Letters to the Editor: Cyclone Idai: Time Zim overhauls disaster management approach

Simon Bere, Correspondent

When Cyclone Idai hit Manicaland Province, decimated lives and massively destroyed infrastructure, bringing untold suffering to Zimbabweans, I was in Kariba with a friend who runs a company locally.

We were talking somewhat casually about the cyclone three days before it struck, and my friend was cautious of our movements then.

But on the Saturday night when pictures and videos of the horror started appearing on social media platforms, my friend was so moved by that he made some frantic calls to his team in Harare, instructing them to respond to the cyclone by sending teams into the disaster zone to set camps for the victims.

What was then a somewhat casual talk suddenly became a deadly serious talk and the cyclone dominated our discussions until we came back to Harare on the Sunday.

My friend responded the way he is – a typical leader par excellence. Leaders do not ask for permission to respond to a situation.

This was also the case with many other leaders who responded spontaneously to the situation and poured in their own resources to help the situation.

When I returned to Harare, I realised that the scale of devastation was far larger than what we were getting from social media feed.

In addition, it became glaringly clear that the cyclone caught Zimbabwe ill prepared.

While the Civil Protection Unit (CPU) was aware that a cyclone was brewing and the country’s weather experts knew at least 14 days before both strength and the probable trajectory of Cyclone

Idai, something did not go on well in the response.

I remember being called for a radio interview on the cyclone and my co-panellist was Zimbabwe’s top weather expert working for the Meteorological Services Department. The weather expert acknowledged that the department knew 14 days before that a deadly cyclone was brewing and would hit Manicaland.

He even admitted that the department knew that the cyclone would be category four, only one step below the severest of cyclones.

From the look of things, something seriously went wrong disaster management-wise in responding to the cyclone. Given the severity of the cyclone, it most probably was not enough to issue warnings to the Manicaland Province population about the impending disaster.

A massive response ought to have been activated, including forced evacuations of the most vulnerable targets and the movement of people from the most vulnerable locations based on their local geology and local geography.

In addition, instead of warnings being issued through social media, text messages and radio and television in a news like fashion, the President must have been advised to take leadership command of the situation, and have him make the announcements through all the possible media, including marshalling resources for evacuations ahead of the cyclone.

The impending cyclone must have been declared a national emergency and even resources mobilised and moved to the safest area close enough to the most affected areas. Instead, the country, even with all the intelligence on the cyclone on its fingertips, was caught flat-footed.

Many lives could have been saved had the nation been better prepared for the cyclone. Cyclone Idai is now gone leaving the nation counting loses, and fighting to restore normalcy to those affected.

However, it is easy to forget paying attention to the nation’s drastic disaster management strategy so that what happened with Cyclone Idai may not happen again.

Weather experts have done researches, and they warn that the sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean have risen to a level that triggers cyclones, meaning the Indian Ocean is now a more frequent and more efficient breeder of cyclones.

This means we are more likely to experience cyclones more often than in the past.

If we do not pay serious attention to drastically improving our disaster management strategy and approach at all levels from the strategic, operational and to the tactical, another cyclone the level of Idai will decimate Manicaland Province.

There are many factors that must be addressed. First, the technical composition of the Civil Protection Unit needs a review.

Cyclones are part of environmental hazards and their impacts are not just dependent on their weather characteristics, but on the interplay of many factors that also include the geology, the culture, the geography and economic and infrastructural factors.

This means a robust CPU must have the right composition of different expertise so that a holistic disaster management framework has the relevant strategic, technical and operational dimensions required for both proactive and reactive management of such environmental hazards.

Second, effective disaster management, especially for environmental hazards requires the right protocols and procedures for dealing with the threats at all its stages.

This also includes the direct, continues involvement of the vulnerable communities starting with raising the level of awareness of the communities of the threats and hazards they face so that they can play apart, first in preventing the disasters associated with those hazards and second, minimising the impact of environmental hazards in the event that communities are exposed.
Zimbabweans cannot afford another environmental disaster for which they are ill prepared.

The time to take drastic action to improve and maybe even completely overhaul its disaster management approach is now, while the wounds from Cyclone Idai are still fresh.

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