Aid workers drawing on lessons learned during tsunami relief effort

THE effort to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake can draw on lessons learned in other large-scale tragedies, particularly the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed at least 230,000 people across a dozen countries, rescue officials say.

The same scenes of bodies littering the ground, or stacked along roadways in Haiti, are flashbacks to the tsunami devastation, but Bakri Beck, who headed relief activities in Indonesia’s devastated Banda Aceh province – where 167,000 people died from the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami – said saving survivors must remain the priority.

“One of the things that is clearly happening this time around in Haiti... is a focus on trying to apply lessons from previous emergencies,” said Ben Ramalingam, head of Research and Development for London-based Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action. “This time around, there is much more of a focus on what could be done better, what could be learned at the outset.”