A Disaster Risk Management meeting took place at the Roodepoort Civic centre on Friday the 24th of August, which was very well attended by 38 delegates!
The two guest speakers were Tinus de Beer from Disaster Management Solutions, or DMS in Centurion and Chris Hart from Investments Solutions who both presented an excellent insight into disasters, the nature of disasters, the resilience of disaster Management around the country – and the world for that matter, the recovery cost and obviously the Economic Impact - post disaster.
Chris Hart is a well know TV personality and has a tremendous amount of financial experience and insight!
However, Tinus gave us an in depth study of the impact disasters have on countries around the globe. The cost of disasters in 2009 amounted to R800 billion and over the next two years had more than doubled – mainly due to the impact the earth quake and tsunami had not only on Japan but also how it affected the world economy.
The flooding in Thailand also had a global impact simply because many vehicles manufactured in Japan are sent to Thailand for final production line fittings and the flooding damaged millions of vehicles that could no longer be sold.
But it does not end there – one has to look at natural disasters and man made disasters. Here one could look at just about every situation that affects man from flooding and earthquakes to severe droughts being experienced in North America. This has a spin-off namely financial implications and possible riot implications as the cost of maize keeps on going up and it just happens to be a staple diet of almost 60% of the global population.
Preparation, building capacity, infrastructure, building reserves and financial resources to handle disasters has a major impact on every country around the globe!
South Africa is relatively ‘safe’ from such major disasters but there is no place for complacency!
Chris Hart highlighted the cost factor and dealing with recovery costs after major disasters. But in a country like ours we need to look at other factors like xenophobia outbreaks, unemployment, social unrest and disorder that can also cause disasters of a different nature like riots, destruction of property etc.
Simple things which we tend to ignore but can affect us immensely – financial implications as is currently at crises point in Europe!
But, bottom line for most disasters is mitigation factors, recovery after a disaster, risk reduction factors, preventative measures, preparedness and quick response time with everybody knowing exactly what to do when disaster strikes! That includes good communication lines where decisions can be made quickly and effectively!
We all learn't a lot from these two presentations and we left with a lot of food for thought!
On a sad note, Hamnet attended the funeral of Chris Willigenburg, ZS6VB in Nigel on Saturday afternoon. The service was very well attended and it was obvious that Chris was very well known in his community and a much liked person.
Chris was a well known amateur radio personality running the “Hamnet Indaba” on VHF for many years and also a past Provincial Director for Hamnet Gauteng South!
We passed on our sincere condolences to Linda, his widow and family.
Reporting for Hamnet, this is Francois Botha – ZS6BUU.
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