Bihar flood

Volunteer interviewing villager in flooded area

In 2019, key informants and citizens were interviewed on their information needs during the Bihar floods in 2017. Both groups expressed similar views of the need of information during a disaster. Very often, during the first two days of the flood, there is no communications since electricity supplies and services are disrupted. For those first two days, it would be good to have battery/solar radio sets in disaster preparedness kits or bags that citizens are recommended to carry.

 

The majority of the key informants were not aware of radio broadcast on AIR relating to disaster survival, which made it impossible for them to evaluate the value of AIR broadcasts, limiting the usefulness of this study. In general, the key informants see the media as a bridge between the citizens and the rescue network, provided the citizens carry radios with them or have the earphones that are provided for FM listening on mobile phones. Media should not cover disasters in a sensational manner, but in a positive manner, giving information, advice and mental encouragement. Those who had listened to disaster survival content on AIR, appreciated the mental encouragement and disaster preparedness topics.

 

Similarly, citizens found it hard to recognize the English language title of AIR disaster survival broadcast, ‘First Response’, FR, which was used at the beginning and at the end of the 15-minute program. Naming the program in the local language might benefit  reception research in the future. However, one fifth of the sample had listened to FR content, at least a few times a week, usually through a FM station. FR listeners share the same demographic characteristics as the rest of the sample. The most beneficial content for both FR listeners and FR non-listeners was the advice on boiling water or using tablets to clean the water. Listening to music is related to better health after the disaster, so local music should be kept in the disaster radio content.

 

According to some key informants, local citizens’ disaster preparedness and decision making capabilities need to be improved, since flash floods occur suddenly, sometimes without warning. Broadcast formats need to be thought through carefully. In this research, long interviews by experts were disliked by the listeners; I recommend that broadcasters use experts in shorter radio features such as community service announcements, or in shorter interviews that are restricted to one topic in each interview. Certainly, information and education about water purification and delivery, medical and agricultural services, recovery advice and disaster preparedness can be put into shorter and especially designed information and education community service announcements. We also recommend that more airtime should be given to community-driven content and citizen’s voices.

 

This research shows that the flood-affected citizens benefit from advice, information and music. Delivering these become problematic during disasters when they are needed most. Media organizations and networks need to prepare a communications plan before the disaster occurs. If citizens do not have radio sets, how will they receive these communication services? Or, would it be best to utilize village communication systems, such as solar-powered loud speakers? Or, if FM frequencies are utilized, will earphones be delivered to the citizens?

 

Besides preparing a communications plan for the villages, citizens need to be prepared themselves. AIR radio has started to produce preparedness content, and disaster management staff is planning to organize classes to teach swimming. There are many things that could be done for preparedness and disaster mitigation at the household and larger society levels. For example, there are citizens living in temporary huts and farming their land within embankments in Bihar that flood every year. They would need to find a new livelihood to avoid living within the embankment. These are some topics for future research.

 

Palu tsunami

The recent Palu earthquake and tsunami that followed will definitely raise the issue of tsunami warnings. The Indonesian official responsible for warnings (BMKG, The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency) followed standard operations procedure and ended the tsunami warning. Why? The sensor, 200 km away from the Palu showed only 6 cm wave.

We will learn probably sometimes later, whether the tsunami wave already had passed the sensor at 200 km, or whether it arrived there after the warning was already lifted. Anyway, this incident will help the officials to improve the warning system efficiency.

My Researchgate link

DESIGNING CRISIS COMMUNICATION

Pure information is not enough for tsunami experienced people. Communication needs to deal with the feelings also. Especially elderly women expressed in the focus group this opposing attitude of not even talking about future disasters. How to deal with that antagonism via media? Elderly people might have difficulty in hearing or seeing the messages designed for disaster mitigation. Their memory and physical strength causes challenges, as one elderly lade expressed ‘don’t hear anything, it’s not clear any more’, ‘I don’t understand much’, ‘I was shaking myself, could not take clothes’.

In crisis communication, public messages are designed and produced in order to create specific responses by the public. The key is to make messages that audience for all ages, educational and vocational backgrounds will understand, and understand so well that they are able to behave accordingly.

Communications research is needed to find out how people picture the disaster, what their natural responses are, before, during and after the disaster. Focus groups discussions for tsunami survivors in North Sumatra were conducted in 2007 to find out, firstly, reactions to the earthquake and tsunami, and secondly, how the resilience was created in the imminent disaster. Five focus groups were conducted, two for elderly women, one for younger women, one for elderly men and one for younger men.

Reactions to the earthquake and tsunami in the December 2004 disaster can be best described by the cosmology episode defined by Weick (1993) as the situation when the orderliness of the universe is called into question. North Sumatrans are used to experiencing earthquakes, but the claim of ‘ocean is rising’, declared by children and adults, when they saw the tsunami wave, was shattering the orderliness of the universe of many people. Reactions to this cosmology episode varied from active participation to passive sitting and chanting. Men and women described the event differently; old people described it in a different way than young people. Old women’s reactions were the most religious, while the old men’s reactions concentrated most on the family; such as looking for the family members.

Besides reactions, I analyzed at the focus groups especially from the viewpoint of how resilience was created. According to Weick (1993), resilience is created by either improvisation, or by social construction (virtual role systems), or by the attitude of wisdom (not to be so sure about anything), or finally, by intersubjectivity; and respectful interaction.

One would expect social construction and intersubjectivity to be high in the Sumatran community, which is based on close social relationships in the family and in the village. Those elderly women that were outside from their house at the beginning of the tsunami event, saw either people running or hearing ‘ocean is rising’, and started running themselves too.  One elderly lady that was alone in the house, however, was afraid of the water so much that she didn’t go anywhere. With the exception of this lonely elderly woman, all the other elderly women expressed analysis of the situation via other people, and surrounding people’s reactions to the water, or to the sounds of approaching tsunami wave (explosions).  Two elderly women showed wisdom in their opinions, the other expressing that we need mental readiness to face the coming disasters, the other acknowledging practical wisdom, what to do at the event of earthquake (get out of the house), and at the event of water rising (look for a strong piece of wood).

Improvisation refers to creative, unorthodox behaviors during disasters; referring to the idea that not everything can be planned and predicted, and that smart improvisation in unpredicted situation helps. Among the elderly women’s group, the tendency is quite opposite to improvisation: to live and act according to the accustomed and traditional way; that is to chant and pray at the time of disaster. Disaster as a Judgment day was described by several elderly people, and their attitude is that you can not predict disasters, or actually you should pray that disasters do not come, or if they come, ‘it is the will of Allah’, ‘the one who decides is Allah’ and we need to chant, pray and surrender to His will. This strong trust in the Lord appeared many times in elderly women’s conversations.

‘We pray to the Lord. Apart from that who can we put our hope in?’ ‘I prayed, Allah, my Lord, save me. Give me strength’. Elderly people recognized having some fear of the future disasters, but in facing the fear, they emphasized the need to surrender to the will of Allah, looking for the Quran and reading Yasin prayers, and this religious observance takes the fear way. At the time of disaster, according to tradition, the elderly women were told to go to the mosque, but they were not told to run at time of disaster. According to tradition, chanting is favored at the time of disaster, since it helps to achieve calmness. There is also a belief that when the island drowns, the Judgment day is near. One elderly lady expressed the belief that if there is repentance, the disasters will be less probable to happen.

In conclusion, I think there are several challenges in designing disaster mitigation messages for old people; to start with, the mental blockage of dealing with disasters – there are attitudes that people do not even want to think and talk about coming disasters, and they do not understand the concept of preparing for the disasters. The other challenge is language being used in creating the messages – it needs to be simple, clear, and understandable, with good audio discrimination qualities. The messages need repetition, or practice, for example repeating by your own words, or making rhymes of them, so that elderly will remember them in emergency.

My dissertation link

https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/44637

Debate experience

It was at first scary. Then I saw the Christmas tree in the University Hall. It lifted my spirit. Also the Bible verses near the ceiling, and seeing my family, me relatives, friends. The lectio precursio was easy, since I had practised it at home. After that, the Opponent’s questions. At first easy, then follows more difficult one – about the definitions of crisis and risk. My mind went blank. All pink slips in my dissertation pages disappeared. I answered based on my data, as my professor had suggested.

The time went slow. More questions. My voice started to go down. My throat was dry. Then stood up, to listen to the final evaluation. Passed! Joy! I recommend this to anybody. Finish your dissertation. It feels so good to have it done.

Debate approaches

It is exactly one month for one of the important events of my life. Not as significant as getting married, or giving birth.

I will defend my dissertation about Disaster preparedness education. This happens in my University town, in Jyväskylä Finland, on a campus hill called Seminaarinmäki, in its old party hall named S212. The date is November 29th, at 12 noon.

I have participated two conferences related to disaster preparedness and my dissertation; Global Risk Forum in Davos 2012 and Media Asia conference in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Mount Merapi

While visiting Yogyakarta, Indonesia this summer, I had a chance to visit the museum of Mount Merapi. It is located at the foot of the vulcano called Merapi. It is one the Indonesia most active volcanos today. I learnt one interesting thing during my visit to the museum: Nyai Gadung Melati. She is the leader of the mystic army residing the mountain of Merapi.  She is also the protector of the vegetation in the region. Melati makes her appearance in residents’ dreams the night before the volcano erupts. Melati is dressed in yasmin green outfit.

Communities are important

In my search of trying to understand evacuation behaviour during natural disasters, I have been faced with the concept of community. Western mind is individualists and can not understand the community as an entity. Community is not a sum of individuals. Community is a community. Reading Benedict Anderson’s book -‘Imagined communities’ helped me understand the concept a little bit more:

‘Communities are to be distuinguished, not by their falsity/genuiness, but by the style in which they are imagined. Javanese villagers have always known that they are connected to people they have never seen, but these ties were once imagined particularistically – as indefinitely strechable nets of kinship and clientship. Until recently, the Javanese language had no word meaning the abstraction ‘society’.  ‘ (p.6).

If you have any ideas of defining the imagined community, please comment!

 

Hydro-illogical Cycle

The term ‘Hydro-illogical Cycle’ was used over sixty years ago, in 1947, by Tannehill and later Vit Klemes when talking about drought research. This term could be used also when referring to the reaction of media and the societal attention to disasters. When a disaster happens, it gets a lot of attention, but when it is over, it looses media interest, and societal interest. I am of the opinion that media could do better in its role of keeping the disasters on the agenda more continuously, and prompting citizens to learn from disasters, so that next time it is easier to face a disaster. Some positive examples of this are community radios in Indonesia. In North and West Sumatra, communities are motivated to create programs and public service announcement on radio, to educate citizens of ways to prepare for earthquakes. One such example is http://www.responradio.com. This radio station was established as an aftermath of Padang September 2009 earthquake, and has been on air even since.