Education needed for disaster and emergency preparedness

Have we ever learned about flood preparedness in our school or college?
I am sure that most of us never undertook any course regarding floods or earthquakes, or for any other natural disasters.
Presently, I have been assigned to operate a flood evacuation centre at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), which is associated with the southern Thonburi district of Bangkok.
Now we have a number of volunteers ready to help at an evacuation centre. Nevertheless, at KMUTT, we are facing the problem on what issues we should train our students and volunteers for to be ready to help flood victims and how we should prepare them for a flood emergency.
Frankly, we have never been trained for any emergency preparedness programmes. For such a responsibility, I realised it was really important for people of all ages to learn the basics to help the community in preparing for and responding to disasters.
Moreover, regarding this flood situation, it is important to know the nature of the flood, its overflow and backflow, the floodwater speed and what type of flooding occurs in our area.
In setting up the evacuation centre, it was important to understand the migration process in case the flood should come close to the KMUTT centre and we had to move to a new place.
This concern is encouraging me to focus on disaster and emergency preparedness education. As an educator, I see the crucial need to practice preparedness and response skills for catastrophe; ready-to-go plans for disaster.
I am sure that we can reduce the impact of disaster through education. The question is how?
For months, we have seen many veteran social network members creating flood information and sharing helpful resources on the Net via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. In order to face less impact from the flood disaster, we must learn not to rely on government anymore.
Community development shall basically enhance our civic education and may expand to school curriculums about Disaster and Emergency Preparedness. At least we have been informally trained to better prepare for and respond to flood disaster.
To summarise from the current social media, I found that the basic information and fact sheets we fundamentally need are:
nRainfall statistics
nMass of water
nFloods and flood impacts
nBasic response procedures
nSafety and preparedness
nAll hazards information
A big question is why the government did not provide efficient information to us in the first place!
I would recommend schools and universities organise educational programmes to train our citizens, especially our young generation, about disaster safety and preparedness. It could be integrated to a general education course.
Needless to say about prevention, our students should have knowledge of local hazards and study how they can better prepare for and respond to disasters in time. They should learn to develop emergency plans and checklists and to work collaboratively with other rescuers.
Since I worked on setting up a volunteer team at KMUTT evacuation centre, I found that students had a capability and a potential role in preparing for and responding to an emergency situation. The current flood in Bangkok gives us the opportunity to learn and exercise in the real situation, without prior knowledge.
In the future, when a flood hits our KMUTT, we will learn the hazards from the flood, first aid and safety, then help communities in responding to disasters.
Indeed, it is vital to have a common understanding in preparing for all crisis and hazards. It is a time to create a “Disaster Tool Kit” and consolidated resources for catastrophe either online or offline at national level.
To train people, especially children, on emergency response and preparedness, the challenge is how to project multidiscipline scenarios and all-hazards disaster into the educational programme.
Apart from such a programme, the government should initiate and create the guideline for an emergency preparedness plan for a variety of disasters – flooding, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, and so on. The information should be on emergency planning and coping with disaster and its aftermath.
I am sure that such information can reduce the fear, anxiety, and losses from disaster. At least, as Thai citizens, we will learn what to do before, during, and after the emergency and crisis.
I think what we have learned from the current flood catastrophe is enough to set up “National Disaster and Emergency Preparedness”. Meanwhile, it’s time for all to design education for disaster in our curriculum at all levels!
Let’s get ready and plan together for the next crisis!