NGO and Community-Oriented Disaster Response: Lessons from the Humanitarian Response to the Asian Tsunami in India and the Jogyakarta Earthquake in Indonesia

In this era, where disasters are recognized as human phenomena and are linked to preexisting vulnerabilities and risk, disaster risk reduction is seen as an integral part of disaster management, in part to get away from the reactive nature of many (if not most) disaster responses. In reality, however, every disaster is different and it is hard to manage for every risk, so an effective disaster response is an essential and ongoing component of disaster risk management. Having a strong disaster response strategy can drastically reduce the number of lives lost and repair a damaged infrastructure more quickly, speeding a community’s return to everyday life.