OneWorld.net (U.S.)

Hurricane Katrina has already been called the United States’ tsunami. There are similarities and differences between the hurricane on the U.S. Gulf Coast and the Indian Ocean tsunami. What is the same, however, is the endless grief of those who have lost loved ones, the dreams that have gone with the receding water, the courage of rescue workers, and the selfless generosity of strangers. Displaced people everywhere have the same need for dignity, to stay together as communities, to see their privacy respected, and not to be forced to live under insecure, cramped, and unsanitary conditions during their weakest moments.

But beyond the similarity of the human condition, are other comparisons meaningful? If you were in the wrong place when the wave came or the water rose, your chance of survival was higher if you were an able-bodied male. Beyond that, your chances of resilience. Whether you were from Banda Aceh or New Orleans, your assets in physical, material and social terms determined your capacity to recover.

Resilience is as much a community as an individual quality. As we saw in both regions, it is invariably the most vulnerable among us—the poor, the sick, the elderly and the isolated—who fare the worst when disaster strikes. Along the Gulf Coast, these were the ones who had no means to leave the danger zone. Poverty alleviation and disaster reduction are mutually reinforcing and must go hand-in-hand to ensure security for all.

With both the tsunami and Katrina, the forces of nature overwhelmed our capacity to cope. Whereas the tsunami was triggered by geological phenomena that, as far as we know, had nothing to do with human agency, that cannot be excluded in the case of Katrina. It is impossible to identify the causal factors for a single event, but we do know that the intensity of extreme weather events is likely to increase with global warming.

We can mitigate disasters by stabilizing and reducing the level of greenhouse gases. The physical protection of communities through dykes, levees, and preserved coastal and wetland vegetation will also have a major impact on the survival of exposed communities.

Both reducing risks and providing rapid responses to disasters is multi-dimensional and must include governments as well as civil society. The responsibilities of all of those who respond must be clear, but governments are ultimately responsible for their citizens’ security. When governments are overwhelmed, the international community must be prepared to assist. This happened for both the tsunami and for Katrina.

The challenges of rebuilding are different in both places. Around the Indian Ocean, there are more resource bottlenecks than in the U.S. New land must be found to build homes for the displaced and titles must be issued where no records exist, or where there was only communal land ownership. Common to the tsunami and Katrina recovery, however, is that survivors will be impatient to see homes and livelihoods restored. We have to see this achieved, but without compromising on the task to build safer and more resilient communities, which are better protected against the hurricanes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters that we can expect will become more intense and frequent in the future.

Johan Schaar Special Representative for the Tsunami Operation, IFRC

Provided by OneWorld partner, The American Red Cross and adapted from an article published at the IFRC Web site.

© International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies