompanied minor and other vulnerable persons and assist them by monitoring their rights, tracing their relatives and reuniting them with their families.
- Reuniting families once contact has been restored.
- Training SARCS disaster response teams with regard to tracing to enable members of the teams, countrywide, to deal with separated families in the above mentioned manner.
Social welfare activities include
- Arranging camps and outings for refugee youths and vulnerable children with members of the local communities to integrate them in our society and give them a sense of belonging.
- Advice to asylum seekers and refugees who call on the South African Red Cross for assistance on where to access education, medical, as well as social and legal services. (SARCS actively networks with other refugee service providers and interacts with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on an ongoing basis.)