I’m sure there can’t be anyone who hasn’t heard of the earthquake that ravaged Nepal last Saturday. I must admit to having a particular interest as my son went on a trekking holiday there just before he started at university and I couldn’t help thinking what I would feel like if something like that had happened when he was there. I would have been worried sick!
As it’s a popular destination for walkers, climbers and gap-year students the news has been full of young people flying back into Britain and being re-united with their families. It’s great for them but when they were interviewed most of them said how guilty they felt about being able to walk away from the situation when the local people were left with destroyed homes, lack of food, drinking water and sanitation. And the death toll keeps rising!
One of the reasons for this is lack of planning. The country had been warned that there could be a serious earthquake at any time and the government should have been planning what to do under those circumstances – arranging bottled water and food stores, tightening up on building regulations. Apparently, it doesn’t cost much more to put together a low-rise building that will withstand shocks then to build one that won’t.
But now that it has happened the real problem is how to deal with the lack of food and provide clean drinking water; how to organise the medical facilities so that they can cope with the injured; how to deal with bodies so that epidemics don’t start. And, in the early days, clearing rubble effectively so that survivors could be found. There are still many villages that are completely cut off with no aid and there are not enough helicopters (and pilots to fly them) to deal with this catastrophe.
Governments around the world are providing aid, as are many generous private donors – but what the country really needs are people who can manage projects on a large scale. People who can see the bigger picture. People who can plan and know how to manage both resources and people. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t make it go away. What’s needed are well-trained people who can think logically and manage projects large and small. There’ll always be a need for those whether it’s in business or – as in this case – on a huge scale!
