Category: Berita Internasional

Indonesians living in areas not designated as mandatory evacuation zones in Florida, United States, have made the decision to stay put despite the coming arrival of Hurricane Irma, which is predicted to strike a large area of Florida on Sunday morning local time.

Yusnita Oner, who lives in Tampa with her husband and her 16-year-old son, said they stocked up on supplies, such as food and bottled water, several days before the hurricane was predicted to strike.

“It is unlikely that we evacuate on Saturday because the roads have been crowded. The airport was closed too,” Yusnita told The Jakarta Post via text message.

Yusnita, who has lived in Tampa for 14 years, said she had experience dealing with hurricanes and always evacuated in the past.

Another Indonesian, Widyastri Atsary Rahmi, who lives in Gainesville, a city in northern Florida, said she immediately stocked up on food and water.

“I charged my cellphones and their portable battery packs, and secured my important documents and main electronic devices like my laptop,” she said via a mobile messaging platform.

The Indonesian Consulate in Houston, Texas, which oversees services for Indonesian citizens, including those living in parts of Florida, has told Indonesians to follow local authorities’ advice. It also provides a 24-hour hotline for any citizen that needs help.

There are around 2,617 Indonesian citizens currently living in Florida, according to the consulate. (ipa)

Some of Hurricane Harvey’s most vulnerable survivors could be benefiting from a food aid program specifically designed to help disaster victims, but inaction at the state and federal levels has kept help out of reach, experts say.

The Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP), a variant of the federal food stamp program, gives emergency SNAP benefits to victims of floods, wildfires, tornadoes and other disasters. Generally, the people who receive aid are not already enrolled in SNAP but are temporarily eligible for benefits because of property damage, unexpected medical expenses and other circumstances.

In the past, state and federal authorities have brokered deals to send big-time aid to people in disaster zones. Louisiana gave out $680 million in D-SNAP benefits after Hurricane Katrina, and New York and New Jersey distributed $43 million in benefits after Superstorm Sandy, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency that oversees the program.   

Update | The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is one of those areas of the government we’d all prefer to never think about, much less deal with personally. But in the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s lashing visit to Houston, it’s worth taking a moment to recognize the agency—and to wonder where it will stand when the next disaster rolls around.

FEMA, which is stashed away under the Department of Homeland Security, oversees both physical and financial recovery in the wake of disasters (both natural disasters and terrorism) and is meant to coordinate other sections of the government to act more efficiently.

The agency’s current administrator, William “Brock” Long, was confirmed for the post by the Senate in June, after this year’s hurricane season began, but brings previous experience with hurricanes from Alabama’s equivalent agency.

According to comments Long made in a press conference held early Wednesday, FEMA’s priority for at least the next couple days is what’s called life-saving and life-sustaining activities. That includes working with the Coast Guard to rescue people, arranging shelters and keeping as many hospitals as possible up and running. Particularly in places like Louisiana, where rain is still falling, they’re also working to make sure people on the ground continue to listen for instructions from local officials as water levels eventually crest.

FEMA’s coordinating role is crucial here—it’s the linchpin that holds together federal employees; other relevant agencies like Health and Human Services; and the Department of Energy, the Coast Guard and National Guard personnel, state agencies and local responders. Although Houston has been drawing the most concern, Harvey has affected people across 50 counties, so coordination is key.

The rescue effort is already huge. Even before the worst of the storm hit, FEMA was gathering drinking water, food and blankets at a temporary base. When 911 call centers were overwhelmed with calls, they were rerouted to the Coast Guard, which has been handling a thousand calls an hour. In Texas alone, more than 230 shelters are open to more than 30,000 people. About 1,800 families have already been placed in hotel and motel rooms across five different states, the fastest way of getting people out of shelters.

More than 9,000 people have taken shelter in Houston’s convention center. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

FEMA is also poised to offer financial support after people reach out to their insurance providers. As of early Wednesday, more than 195,000 people had filed requests, and the agency had already sent $35 million to survivors.

The next wave of priorities will focus on infrastructure, since that helps people get back to their normal routines. Energy is a key piece—not only have large areas lost power but because of Texas’s role as a producer, it’s also important to get refineries and power plants back online. Airports, ports, rail lines, industrial facilities and schools are other important targets in the search for normalcy.

Finally, FEMA will start bringing in trailers and temporary housing, although that effort is limited by the amount of time and money needed to produce these shelters.

Houston residents wait in line to buy groceries after Hurricane Harvey. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

But the response to the next Harvey could face even stricter financial constraints if President Donald Trump gets his budgetary wishes for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins October 1. The president’s budget blueprint calls for FEMA’s budget for state and local grants to be cut by $667 million, saying that these grants are unauthorized or ineffective.

The program it explicitly calls out as lacking congressional authorization is the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, and a second proposed change would require all preparedness grants to be matched in part by non-federal funds. All of FEMA’s pre-disaster grants are meant to reduce federal spending after disasters, and according to the agency’s website, there’s evidence that $1 in mitigation spending saves $4 in later damages.

Trump’s budget proposal also calls for the elimination of the National Flood Insurance Program run by FEMA, which provides affordable flood insurance. According to the proposal, the program costs the government $190 million; it is also $25 billion in debt, a number expected to rise rapidly after Harvey. According to The Washington Post, even with the program in place, about 80 percent of people who own homes in the area affected by the storm don’t have flood insurance.

During the same press conference where Long spoke, a reporter asked about the funding cuts. The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security evaded the question, saying that the response team’s focus right now was strictly on helping Harvey survivors recover.

Even last year, experts were raising concerns that Houston was unprepared for the ravages of a serious hurricane.

You know what might have helped the city prepare? Mitigation funding.

This post was updated to accurately reflect a budgetary number.

When Houston floods, it turns into a locked circular labyrinth. The city, my home town, is laid out like a wagon wheel: downtown sits at the center, surrounded by three concentric circles, which are bisected by highways in every direction. The first loop, Interstate 610, is thirty-eight miles long, and corrals the Inner Loop neighborhoods. Another round of suburban neighborhoods surrounds the Loop, and is bounded by the eighty-eight-mile-long Beltway 8. Then, the truly sprawling suburbs (Spring, Sugar Land, the Woodlands) surround the Beltway. All told, the Greater Houston Area is gargantuan—at over ten thousand square miles, it’s bigger than New Jersey—and, with upward of six million residents, it’s far more populous and diverse than outsiders tend to guess. Houston is also, famously, largely unregulated: zoning laws are minimal, and the unceasing outward development has, with official permission, drastically inhibited drainage. The freeway system holds the city together, keeping a huge, dispersed population connected. But in a storm this lifeline becomes a trap. Houston is flat, and it sits just fifty feet above sea level; after the bayous overflow, the rain collects on the roads. When a flood hits, driving in Houston feels like a video game turned real and deadly. There are sudden impasses everywhere; ingenuity can’t save you; once the spokes of the wheel go under, there’s nowhere to go.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in America, and right now much of it is underwater. Things will get worse this week. Tropical Storm Harvey, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, is sluggishly lingering, and will continue to pummel the flooded city. Forecasts say that Houston may get fifty inches of rain from this storm—which is the city’s average annual rainfall. Five people have died; many more will be injured. Houston’s safety-net hospital started evacuations on Sunday. The Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, closed its submarine doors, designed, after Tropical Storm Allison, to protect the facility from flooding. Local news crews have struggled heroically to report out the disaster; one newscaster saved a truck driver’s life on air. The National Guard saved between twenty and twenty-five nursing-home residents in Dickinson after a harrowing photo went viral. My dad, who got stuck in high water on Saturday night, is one of thousands who have been rescued by Houston police. Harris County has been calling for citizens to help conduct rescues. All over the city, the roads have turned into rivers. Much of what’s visible looks like a nightmare; what makes me even sicker is imagining all the fear that we’ll never see.

People have criticized Houston residents for not evacuating. Plenty did, and with more understanding of the context, you might excuse many of those who didn’t. Evacuating a city like Houston, on these interlocked freeways—where a one-way commute might take two hours on a normal day—can very easily turn into a secondary disaster. The majority of Hurricane Rita deaths in Houston occurred in the evacuation, and two-thirds of flood fatalities happen in cars. Without financial resources, evacuation is a uniquely difficult experience, and 22.5 per cent of the population in increasingly unequal Houston lives under the poverty line. Official messages have also been uneven: Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, advised evacuation; the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner—likely warding off the worst-case scenario of a hurricane hitting gridlock traffic—advised sheltering in place. (In Rockport, the mayor pro tem issued a mandatory evacuation order, telling people who refused it to write their Social Security numbers on their arms.) President Trump, who has been tweeting about Harvey as if it were a thrilling reality-show finale, and who recently rolled back an Obama-era executive order that infrastructure projects be designed to survive rising sea levels, offered a helpful “Good luck to everybody!” on Friday, before the storm.

Eight years ago, I spent all summer driving around Houston’s endless looping freeways, passing picnic-table icehouse bars and stadium churches and the nondescript streets that birthed chopped-and-screwed. I was canvassing for an environmental nonprofit that was pushing for a long-overdue citywide recycling program, and we drove for hours to reach our neighborhood targets. The job was hard: we looked like scammers, and we were proselytizing about environmental responsibility in a city that at the time recycled less than three per cent of its own waste. But I liked the effort of trying to understand and appeal to a dizzying variety of strangers. I knocked on the doors of McMansions and decrepit bungalows, talked to immigrants and Texas-born white people, pitched liberals and conservatives and the politically averse. Houston, which is by one measure the most diverse city in America, took shape in my imagination as an enormous canvas of unpredictable, heterogeneous people who were connected, somehow, by a confusing combination of independence and generosity. As a state, Texas is fiercely individualistic—the land of bootstraps and no income tax and privatized solutions for all. Houstonians absorb this; they are loyal and responsible in a way that rarely extends across the city, which is, again, so big as to feel unfathomable—and those freeways, effectively, are our only public space.

And yet, this week I suspect we’ll mostly see another side of Houston: its scrappy sense of humor, and its extraordinary and very Texan largesse. Houston responds to disaster with fortitude: the city absorbed two hundred thousand Vietnamese refugees in the nineteen-seventies, and it currently resettles twenty-five of every thousand refugees that the United Nations resettles anywhere—that’s more than any other city in America, and more than most countries. After Hurricane Katrina, Houston took in a quarter of a million evacuees, and, aided by Mayor Bill White’s multimillion-dollar resettlement program, as many as forty thousand people stayed. Over the weekend, Houston teen-agers were out in the streets rescuing people via kayak. As Rebecca Solnit argues in her 2009 book, “A Paradise Built in Hell,” disasters create a window into social desire and potential. We’re normally encouraged to think of private life as precious and public life as a nuisance, she writes, but “disasters, in returning their sufferers to public and collective life, undo some of this privatization, which is a slower, subtler disaster all its own.” Disasters remind us that ambitious, difficult things are not just possible but necessary; in Houston, Harvey is already showing how an individualistic work ethic and a spirit of collective generosity can and have to coexist.

Bisnis.com, JAKARTA– Kementerian Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral meluncurkan Aplikasi MAGMA (Multiplatform Application for Geohazard Mitigation and Assessment in Indonesia) yang memberikan terobosan dalam pemberian informasi terkait bencana.

Pemrakasa MAGMA Indonesia Devi Kamil Syahbana menjelaskan, MAGMA adalah media online aplikasi, masyarakat mendapatkan informasi real time, sehingga masyarakat mendapatkan informasi cepat, jadi tidak akan ada kejadian keterlambatan mendapatkan informasi kebencanaan.

“Aplikasi MAGMA ini dibangun dan dikembangkan secara mandiri oleh Pegawai Negeri Sipil (PNS) Pusat Vulkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi (PVMBG) Kementerian ESDM,” katanya, Minggu (27/8/2017).

Aplikasi ini bermanfaat untuk kementerian ataupun pemerintah daerah seperti Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB), Badan Penanggulanan Bencana Daerah (BPBD), Badan Meteorologi Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG), Kementerian Perhubungan serta lembaga-lembaga International terutama industri penerbangan.

Debi mengatakan, MAGMA juga melakukan ekspansi dengan stakeholder penerbangan tidak hanya Indonesia juga International, mereka mendapatkan informasi letusan gunung api secara real time.

Abu vulkanik berbahaya untuk penerbangan dan menjadi data yang menjadi acuan Volcanic Advisory Centre (VAC), Pacific Disasster Centre (PDC) serta International Air Transportasion Association (IATA).

Aplikasi itu kembali menorehkan prestasi dengan meraih Top 40 Inovasi Pelayanan Publik 2017, belum lama ini. Penghargaan untuk MAGMA diserahkan oleh Menteri Koordinator Bidang Pembangunan Manusia dan Kebudayaan RI Puan Maharani mewakili Presiden RI Jokowi.

Kepala Pusat Vulkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi (PVMBG) Kementerian ESDM Kasbani mengungkapkan MAGMA Indonesia bukan hanya kebanggaan Kementerian ESDM, tetapi juga kebanggaan bangsa.

“MAGMA Indonesia asli buatan anak bangsa, sehingga kini bukan lagi menjadi kebanggaan PVMBG, Badan Geologi, maupun Kementerian ESDM, namun lebih luas lagi menjadi kebanggaan bangsa Indonesia,” ungkap Kasbani bersemangat.

On 14 August, heavy rains, a mudslide and flash floods destroyed hundreds of homes and left many dead, injured or missing in Sierra Leone. In all, more than 500 houses were buried and destroyed and some 6000 people were severely affected. So far, more than 500 bodies have been recovered, with the number expected to rise. A mass burial for 300 people brought the country together and hardened the commitment to collectively recover from the tragedy.

An estimated 200 people living with HIV and their families were affected, with around 54 among the dead. Relief and rescue efforts by community members and first responders immediately began providing life-saving support.

People living with HIV and people at higher risk of HIV infection often become more vulnerable in times of emergency, owing to a lack of prioritization of their needs, lack of prevention services and disruption of treatment. In addition, people living with HIV, especially with weakened immune systems, are at higher risk of contracting malaria and waterborne diseases.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, UNAIDS’ priority has been to ensure the continuation and scale-up of antiretroviral therapy services, provide technical support to the Network of HIV Positives in Sierra Leone (NETHIPS), generate strategic information for fundraising and facilitate access for people living with HIV to food and non-food resources. UNAIDS has been participating in the broader disaster coordination structure within the United Nations and is supporting NETHIPS in the registration of people living with HIV affected by the disaster and in finding out their immediate needs.

In the medium and long term, UNAIDS, in collaboration with the United Nations interagency team, the National HIV/AIDS Secretariat, NETHIPS and the wider national disaster response coordination unit, will ensure that people living with HIV have access to support that includes the restoration of livelihoods, shelter construction and psychosocial services.

This crisis has put into sharp focus the fragility of Sierra Leone’s post-Ebola social safety nets. It is critical that the resources required for the response to HIV be included in the emergency fundraising appeals and that the country’s HIV catch-up plan be financed and implemented effectively.

QUOTES

“ENTIRE COMMUNITIES HAVE BEEN WIPED OUT BY THE DISASTER. WE NEED URGENT SUPPORT NOW.”

ERNEST BAI KOROMA PRESIDENT OF SIERRA LEONE

“HUMANITARIAN CRISES EXACERBATE THE HIV EPIDEMIC—VULNERABILITIES ARE INCREASED, SERVICES ARE DISRUPTED, PEOPLE ARE UPROOTED AND ACCESS TO HIV PREVENTION AND TREATMENT AFFECTED, LEADING TO NEW HIV INFECTIONS.”

MICHEL SIDIBÉ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNAIDS

Disaster preparedness methods and prevention infrastructure have been proven to mitigate the impacts of catastrophes on citizens around the world. As shown in the infographic by the Aid and International Development Forum (AIDF), every euro spent on disaster prevention efforts is predicted to result in €4 savings that would go towards response efforts. In 2016, the European Commission released a report of its planned investments for the countries in the EU. It is estimated that the projected developments will save 13.3 million people residing on the European continent from floods and 11.8 million people from forest fires. To view the infographic, click here www.aidforum.org/infographic/infographic-disaster-prepare…

Despite its ability to cut response costs, disaster risk reduction has only accounted for 12.8% of the $3.3 trillion allocated globally to international aid finance during the period spanning from 1991 to 2010. Emergency response accounted for the majority of aid finance, 65.6% or $69.9 billion during these years while reconstruction and rehabilitation took up 21.7% of the total expenditure.

These figures might be accounted for by factoring in the inability of some countries to afford the cost of protection infrastructure. This proves to be unsurprising as such infrastructure projects can come with a hefty price tag. The 5th Delta Program launched by the Netherlands cost €20 billion and $15 billion was spent on the flood protection program in New Orleans. In total, an estimated $1 trillion is needed per year to close the infrastructure gap in developing countries.

In the private sector, 72% of Standard & Poor’s Global 100 companies do not conduct environmental or climate-specific vulnerability assessments. Furthermore, a majority of these companies do not engage in climate-risk management activities, such as the utilization of climate-specific risk models and research as well as the upgrading of infrastructure and equipment; despite the fact that 77% of these companies include climate-risk management in their conventional business continuity and risk management strategies.

The importance of disaster readiness reaches beyond government and corporate level and is vital for the individual to be conscious of as well. In the United States, the National Health Security Preparedness Index, which measures preparedness for disasters and other emergencies, reached a score of 6.8 out of 10 on the national scale in 2016. However, measurements on a state-by-state basis record a 31% disparity between states with the highest preparedness scores and those with the lowest. For the 144.6 million people living in the coastal states from Maine to Texas, disaster preparedness is incredibly necessary. Especially in light of the fact that in 2016 alone there were 7 hurricanes which threatened the 61 million homes and 3.4 million business establishments on the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast.

To discuss the impact of disasters and how to enhance disaster preparedness and prevention, join the 9th Global Disaster Relief & Development Summit on September 6-7 in Washington D.C. The Summit will gather industry experts who will be sharing best practice and discussing new technology innovations aimed at improving preparedness, proactive disaster mitigation, risk management and community management. Hear from:

• Christopher Smith, Director of Individual Assistance, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), United Sates Department of Homeland Security
• Akshat Vishal Chaturvedi, Senior Advisor, Disaster Risk Management, World Bank
• George Sullivan, Director, Individual and Community Preparedness and Resilience, American Red Cross
• Kieth Kall, Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships, World Vision
• David Jones, Chief Executive Officer, Rescue Global
• Isaac Kwamy, Director, Global Programs, Humanitarian Disaster Management, NETHOPE
• Dr Joe Leitmann, Lead Disaster Risk Management Specialist, Team Leader, Resilient Recovery and Urban Resilience, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), World Bank Group

For more information about the Global Disaster Relief & Development Summit, visit disaster-relief.aidforum.org

Global Disaster Relief & Development Summit strives to enable quicker and better response during crises and catastrophes by improving effectiveness, cost-efficiency and sustainability of aid operations. This year’s programme will expand its scope beyond disaster relief and will look into emerging global challenges, innovations and opportunities in international aid and development sector. It will continue to focus on best practice in humanitarian logistics, emergency communication, supply chain, procurement, partnerships and financing of aid programmes. The agenda is developed in consultation with World Bank, UN OCHA, Red Cross, USAID, World Vision, UNOPS.

3rd Floor, Two America Square, London, EC3N 2LU

This release was published on openPR.

FREETOWN, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) — Sierra Leone’s presidential spokesperson Abdulai Bayraytay said Wednesday that the country is in dire need of food, water, clothing, accommodation and medical supplies for the thousands of people left homeless by the devastating floods and mudslide that hit an area on the outskirts of capital city Freetown on Monday.

Bayraytay, who also doubles as lead communicator for the disaster management in Sierra Leone, told Xinhua in an interview they have temporarily provided shelter for the homeless in various schools across the city and that they are currently providing dry food rations for people that were affected by the disaster, but more supplies are needed.

“We need water facility, clothing, medicine, food and accommodation for people that have been left homeless,” he said, as work to rescue and recover people suspected to be buried under the rubble is still under way.

“We are still very optimistic that as the recovery effort still continues, we would discover more people. That is why we have ambulances on standby, so that whosoever we discover would be taken to the nearest hospital,” the spokesperson said.

He said registration of people suspected to have been victimized by the disaster is still in progress, although he could not provide an update on the latest death toll figures.

He told Xinhua that the government is particularly concerned about any outbreak of cholera in the aftermath of the disaster, hence medical supplies would be direly needed by the government.

“We are very much concerned about any outbreak of cholera. So, whatever medical supplies we get would be greatly appreciated,” he said.

Deputy Minister of Health and Sanitation, Madina Rahman, has earlier cautioned people to apply all precautionary measures to avoid catching up with Cholera or any other waterborne diseases .

A release from State House late Tuesday indicated that 83 women, 105 men and 109 children were reported dead during the disaster. As rescue operation is still in progress, the number is expected to rise as more bodies are being transported to the Connaught Hospital Mortuary in Freetown.

According to Baraytay, the government and development partners have deployed social workers in the affected communities to provide psychosocial treatment for affected people.

More relatives on Wednesday have identified some of their loved ones killed by the disaster. Bayraytay said that the burial process would take place at waterloo in the outskirt of Freetown Thursday.