Wednesday, August 25, 2010

UN develops disaster response toolkit for Kenya



People are evacuated from Nyayo house in Nairobi by the Kenya disaster management team during a drill in the past. United Nations has developed a toolkit on disaster management for Kenya and started rolling out through a training going on in Nakuru. FILE | NATION

By OLIVER MATHENGE
Posted Wednesday, August 25 2010 at 14:23

The United Nations has developed a toolkit on disaster management for Kenya and started rolling out the programme through a training going on in Nakuru.

Through the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the UN plans to publish the tool-kit for use around the country as a way of helping in disaster management and reduction.

A statement from UNISDR on Wednesday said that it has also developed a fact-sheet on Kenya’s disaster management at the request of the Kenya National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction called “Natural Hazard Factsheets for Kenya,”

The fact-sheet is targeted at disaster risk managers, disaster emergency responders and others in order to mitigate and prepare for disasters more effectively.

The fact-sheets are designed to help practitioners in disaster risk reduction to identify vulnerabilities unique to different parts of the country, depending on the types of natural hazards that each part is most likely to face, the statement added.

“The outcome of this training will create a super highway for spreading hazard and disaster risk reduction information to local communities, thereby increasing their knowledgebase and consequently their resilience to natural disasters,” said Pedro Basabe, Head of the UNISDR Regional Office for Africa.

He added; “It is also projected that the pilot training in Kenya will help the participants to fine tune their own approaches to disaster risk reduction, as they apply the lessons from elsewhere on the continent.”

The workshop has attracted 30 the various provinces, and five regional participants from Burundi, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal along with representatives from other governments and the United Nations.

The draft toolkit teaches practitioners to use the Natural Hazard Fact-sheet when training actors at the grassroots level on actions to take on disaster risk reduction.

“Communities will be trained on the various aspects of hazards and how to use local means and resources to adapt, mitigate and cope with these hazards so they do not turn into disasters,” the statement said.

Recent events in Kenya have shown that the country is increasingly becoming predisposed to both natural and human-made disasters such as floods, droughts, landslides, fire and consequences of climate change.

The key drawback in the government’s efforts to initiate disaster risk reduction programmes and activities is that the dangers posed by natural and manmade hazards are little understood, and have not been given the needed attention.

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