Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
have gone further and provided loans to known residents of disasters for hospital
fees, burials etc. In developed countries faster assessment of insurance claims, or
assistance from government, also helps the recovery process. For example a week
after devastating floods in Calgary and areas around in late June 2013 the provin-
cial government provided newly homeless families with preloaded credit cards,
enabling victims to obtain food and other supplies, some of which could be used to
repair damage. However the issue of compensation for residences destroyed, and
whether rebuilding on the flood plain should be allowed, are still contentious issues
a year after the flood.
One factor that was often forgotten in many cases of disaster relief by interna-
tional agencies is the need to treat the minds of the victims as well as their bodies
and livelihood. Most natural hazard disasters create a great deal of what amounts to
post-traumatic stress, and the loss of self-esteem among the victims about their abil-
ity to cope with the future, especially in less developed world situations since their
meagre possessions have been lost, which seriously restricts belief in their ability
to recover from the events. Hence there is a pressing need for trained psychologists
to assist in the evaluation of victims, especially in the case of children. Their feel-
ings of safety have been destroyed, not simply by the negative experiences of the
disaster itself, but by being uprooted and perhaps faced with the deaths of many
friends and family. In addition, regular counselling sessions and roundtable discus-
sions must be created. This allows victims to take part in the process of recovery, as
well as sharing their stories and describing how improvements can be made, based
on their local expertise or even experiences in dealing with government or insur-
ance agencies. However it has been noted that attempts to help victims over stress-
related problems need to use the methods familiar to the cultures affected, not the
external, person-oriented approach of western medicine. Watters (
2011
) has shown
that western approaches, often individual and personal in one-on-one sessions, can
have harmful effects on more group-orientated societies where grief is expressed
and resolved collectively, for local cultures and belief systems shapes understand-
ings of what has happened and the ability to recover. In the longer term one of the
sad effects of the 2011 Japanese tsunami has been the increased number of fam-
ily breakdowns due to stress, inability to find work and worries over exposure to
radiation in the areas near the Fukishima nuclear plant. Many, especially women
with children, want to move to other locations, which disrupts the family unit, but
those who move often find little assistance in finding jobs. By contrast many of the
elderly in particular, wish to remain in more familiar surroundings, but soon face a
lonely and bleak existence given the slow development of new housing and facili-
ties in affected towns.
Once the immediate problems have been solved plans are required for the
long
term rehabilitation
of an area subject to disasters as well as the compensation of vic-
tims. The people in too many disaster areas remain in conditions of dependency for
years. There is a pressing need for governments to help in restoring the living condi-
tions and livelihood of victims of disasters. Certainly it is likely that many former
residential areas will be considered at risk from further disasters, since they were
built on flood plains or open to other hazards. Decisions on areas that can or cannot
