R&R of community

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF COMMUNITY IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT

The community that faces a disaster should be a part of the complete disaster management process. The community knows its environment better than anyone else. Additionally, senior citizens will be aware of incidents that had occurred in the past. The community should be made aware of its history with respect to disasters along with providing necessary inputs to identify hazards and risks. The responsibilities of the community towards disaster management are listed below-

1. Engage in public awareness campaigns about disasters.
2. In case of any disaster, the community should act as the first responder before external help reaches the victims. This will reduce the work load on external agencies coming to help
3. Communities should be responsible to raise public awareness and bring about a behavioural change in disaster preparedness and mitigation
4. Communities should be responsible for deployment of stable, reliable and effective warning systems
5. It is the responsibility of the community to partner with media (radio & TV) in improving disaster awareness
6. The community is responsible for communicating and disseminating disaster warning to vulnerable people and set-up a community emergency operations centre (EOC).
7. Community Disaster Response Team (CDRT) is responsible for strengthening the existing role of District Emergency Organization (DEO)
8. Capacity building at social, economic and environmental levels

The roles of the community towards disaster management are listed below-

1.  Training
2. Planning
3. Early warning
4. Communication
5. Shelter
6. Search and rescue
7. Arrangement of food
8. Set-up of Public Distribution Centres
9. Set-up cultural groups to engage in awareness to build disaster preparedness
10. Fire prevention 
11. Initial damage assessment
12. Shelter management
13. Psychosocial support