What the Philippines can learn from Haiti, 2004 tsunami

14/11/2013 15:42

By Lean Alfred Santos

As relief efforts continue following the onslaught of Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, many in the aid community now look back at other major natural disasters such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The ongoing operation in the Philippines is one of the largest relief drives since those two tragedies, and aid officials are wary that mistakes from the past may be repeated at the expense of victims, putting their situation from bad to worse. “A lot of the aid funding that reached Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami was wasted because decisions were made hastily and the recovery work was poorly coordinated,” Martin Mulligan, chief investigator for an AusAID-funded relief efforts study, told Devex. [Read more] ...