Quantifying disaster

Reports speak about trends in the world, and use large numbers. These numbers seem to operate as a shield against our notions of humanity. People argue over numbers, I mean, would Hitler have been less of a monster if he'd have killed three million Jews? 1.5 million?

This was my thought as I read an article in the Christian Science Monitor praising Bangladesh for its preparedness in the case of a natural disaster. Burned deep in a nation's collective memory, tragedies that have taken huge tolls like floods, storms and droughts must have special meaning on an individual level. How difficult to conceive the suffering by looking at numbers that are so large that they become abstractions.

We mark time from our triumphs and disasters. We remember birthdays. The same woman who bore my four healthy children returned yesterday from a funeral for a one-day-old baby of a co-worker. The little white coffin was barely bigger than a box they give you when you purchase boots. For that family, April 6 will always be "the time before", and April 7 will always be "the time after".

My black-clad grandmother could always tell me the number of days that had passed since she had worn the bright floral patterns, the reds and blues of rejoicing in a life spent with my grandfather. I only knew her in the carefully ironed elegance of her widow's dark dress. For my grandmother, happiness ended in the spring of 1959.

I never knew my grandfather in the physical sense, but I could see in the moments that joy wrote in all caps that in the subtext of her observations, she was keeping an archive she'd share with him when they were both together again in heaven.

In the United States, we often speak about natural disasters in terms of money lost. The same Monitor article reported that tornadoes in the Midwest accounted for half of all money lost due to natural disaster throughout the world in 2012. The number is in the billions. Does that number mean anything to anyone? 1000000000 or 10000000000- the difference is a factor of ten. Yet how can any of us conceive of this number, or even really notice the difference between nine and ten zeroes? Do the reports of money lost simply mean that we Americans have more stuff that can be lifted, swirled around, and slammed into other things? Does that same wind that can throw an SUV really affect a life any more than a flood that carries away a rickshaw?

I remember the days of having to dig through couches and car seats to find enough change to buy my children milk. I recall the college-educated middle-class shame I suffered for accepting a twenty dollar bill from a kind stranger. How brave that stranger was to face the possibility of a misunderstanding in order to do a kindness. Yet, how much more that $20 figure impacted my life than the concept of twenty billion dollars.

I say all this because I read that recent reports indicate that Bangladesh is better prepared for disaster than many of her neighbours, even though her neighbours may have more to do with the actual causes of those disasters than does Bangladesh. A recent UN report commends Bangladesh on the levels of disaster preparedness. Of course, this progress is something that we all applaud, but it does not diminish the agony suffered by loss of a single life, or the economic upheaval that strikes a family, especially a poor family, when nature (and global warming) does its worst.

And here's the crux of the problem. Bangladesh is particularly susceptible to the types of disasters brought on by global warming. Consider this: Sometime last August, the number of cars on the road worldwide surpassed 1 billion, accounting for 27 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions across the planet.

By driving my children to a ballpark a mere two kilometres away, then, am I ultimately contributing to an impending disaster halfway around the world? Or am I overstating my responsibility?

Life teaches lessons of independence and interdependence. We live on a sheet of rice paper and our footsteps, no matter how faint, do mar the surface. Each tiny indentation of foot upon sand, the micropressure of each undulation of a single toeprint, compacts the sand. Multiply this by ten toes and seven billion pairs of feet, and it is clear that we humans have the power to make the valleys low, and to blaze the trails that the tornadoes can follow.

In 2009, The World Bank generated a climate change "hit list", and on that list, Bangladesh is the most likely nation to suffer a disaster due to flooding, second most likely to be hit by a devastating storm, and tenth most likely to lose coastal areas due to flooding. Overall, your country is the Asian nation most likely to be adversely affected by climate change. Bangladesh has met the challenges of natural disaster with realism and resiliency.

But challenges remain.

According to a recent report (March 29, 2012), Bangladesh still needs to build about 2,000 more cyclone shelters and needs to create a more cohesive program for dealing with the crumbling of coastal embankments.

Nevertheless, Bangladesh has been identified as the world leader in disaster risk reduction. This was the conclusion of a recent speech by Matthias Anderegg, the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Coordinator South Asia. As I read the report, I could imagine, not the emerging demographics and the threat of potential disaster, but the story of a single Bangladeshi family.

I imagine that this family has resettled from the countryside to Dhaka. This family manages to scrape out a living and achieve a lower-middle class status through hard work and some luck. Then comes an earthquake, or a flood, or even a motor vehicle accident.

In an urban area, this family is now faced with a loss of income from which it cannot recover the way a family might be able to recover via sustenance farming in a rural area. How do its members survive, especially if the disaster is so widespread that the population affected is so vast that resources are unavailable to adequately help the entire population?

Angregg recommends that Bangladeshis must work together to "to get involved, work together, and unite in making Bangladesh a strong, resilient and disaster-ready nation." Good words, but what does this ultimately mean? Is Mr. Andregg suggesting more urban planning? Is he calling for funds to retrofit older buildings against the possibility of earthquake?

Or does mitigating disaster mean countering the causes of urbanization? A 2010 report listed Dhaka as the earth's fastest growing mega city. By 2025, the population of Dhaka is predicted to reach 20 million. 20 million! What does that number mean? I really don't know. I can't imagine it. What can Bangladesh do to prepare for a natural disaster that hits a mega city like Dhaka? I don't know the answer to that question either. I suspect Mr. Andregg doesn't quite know either.

The solution may be to change the narrative. It may be to examine the lives of the disenfranchised masses that move to the city for a chance at a better life, and to understand their individual stories, their dreams and motivations. To become interested in them, the way we are interested in celebrities. I am amazed that rap star Jay Z and Beyonce's child "Blue" received over 1.5 million dollars in gifts when she was born. Oprah Winfrey gave the privileged child a lifetime supply of reading material. Why are we obsessed with entertainers' private lives, when "real people" can pass so easily under our radar?

I am only a writer, and as such, I can only use my words. But perhaps, if we call upon the writers, the filmmakers and the musicians of the world to tell the story of one person — not 20 million, we will finally grasp the reality of our shared humanity.

Only then, when we can parse the single digits from the strings of zeroes, assign them a face and a story, will we be willing to "get together, to get involved, and to unite" to make this a resilient, strong, and disaster-ready world.

—————————–
Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient. His most recent book, "Learning Little Hawk's Way of Storytelling", teaches the native art of oral tradition storytelling.