Disaster Management in Pakistan Viz a Viz International Practices

DISASTER MGMT IN PAKISTAN
Introduction
1. Disaster can be termed as “any unplanned event, occurrence or sequence of events that may have unpredictable and undesirable consequence”. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes can wipe out yrs of urban dev by destroying infrastructure with colossal human and material losses. The tendency of such disasters has inc off-late due to paradigm shift in global envmt. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunami and floods are the popular sound bites heard on the media these days. Poor bldg codes, inefficient governance sys and lack of awareness on how to deal with impending disasters can all impact the scale of death and destruction to an unimaginable toll. The gruesome Earthquake of 8 Oct 05, a log and humanitarian nightmare clearly illustrates the nature of hazard. The incident was an atrocious disaster, unprecedented in the hist of Pakistan.
2. In our regional scenario, it is nearly a unanimous view that due to rapid global changes in climatic conditions, possibility of such natural disasters would inc manifolds. While other modern ctys of the world have intensely dilated on how to manage the disasters, the subj has remained relatively unexplored in our Cty. The quick realisation of managing the natural disasters in the backdrop of the Oct 8th Earthquake and 2010 Floods at National and Army Lvl is an encouraging sign. A no of steps at national lvl indicates the seriousness of the Govt to handle such sits in future. Whereas the response at Army lvl to manage various disaster sits had been commendable, a no of snags also surfaced, as inherently, Army as an org is not designed to manage disasters of greater magnitude. Taking due cognisance of Oct 8th Earthquake at Army lvl a no of studies to recommend different measures has been carried out. These steps and studies at Army lvl were basically initiated to formulate comprehensive SOPs on disaster mgmt at national lvl.
3. Aim. To carryout an indepth analyses of...