“Those who suffer most from disasters are the most vulnerable”

Discuss with reference to the SE Asia Tsunami.

This idea is one that can be argued either way. A natural disaster is a natural
hazard that occurs and has an effect on people or their property in some way.
The concept that this quote suggests is that the more vulnerable the population,
the more they will suffer from a natural disaster. Vulnerability is determined by
how a certain population handles the factors that can be influenced by humans.
Another way to put it is, how liable to disaster has a certain population presented
itself. However these are not the only factors to take into account, risk factors
may also play a vital part in how much a population suffers. Risk factors are
factors that humans have no control over at all, no matter what they do, they
cannot influence the outcome. However whenever there is a disaster people
suffer. Suffer can mean anything from personal health or socially/economically
as a population. In this essay I am going to use the case study of the South East
Asia Tsunami to show how risk and vulnerability factors have an effect.

Firstly, I will consider the opposing argument to the statement, what if it was the
in fact, those who suffer most from disasters are people who at the time of the
disaster are most at risk. The morphology and time are two aspects I would like
to consider. Firstly the morphology, this includes the shape and the vegetation
that grows on a certain coastline. To start with the vegetation on the coast can
have a vital impact as you can see from the quote, “Two people died in the
settlement with dense mangrove and scrub forest, while up to 6,000 people died
in the village without similar vegetation.” This is because the vegetation acted
like a natural buffer against the waves and acted in a similar way a wave break
works on the coast of England; it absorbs the wave energy. Other factors that
come under morphology will be the shape of the coast, if the wave hit head on or
whether the population was on the other side of the island or in a bay that
protected the settlement from strong waves. An example would be Batticaloa
where 2,264 died and on the opposite side of Sri Lanka facing away from the
tsunami at Puttalam only 4 people died. This is because the locations facing
head on into the wave gets the full force, whereas if the population are sheltered
by an island or bay the waves have to diserpate around this obstacles and
therefore loose energy and reduce in strength, therefore causing less damage to
the area. Finally the depth of the sea bed leading up to the coast also has an
impact. We saw this in the Maldives where the shallow water surrounding the
islands stopped big waves building and therefore reduced the force of the impact
only allowing low force flooding to take to place therefore saving lives.

The economic and structural characteristics are linked closely and will have an
effect on vulnerability. As the general economy is better off people have more
money to spend on their homes resulting in better quality homes in terms of
structure, 14% of deaths occurred in buildings which were completely destroyed
whereas 5% occurred in buildings that held up well or with stood the impact.
Therefore if more buildings could have withstood the impact the 14% that died in
poorly built houses could have been reduced to 5% if all houses were built to a
good standard.
The structure of the building is not the only factor which resulted in some
buildings withstanding the impact, it was linked to the location of the buildings,
the buildings that were completely destroyed were built in different locations
compared to buildings that remained intact. University educated people earn
more and could afford to move away from high risk locations which comes back
to the wealth of the economy. The wealthier people are not only going to be able
to afford a building that has a good structure, they are also able to afford to be
located in a lower risk area compared to the poorer people that can only afford a
poorly built house in a high risk area. This means that the richer people have a
lower risk and high security which reduces their exposure to a hazard thus
reducing their vulnerability compared to the poorer communities that have an
increased risk and a lower security which increases their exposure to hazards
and their vulnerability. This shows that the more vulnerable you are through the
location and structure of your house the more likely you are to suffer from a
disaster.

Education did not only allow people to have better jobs and earn more money,
the lack of education also increased the vulnerability of many people living along
the coast. Very few people living along the coast recognised natural tsunami
warnings such as strong shaking felt in Ache and the rapid retreat of ocean water
from the shoreline observed in Thailand, if people had of known about signs of a
tsunami they could have run to safety instead of watching in amazement.
However, one person that did recognise the danger was a 10 year old tourist
from England who knew a tsunami was coming and gave herself sufficient time
to get to safety, she saved her family and 100 other tourists from the Asian
tsunami because she had learnt about the giant waves in a geography lesson.
Many more people would have survived if they too had known the warning signs.
Experts have said that it was to do with the “ignorance of the regions tsunami
history”. This means that even though many of the poorer people would not
have gone to school they should be aware from past tsunamis that have
occurred and therefore should know the warning signs of such a threat through
word of mouth, just as before when most people safely fled to higher ground in
2004 because of the islands oral history which included information about a
devastating tsunami in 1907. Ache is a place where many people died as they
did not have the same knowledge. Overall this just shows how two populations in
the same area can be different sides of the risk awareness threshold. The island
off the coast was above the risk awareness threshold and accepted or shared the
losses, whereas in Ache and Thailand they were below the risk awareness
threshold which means they couldn’t do anything and just absorbed the losses.
This shows how lack of education, planning and awareness can increase your
vulnerability.

Planning is another factor that in some ways links with education and a lack of
planning can increase the vulnerability more than anything because even if
people know a tsunami is coming or what to do after a tsunami has hit they will
not know what to do and therefore panic. Planning should have been done by the
government and evidence that the government knows they should have done
more is the fact they have now set up deep ocean sensors in the Indian Ocean.
The national system aims to protect the inhabitants of the archipelago's vast
coast and prevent a deadly repeat of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed
168,000 people in Indonesia alone. In 2004 the only ocean to have these were
the pacific, and in 2004 these picked up slight vibrations but the people
observing them could not contemplate that they was picking up vibrations from
the Indian ocean. They knew it may have come from the Indian Ocean and
released a warning of a small wave. Over time their prediction of the wave size
got bigger as more data come in but it was too late to notify most countries, not
only because they found out too late, but because they did not actually know
who to call. However one place where a plan was in place was Kenya where they
knew who to phone and when the government heard about the tsunami they had
a plan in place and managed to evacuate the area with the loss of only one life
compared to the thousands of lives lost in unprepared areas. Although risk
factors did influence this due to the fact that Kenya was located was much
further away from the tsunami source than places like Ache and Thailand and
therefore had additional time to react. If the Indian Ocean had a warning
system and had a plan on how to evacuate the area they would have known the
magnitude of the tsunami sooner and you would have had more countries like
Kenya which were less vulnerable and therefore suffered less.

To conclude, risk factors do influence how much a population suffers but not
nearly as much as the vulnerability factors, the main ones being economic,
structure, education and planning. I believe the statement of “those who suffer
most from disasters are the most vulnerable” to be true because as the
vulnerability quadrant shows you can be at high risk and still be safe if the
vulnerability is low, such as in California. However, if the risk is high and there is
high vulnerability people are more likely to suffer such as Haiti. So people who
suffer most from disasters can have the same risks as people who suffer less, it
is the vulnerability that makes them suffer more.

Biblography

AS Geography for Edexcel by Digby, Hurst, Chapman, King and Owen (2008)

Reuters.com NEWS ARTICLE BY Tan ee lyn (2008)

Guardian .com