Government, non-government and community organisations in disasters

Abstract

[Extract] In the event of a disaster, communities become the targets of specialist organizations and undergo a concentration of activities. The complex unstructured activities and routines of daily life are disrupted and even totally overwhelmed by a single catastrophic event that requires a redirection of priorities, resources and people, to deal with all aspects of the disaster impact as rapidly as possible. The whole community must be mobilised to restore functions and meet needs, to return to the normality of the predisaster state. This latter purpose is least likely to be achieved, as the destroyed community can seldom rebuild to the same complex, but randomly haphazard state that existed before the disaster.