Can we say that India is nowhere near to Japan, when it comes to Disaster Management?

Japan was hit by the Typhoon Jebi yesterday afternoon, and it left various regions in the country wrecked. You can see it here:

While Japan was victimized with this natural disaster, India suffered a man-made one, as the Majerhat bridge collapsed in one of the most crowded regions of Kolkata, West Bengal. This is not the first bridge that fell in West Bengal. Neither is it the first disaster that struck the country this year.

You must be more than just familiar with the Kerala Floods. Read how much destruction the floods caused in the state here.

Why did I give you these news updates with a quick flash back, is because before comparing the management, we should compare the amount of disaster and destruction caused. Now let’s come to the management.

Typhoon Jebi in Japan, which the strongest typhoon to hit the country in last 25 years, has already taken the lives of six, and injured around 160 people. On the other hand, as soon as Kerala got hit by the floods, the news of thousands of people getting homeless hit our TV screens, and the initial death toll (1 or 2 days) was not 5 or 10, but somewhere around 30-40!

While the roads and public places were shut down and closed for several days, a bridge in Japan was blocked and reopened in less than 24 hours, with proper high speed boats and buses to the rescue on airports, where people were stuck overnight.

“Almost 14,000 residents have been moved to around 5,000 refuge zones, mostly town halls and school gyms, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency”, reports CNN.

It is, henceforth, more than evident that we need to learn a lot from Japan, when it comes to Disaster Management techniques. How smoothly, efficiently, effectively, and quickly, it deals with such disasters, minimizing the devastation as much as possible is worth applauding indeed.