Easter Sunday disaster: Who is responsible?
On Easter Sunday, our country after many years of peace was shocked and shaken by a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 250 plus, men, women, and children. The usual post disaster record was played by the powers that be:
a) Compensation would be paid.
b) A disaster would NEVER happen again,
c) The rest of us Sri Lankans would be hit by our national disease…the “21 day memory loss syndrome.”….. we will forget the incident after approximately 21 days.
File picture of an armed guard outside a hotel.
No other person than the Prime Minister himself gave us the assurance that a terrorist disaster would NEVER be permitted again in our country. This is a very comforting and ambitious assurance, except for the fact that the PM never mentioned any mechanism by which he intended to achieve this herculean task. Either the PM did not comprehend the magnitude of the task or this was another promise to us gullible citizens. In order to provide credibility to his assurance I would have expected the PM to state, very briefly and forcefully, without disclosing any confidential information, his PLAN, to ensure that a disaster would not occur again in Sri Lanka. For example with immediate effect he would establish Disaster Management Units in every district, he would ban the overloading of buses and trains, which provide a soft target for the terrorist. But there was no such assurances. Does this imply that there were no such Disaster Prevention/Mitigation Plans at that time? I do not expect a plan for the church only, but what I expected was a General Plan to deal with disasters of all targets which include, casualty handling, traffic congestion, etc. This may sound overreacting but the church disaster taught us a very important lesson……even after many years of peace, we cannot afford to drop our guard because the terrorist has all the advantages. He can decide on the date, the place, the time, the type of explosives, etc for his next attack. Such an assurance given by no other person than the PM is taken very seriously. No one can with certainty ever say it will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
Disaster Management
Disaster Management is an applied science which seeks by “observation and analysis” to PREVENT disasters and to MITIGATE the consequences of such disasters.
It will be observed that Disaster Management has two major components:
a) Observation: This component is responsible for feeding information derived from observation to the second component for analysis to ascertain whether there is any terrorist activity.
b) Analysis: This component of Disaster Management is a collection centre for all the information from the observation component, to ascertain whether there is any terrorist activity.
It must be noted that at no stage must the analysing function be undertaken by the observation function, because if it does it may result in a disaster.
By observing and analysing the many previous disasters, could we be assured that we have by now formulated a sound Disaster Prevention/Mitigation Plan? I regret to state that I was not impressed by the prevention and mitigation effort. In relation to the disaster prevention plan of the Easter Sunday bomb blast, it was a disaster. How did we perform in the mitigation of the effects of the disaster? There was no evidence of an ORGANISED effort, but the crowds performed this task admirably. In such disasters Sri Lankans have always risen to the occasion. This factor must be taken into consideration when formulating Disaster Management “mitigation” plans.
In this conflict of terrorist versus the citizen we have almost no possibility of survival unless we are lucky. Luck is not a scientific factor.
Has “observation and analysis” of those many past disasters enabled us to prevent any disasters? It is my opinion that it is extremely difficult to prevent a disaster, but in this disaster I could find no reason to justify the disaster. Observation and analysis could at most prevent us from repeating the same errors over again. The performance of the observation and analysis exercise pertaining to the Easter Sunday Disaster are given below:
a) This disaster could have been prevented. This is the most important factor.
b) There was no indication of a plan to mitigate the consequences.
c) We cannot afford to drop our guard, no matter what the price we have to pay.
d) There was no command and control structure.
e) In relation to mitigation of the consequences of a disaster it is worth noting that our buses do not have a simple First Aid Kit, nor do they have a functional emergency exit. This would give us an indication of our ability to provide post disaster mitigation.
Responsibility
Who was responsible for the Easter Sunday carnage? A heated discussion ensured in Parliament with fingers being pointed at each other, and even chairs taking an aerial route in the lobby. My evaluation is that every one of us is responsible. If on that Easter Sunday morning, 10 minutes before Holy Mass the IGP had burst into church and requested all of us to vacate because there was a threat of a bomb, How many of us would have vacated; we have had peace for many years; this was Easter Sunday and taking these and other factors into consideration I would not have vacated, so why point my finger at my neighbour.
Dehiwela Railway Station
bomb disaster
Readers may recall this disaster. On that fateful evening a similar incident occurred. When the train transporting office staff home after work was approaching Dehiwela, a passenger “observed” a brief case which was on the baggage rack above his head. This piece of baggage did not seem to have an owner. When the train stopped at the railway station the passenger notified the Station Master. The station master immediately notified the bomb squad. The Bomb Squad instructed him to hold the train, and that they would be there in 15 minutes. But in a short while a passenger made an “analysis” of the situation, got into the compartment, took the brief case and placed it near the Railway Station board; he performed the function of the “analysis” component, which he should never have done. Now there seemed to be no danger. The commuters then got impatient and began to get unruly and demanded that the train be released, which the Station Master did a few seconds later there was a huge explosion which took the lives of 70 plus passengers.
Who was responsible for this disaster? The Station Master, the passenger who took the brief case out, the passengers who wanted the train released, the bomb squad? In allocating “responsibility” in relation to Disaster Management I would like to establish three broad levels of responsibility as follows:
LEVEL 1: Those persons “DIRECTLY” involved in causing the disaster.
LEVEL 2: Those persons “INDIRECTLY” involved in causing the disaster.
LEVEL 3: Those persons who have information, but do not forward it for analysis.
I must state that I am in no way proud of persons in L 3. They could put all of us in danger.
Who was responsible
for this disaster?
The Station Master, the passenger who notified the station master, the passenger who took the brief case, the passengers who forced the station master to release the train.
“Observation and Analysis”
Observation and analysis is a very important tool in the preparation of a Disaster Management Plan. The former Civil Defence Force was able to draw up a disaster prevention plan from the “observations” received from ordinary civilians. Their observations when analysed revealed that the LTTE had to successfully complete four operations as given below to perform a single disaster:
1. Obtain a “safe house” to operate from and to manufacture the bomb.
2. “Transport” the bomb to the target.
3. “Plant” the bomb in the target.
4. “Explode” the bomb
This was a very important factor in disaster prevention because it meant that the LTTE had to successfully complete four operations to create a disaster while the Security Forces had to complete only one operation to prevent the disaster.
Will we ever have another disaster?
The answer to that question depends on how “prepared” we are. To be prepared we require information from the observation component because the probable targets are so vast that we do not have the resources to protect all the targets. We require the input from the observation component of the disaster management to prepare our defenses since the possibility of disasters is so vast. If we can afford to have the troops patrolling the streets 24 hours for 365 days of the year, we could with confidence say NEVER AGAIN. But this is not practical. This information is available in the streets, the boutiques, the marketplaces the bus and train terminals, etc. We must by the use of our eyes and ears derive this information and pass it on to the analysis component for decimation and preparation of disaster prevention. Every one of us must use our eyes and ears, to “OBSERVE” anything suspicious, and report it to a central “ANALYING” unit. My main concern at the moment is not who is responsible but as to whether we are prepared.