We need a national emergency planning handbook-by KKS Perera
Source:Dailynews
Natural disasters are a fact of life in Sri Lanka. Every year, monsoon floods wash away homes, landslides bury villages in the hill country, and coastal areas live in fear of another tsunami like 2004. We remember tragedies like the Meethotamulla garbage dump collapse and the Aranayake landslides that killed dozens.
As climate change makes disasters worse and more people move to cities, our risks are growing. Disasters no longer stay within one district, they affect the entire country. The COVID-19 pandemic showed this clearly, affecting every district, sector, and family. Our response was confused because different organisations worked in different ways without a shared plan.
No single Government department or organization has the resources to handle major disasters alone. Yet we have a major problem: there is no simple guide telling everyone how to prepare for emergencies. Schools plan differently from hospitals. Businesses plan differently from Government offices. Some have good plans, others have nothing.
Emergency Planning Handbook?
An emergency planning handbook is an instruction manual for preparing for disasters. It would explain step-by-step how to make an emergency plan for any type of emergency, floods, fires, or health crises.
Countries like Australia already have such handbooks. Australia recognised that modern disasters are too big for any single organization to handle alone. Their handbook helps fire departments, schools, businesses, hospitals, and community groups prepare using the same methods, making coordination easier when disaster strikes.Sri Lanka needs something similar, designed for our unique situation. The handbook would help people create plans before emergencies happen. Good planning now means better protection later.
Sri Lanka faces a dangerous combination. First, disasters are worsening due to climate change. Weather patterns are changing, bringing heavier rains in some seasons and worse droughts in others. Sea levels are rising, threatening our coastline. Second, more people live in dangerous areas. Cities expand into flood zones and landslides-prone hillsides. Coastal areas grow more crowded as storm surge risks increase. Third, everything in modern life is connected. When floods hit one area, they disrupt roads and railways, cutting supplies to other regions. They damage power lines, causing blackouts across provinces. They interrupt telecommunications everywhere. One disaster creates cascading problems nationwide.
When a really big disaster strikes, beyond what we normally experience, our usual emergency systems get overwhelmed. These severe or catastrophic disasters exceed what we’re set up to handle, affect multiple districts at once, and require help beyond normal emergency services.
The Sri Lankan public rightly expects effective responses to major disasters that save lives, protect property, and enable quick recovery. This requires bringing together all capabilities, from Government, private companies, NGOs, and communities, into one coordinated national response.Mismatched plans make coordination during real emergencies harder.
Disaster Management Centre could share it with provincial offices. Divisional secretariats could help Grama Niladharis prepare villages. Everyone would follow the same basic approach, easing coordination when disaster strikes. Private businesses need it too. Garment factories employ thousands. Hotels house tourists. Banks hold people’s money. Shopping malls see thousands daily. Ports, airports, power companies, and telecommunications providers keep essential services running. All need good emergency plans.
Schools must protect students. Hospitals need plans to keep working during disasters while treating more patients. Even small community groups and religious centers would benefit from simple planning guidance.
What Should the Handbook Include?
A good handbook must be practical and easy to use, written in simple language anyone can understand.It should explain risk assessment: What disasters could affect your area? How likely are they? What would happen if they struck? This understanding foundations good planning. It should teach partnership importance. No one prepares alone. Government partners with businesses. Communities partner with local officials. Organizations partner with each other. The handbook shows how to build effective partnerships.
The handbook should include ready-to-use tools: templates organisations can fill in to create plans, checklists ensuring nothing gets forgotten, and simple worksheets for identifying risks and deciding responses. It must be available in all three languages.
Special attention must go to vulnerable people: children, elderly people, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and poor families all need different considerations. The handbook must guide protecting everyone, especially those needing extra help. It should explain using modern technology, mobile phones for early warnings, social media for information sharing, while ensuring plans work when electricity fails or networks go down.
It must address capabilities, the actual abilities and resources needed to handle disasters. This includes skilled people, working equipment, systems functioning under stress, and organisations coordinating effectively. Understanding existing capabilities and gaps is essential for true preparedness.
Preparing for disasters is a shared responsibility, though not equally shared. Government has primary responsibility for protecting citizens and coordinating responses. But businesses must protect workers and customers. Community organisations must prepare members. Families must prepare themselves. National preparedness means bringing all these preparations into one coordinated system. The handbook would be the foundation, ensuring everyone works from the same understanding.
It means understanding capabilities existing across the country, knowing where gaps exist, and building partnerships so capabilities can be shared when needed. A Jaffna disaster might require Colombo help. A Hambantota disaster might need Kandy resources. The handbook should guide this national thinking.
Making a national handbook requires teamwork. The Disaster Management Centre should lead, bringing together Government officials, emergency workers, military, Police, university researchers, NGO staff, business leaders, and community representatives. The team should travel across Sri Lanka, talking to disaster survivors. What worked? What failed? What do communities already do to protect themselves? Local knowledge and traditional practices contain valuable lessons.
The handbook should align with international standards like the ‘Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’ while remaining firmly rooted in Sri Lankan realities. Once written, it must reach everyone needing it. Print copies should be distributed widely. A free online version should be available. Training workshops should teach usage. Videos and tutorials can help visual learners.
The handbook cannot be written once and forgotten. It must be updated regularly as we learn from new disasters and conditions change. Every year without a national handbook means more missed preparation chances. When disasters strike, we see results: preventable deaths, collapsible buildings, closing businesses, suffering communities.
Creating, printing, and sharing a handbook costs money, but little compared to disaster losses. One prevented death, one saved building, one operating business during crisis, any justifies the entire cost. Beyond money, we’re talking about lives and futures. Families not losing loved ones. Children returning to school quickly after floods. Farmers protecting harvests. Workers keeping jobs. Sick people still receiving medical care during emergencies.
Sri Lanka has shown incredible strength bouncing back from disasters. Our people are resilient. But we shouldn’t bounce back so often or so hard. Better preparation means disasters hurt less.
Climate change makes disasters worse and more frequent. Growing cities put more people at risk. Interconnected systems mean one disaster creates cascading problems nationwide. We cannot wait. The next major disaster could come tomorrow. Today’s preparations could save lives when that disaster strikes.
The question is simple: will we create this handbook before the next tragedy, or after? The answer should be obvious. Sri Lanka needs this handbook now.
kksperera1@gmail.com
