Clarity surrounding the roles and responsibilities of those involved in flood operations (during the intial response phase but equally during the recovery process) is important before any floods occur. For example, the recent floods in the UK showed that whilst the Coast Guard has responsibility for rescuing those at sea, there is no overall policy on who/which organisation has responsibility for rescue and evacuation by boat in the event of flooding. The fire and rescue services in the UK generally have boats but their role is to rescue people falling into ponds etc and they don't have responsibility for evacuation of people from their flooded homes/offices etc. (although they frequently do undertake this task).

Just for information purposes, WFP's EFSA (Emergency Food Security Handbook) has some quite interesting tables in Annexe A1 which define the general effects of different disasters including:
possible secondary disasters;
food availability and markets;
household food access;
food utilisation;
nutrition and health;
contextual factors.
The tables include the effects of cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes, seasonal floods, flash floods and tsunami (as well as population displacement which may come about because of a flood disaster).

It is imperative that for implementing participatory approach in flood disaster management and to make it effective, awareness about any disaster event and the role of all concerned should be clearly understood. For this purpose the government, NGOs and others concerned should undertake concerted efforts.

What are the key points that you would highlight as lessons? To contribute, just click on the "comment" link in the box above.

We appreciate your interest on the lessons from flood operations paper and would like to still encourage you to contribute suggestions and insights. Our focus is on lessons that will really help operational decision-makers and relief/recovery programme managers to better manage relief and recovery activities. To comment on any of the topics mentioned in the posts above, just click on the "comment" link in the box above. To start a new topic create a new user account using the links at the bottom right.