Disaster Management in Bangladesh

DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN BANGLADESH
s in Bangladesh were largely considered to be acts of God beyond any necessity for undertaking management activities to minimize risks and losses except temporary government responses to distribute relief during post disaster phase without taking into account the socio-economic implications of these events. Efforts had not been made to recognize the dependence of development in proper handling of disasters. But over the years, the Government of Bangladesh has begun to put more emphasis on ways and means of reducing human, economic and environmental costs of disasters in Bangladesh. It has been done through enhancing the national disaster management capacity to address to the various aspects of planning for disasters which includes prevention / mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery and development (rehabilitation and recovery) activities. This broad concept of planning, though new in Bangladesh, is now firmly rooted. The government of Bangladesh has perceived that the negative impact of disasters can be suitably alleviated through a rational disaster management approach. The government believes that with some elementary preparedness and preventive measures such as risk analysis, land-use zoning, building codes, training and awareness build up, basic institutional arrangements, field level action planning etc., disaster reduction can be highly cost effective.
Emergency Preparedness for Disaster. With the devastating floods of late 1980s and the killer cyclone of 1991, the concept of overall disaster preparedness in the country became clearer through discussions on variety of complex and inter-sect oral issues which cropped up in the course of implementation of the short term project of “assistance to the Ministry of Relief in the coordination of cyclone rehabilitation”. As a result, the Government of Bangladesh has taken the following significant steps during the last few years for building up institutional arrangements from...