Eleven years ago on 8thOctober 2005 a tragic disaster occurred, an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude hit Pakistan and Kashmir perished nearly 90,000 lives and uprooted 3 million people. It does not stop there, five years later in 2010 Pakistan faced another unprecedented catastrophe floods that affected almost 20 million people and inflicted an estimated loss of Rs855 billion. Since 2010 each year flood have been hitting the country enormously.
Although all disasters had huge effects on many precious human lives, infrastructures and economic condition but it also give us opportunity to prepare ourselves to cope up in better way. The government has declared it National Disaster Awareness Day to sensitise community to learn from disasters and play their role as socially responsible citizen in the country.
Disaster awareness helps the government and communities to take necessary measures for building disaster resilient nation and minimise the losses of lives and properties. The emergency management data is evident that Punjab Emergency Service Rescue 1122 has set a trend of professional emergency management in Pakistan since 2004. Every patriotic person not only appreciates Rescue 1122, rather they always pay rich tribute to founder of comprehensive emergency management system Dr Rizwan Naseer (Sitar-e-Imtiaz) and his team who worked hard to establish a new system with through professional approach.
The government established Emergency Service Rescue 1122 to deal with all kind of emergencies like road traffic accident, building collapsed incidents, hazard material incidents, fire incidents and disaster caused by natural hazards like earthquake, floods etc. This was a positive step towards addressing the main component of disaster known as Response. Rescue 1122 is an emergency management system which provide sense of safety to the citizens by providing immediate response in all emergencies and rescuing over 4.3 million victims of emergencies. Besides that the service has maintained its average response time of less than 7 minutes. This positive initiative has been replicated in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Biltistan and Azad Kashmir. The provincial governments are replicating this system in their provinces according their priority.
Besides discussing disaster sensitised community which efforts can create difference in all phases of disaster management cycle. A well disaster oriented community makes better plans of preparedness, rehearse those plans in peace time resulting to minimise deaths and disabilities in case disaster and lessen the impact of that disaster. The disaster sensitized community can play vital role for the first 24 hrs to 72 hrs. This is the time when community help can create difference by dealing victims with professional approach. Disaster 2005 is full of the examples related community participation from initial response to the different phases of disaster like recovery and rehabilitation. Many victims have been rescued by community first responders probably neighbours passerby but unfortunate part was that nonprofessional handling of victims lead to deaths and disability. There was no doubt about the positive intentions of first responders from community but lack of awareness and training related evacuation of trauma injured victims caused such damages. Civilized nations always learn from the disasters to have resilient community in their country.
It is believed that everybody is an asset for the country, everybody can create difference. Try to make your life more meaningful, there is possibility that you could save a life or somebody could be a life saver due to your life saving trainings. All willing people can join plate forum like Rescue 1122 Safety and Training Wing, get trainings on basic life support, first aid, fire safety, rescue techniques and evacuation planning and exercise etc with an a aim to enhance existing community response. Any Individual, who informs emergency services about the incident must know what to do in case of emergency? Where to dial first in case of emergency? How to make an emergency call? How to minimize the impact of emergency? What tasks can be performed in golden hour.
Besides that community can play its role in pre-disaster phase by establishing organised groups and organised efforts to minimize or reduce the disaster risk. Remember if you are not ready to deal with an emergency, do not think that any miracle will take place in case of any disaster. Come forward, streamline your energies through any disaster related plate forum preferably Rescue 1122 and put your efforts towards developing Safer Communities in Pakistan.
On behalf of the Emergency Service Rescue 1122, I pay rich tribute to martyrs of disasters and solidarity with their families who bear great loss.
May Allah help us to put our efforts in right directions, Ameen!
Deeba Shahnaz Akhter
Head of Information Wing, Rescue 1122
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