Discussion Board Response or Comment
Logistic Management in Disasters
This assignment is for the Discussion Board.
Check the two posts and write a respond separately to their threads "meaning two posts", the
response must be substantive and contain new ideas or information that adds and support the
discussion. Faculty will assign points based on quality of response. Exemplary responses
demonstrate insight, contain additional references "APA", show extraordinary effort, promote
dialoguing, etc.
Responses to classmates’ postings include content that is thoughtful and address all issues
clearly and comprehensively; references provided
Respond to two of classmates posts
When it comes to disaster management, it is always advisable to put more focus on the
preparation as it makes the response activities much more manageable. The best way to get well
prepared for a calamity is by ensuring that the supplies are prepositioned in the most appropriate
way possible. The disaster can be a force of nature, human-influenced or scientific which calls
for different resource allocations. Prepositioning in the case of a disaster is the most important
activity as it provides confidence to the teams involved. Some of these preparations include wellbuilt infrastructure lines, medical supplies in health centers and public openings.
The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 was a terrible disaster that led to a significant loss of lives and
injuries that left a permanent negative memory in the area. It is clear that there were no warnings
of any kind to the public so that they can be ready to evacuate before the damage is done.
Nobody expected such like an earthquake that turned into a tsunami and that cost the world many
lives. In this case, if there were early predictions from the weather department, people could be
evacuated from the area, better infrastructure could also be set up to protect everyone and
everything around. The Haiti earthquake was also not adequately prepositioned as evident
through the infrastructure which increased causalities. The enormous losses could be prevented if
the city constructed better buildings and roads in preparation as well as move people from
exposed areas. The response was however remarkable including the provision of shelter food
and clothing for the victims to reduce any more damages and suffering.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was another disaster that showed the importance of preplanning and
positioning the supplies to deal with a calamity. The city had warned the public about a possible
hurricane in the area, and many people evacuate the area, leaving some of them who ended up
losing their lives or getting attacks when they decided to stay. There was however no other
planning regarding infrastructure which increased losses, and the response was not as great. The
government could have taken all the measures to move everyone from the area and provide them
with the necessary supplies and hence prevent the deaths experienced. Finally, the Influenza
epidemic in 2009 was a biological issue that affected the largest geographical area and hence
difficult to prevent its spread. There were no appropriate preparations done, and hence people
spread the virus all over the place leading to the suffering and death of many people. The
response was however remarkable with fully staffed health centers and tents that provided people
with antidotes, antibiotics, and vaccines to reduce their risk of succumbing to the infections. If all
these cases were pre-positioned, then it would be easier to deal with the outcomes as everything
is already planned.
References:
Aruna, A. & Keenan, D. (2011). Strategies for Logistics in Case of a Natural Disaster.
Naval Post Graduate School
While Haiti has experienced several issues with their government and lack thereof, humanitarian
aid has swept in and provided much-needed assistance. Habitat for humanity developed a fiveyear plan that helped over 57,000 Haitian families recover (Habitat for Humanity, 2010). They
also built 300 permanent homes, repaired 683 homes, and provided 2,000 people with clean
water (Habitat for Humanity, 2010). While those things are great and helped a lot of people, the
most critical thing that Habitat did was increase stability within the community. This stability
came in the form of providing 2,100 jobs and training 6,600 people in different areas such as
financial literacy and proper hygiene (Habitat for Humanity, 2010). With these skills that the
people developed, they are building a more resilient neighborhood. This was such a pivotal
opportunity to teach this community how to care for themselves instead of waiting for outside
aid. It is important to educate and train people on how to care for their community. Haiti has an
abundance of issues however by training and supplying jobs they are able to help alleviate some
of their stress until aide is able to come.
Reference
Habitat for Humanity. (2010). Haiti Earthquake Effects & Responses (2010): Helping 57,000
Families. Retrieved January 27, 2019, from https://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/whatwe-do/disaster-response/disaster-relief-in-haiti/
Positioning of emergency supplies serves an important function in disaster relief operations. Disasters caused
massive casualties and tremendous economic and social damage and have cause more infrastructure lacking
adequate structural stability collapses and human beings either die or need immediate help. These huge losses make
emergency logistics management attract considerable research attention from both logistics academics and
practitioners in recent years. When creating an efficient and effective emergency plan, uncertainty is paramount
challenge (Abounacer & Renaud., 2014).
Prepositioning served as alternative to early deployment because when it is impracticable to position supplies well
in advance of a disaster, as in the case of hurricane Katrina when landfall in New Orleans days in advance of the
disaster, unfortunately public authorities tended to be reactive rather than proactive and did not effectively
preposition medical supplies prior to the hurricane's landfall (U.S House of Representatives, 2006). As search it lead
me to belief that, disasters that are classified as slow onset provide time for humanitarian logisticians to plan and
prepare for relief operation. In all, the disasters, slow or sudden onset and localized to disparsed, it is likely to be
some type of prepositioning of supplies, but that does not mean that it is the most desirable policy because
prepositioning may also be difficult for policy makers to justified. During Katrina, there were a major disparities in
security patrol in sensitive areas and these issues identified failure to provide leadership structure in crisis situation.
In he case of the Ebola incident in west Africa, Liberia. It was reported that weak surveillance systems and poor
public health infrastructure contributed to the difficulty surrounding the containment of this outbreak quickly spread
to three (3) Guinea's boardering Liberia and sierra Leone. The scope of the outbreak attributed to the unprecedented
circulation of EVD into crowded urban areas, increased mobilization across borders, and conflicts between key
infection control practices and prevailing cultural and traditional practices in West Africa, CDC has to effectively
activate its emergency Operations Center in July 2014 to help coordinate technical assistance and disease control
activities with partners. CDC personnel deployed to West Africa to assist with response efforts, including
surveillance contract tracing, data management, ( laboratory testing, and health education to prevent cross border
transmission, travelers leaving West Africa were screened at airports. Exit screening helped identify those at risk for
EVD and prevent the spread of the disease to other countries (Kaner Schaak, 2016).
Finally, it is often said that disaster operations are really logistics operations and to certain extent this is true. A
response system is designed to assess resources needs and then to fulfill them as best it can. The specialized teams
that are deploy need to be resupplied to be effective as every disaster generates toxic waste of some sort that will
need disposal. Logistical planning should be at the core of disaster planning.
Reference
Kane, & Schaak., (2016). Understanding Ebola, the 2014 Epidemic; globalization health
Abounacer, & Renaud, (2014). "An exact solution approach for multi-objective location transportation problem for
disaster response." Vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 83-93
US House of Representative (2006). A failure of initiative. Final Report of the select Bipartisan Committee to
investigate the preparation
The value of prepositioning disaster supplies ahead of a disaster
The disasters which have been discussed in the article, show the strategic as well as
operational difficulties which individuals, as well as organizations, face when they are
responding to a disaster. Though the disasters are divided into four sectors, the common terms
like slow, localization, sudden onset and dispersal are always the same. For example, a
hurricane is always slow in its onset since there is an available forecast hence even though it is
imminent it is not necessarily available. For the case of a pandemic, it's very slow compared to
the duration the hurricane is noticed and the time it strikes. The geographical dispersion of a
disaster is relative too since if a disaster only affects a single country then it is referred to as a
local disaster since it only affects a single administrative entity.
Other than the military using prepositioned stocks has developed a lot of interest since
prepositioning of additional resources near the disaster location is almost the same as that of the
military storing defense weapons at sea or at offshore which could be used in case of an event
conflict. Non-governmental organizations also preposition their items in advance so that in case
of a disaster, the response time is reduced. Prepositioning is also essential when the time the
supplies are needed is less than the time taken to respond with the supplies.
Prepositioning is also important when transport assets need to be preserved like the airlift
for other purposes like the movement of people and priorities. Organizations should always
consider the tradeoffs between locating the stock close to the area where the disaster is
anticipated to happen to reduce the time and distance of distribution. Prepositioning the supplies
near the area of a disaster also reduce the risk of that place being adversely affected by the
disaster. There is also a risk of placing the supplies close to the place of a disaster since they can
to be affected by the disaster.
An action which could have offered a better outcome for one of the disaster discussed
The event I chose was the Hurricane Katrina which struck the city of New Orleans. Since
the hurricane had been known in advance, what the government should have done was to
forcefully evacuate the people who were staying in the city by providing the city with enough
facilities which could help in the ferrying of the citizens before the disaster had occurred. The
government should have carried a media campaign warning the people of the city what could
happen have if they could not take the necessary steps of moving away from the town whereby
some could have moved to their relatives in other cities. The number of deaths could have
reduced. First aid facilities could have been located near the city so that the response time after
the disaster could have reduced and it could have helped save some lives.
REFERNCES
Apte, A., & Keenan, Y. (2011). Strategies for Logistics in Case of a Natural Disaster. Naval Postgraduate
School.
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