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NOTICE:
TIEMS Transportation Safety and Security Workshop January 28-29th 2003
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Welcome to
the
Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management
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| January 2003
Volume 3 - Number 4 |
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Links:
Current events
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A Key Success Factor in Sustainable Disaster
Mitigation:
Inter-organizational Synergy
by Sarp Yeletaysi Abstract:
The August 17th, 1999 earthquake in Kocaeli, Turkey killed
more than 17,000 people, injured many more and created an economic impact
of more than 10 billion dollars. It also proved how unprepared Turkey against
disasters was. The government failed to organize a fast and coordinated response.
The public was not prepared for such a huge disaster, even though the area
was known to be highly seismoactive. The media didn’t do much more than criticizing
the government. The private sector was ruined down and many companies had
never dealt with contingency planning or mitigation activities. The NGO’s
and academic units were among the more prepared institutions, however lack
of integration to a national emergency management system has limited their
success too.Keeping in mind the lessons learned from the Kocaeli Earthquake, this paper would mainly deal with the importance of inter-organizational cooperation for sustainable disaster mitigation. The major stakeholders in this context are government, public, private sector, media, NGO’s and the academic world. These stakeholders have a big challenge in front; Research has proven that the probability of a major earthquake in the mega-city of Istanbul in the next 30 years is 62% ± 15% (Parsons, Barka, Toda, Stein, Dietrich, 2000). Inter-organizational cooperation is especially essential for earthquake mitigation in highly populated cities. This paper will explain roles of different agencies and suggest priorities, alternative policies and cooperation between these agencies while they prepare for the next disaster. Mitigation Prior to the August 17th, 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake: Earthquake Mitigation and Preparedness in Turkey were very much ignored prior to Kocaeli Earthquake. This is a general statement for most stakeholders that potentially have disaster responsibilities. I think that this is to some extent correlated with Turkish culture, which is ignorant rather than proactive. Lack of enough understanding of disaster management and tendency to be reactive on the government level were the main problems. The private sector companies were busy dealing only with their core businesses and they easily ignored what to do when a disaster would destroy their production facilities or headquarters. The media, as usual chose to be speculative, but not very educative. NGO’s and academic institutions were doing some useful jobs at that time but they also had some financial problems and difficulties in communicating their projects to the government and the public. The Kocaeli Earthquake has been a sign for everyone to sit down, think and do something to minimize future losses before a new earthquake strikes. The 1999 earthquake has also proven that successful disaster management is only possible if agencies understand each other, establish empathy and cooperate beyond their usual responsibilities. Even though it is hard to change from an organizational point of view, Turkey as a nation should have learned that it has to change. Especially Istanbul, which is unofficially defined as the next target of the earthquake, should pay more attention to earthquake mitigation and preparedness. The next part will mainly deal with what is currently being done in Istanbul and try to suggest alternative solutions to the problems faced and address them with respect to the responsibilities of stakeholders involved. To Full Paper |