The UN’s International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG) is planning to hold an international earthquake simulation response exercise in Nepal in April.
A global network of more than 80 countries and disaster response organisations, INSARAG deals with urban search and rescue related issues and aims to establish standards for international coordination in earthquake response.
The INSARAG exercise will take place in Kathmandu, one of the world’s most at-risk cities.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is the secretariat for INSARAG, the primary purpose of the exercise will be to test earthquake response and improve coordination between local, international and regional search and rescue organisations.
UN and local NGOs see this as a good chance to assess what can be improved within the whole disaster management process - from legislation, policies and planning, to training, mitigation and prevention, as well as response, relief and reconstruction.
"This is a great opportunity to put all this together and work together in the planning and simulation exercise, especially in the evaluation phase where we will identify areas of improvement,” OCHA Nepal’s disaster readiness and response adviser Arturo Lopez Portillo told IRIN.
Government officials, who remain crucial to the INSARAG planning exercise, say they are actively involved in the planning process with the UN.
But neither the UN nor the government would confirm whether the exercise would on the scale of the last one - in Subic Freeport Zone in the Philippines in April 2008. That was the world’s largest INSARAG exercise - with 18 countries 52 organisations and 270 individuals participating, according to OCHA.
The densely populated capital is ill-equipped to handle a major earthquake. Many buildings are poorly built or poorly constructed, with thousands more built each year
Is it worth it?
Nepal will be the first country in South Asia to hold the exercise, and but concerns have been expressed over the ultimate cost of staging such an event.
But for the UN the justification is clear enough: “Everything we do in terms of improving disaster preparedness is worth it,” said OCHA Nepal’s Portillo.
The exercise would help prepare the country for a possible earthquake, reducing vulnerability and the impact of any other natural disaster, he said.
Kathmandu is seismically at risk and its poor preparedness, high population density, weak structures and poor facilities make the city particularly vulnerable, according to the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET), a local NGO involved in, and lobbying for, preparedness activities.
NSET, frustrated by government inaction, believes the INSARAG exercise will help galvanise fresh government efforts to boost preparedness.
“We know what and how to do preparedness but now it’s time to take real action seriously,” prominent NSET expert Amod Dixit told IRIN.
There was now a lot of general awareness about earthquake-related risks but people needed guidance and encouragement from the government to prepare themselves, he explained.
The first thing the government should do, he said, is implement the country’s National Strategy for Disaster Management, a standard for enhancing the country’s ability to reduce the impact of natural disasters, including earthquakes.
"What we can do is build better and stronger, and be better prepared, and that is what we are intending to do with INSARAG,” said Portillo.
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