Emergency sanitation.... Permanent or temp?

[afshin]

Having the recent Haiti Tsunami and the Pakistan's flooding in mind,

1) What would be the ideal sanitation system when the existing infrastructure is damaged and residents are displaced?

2) How such a system can be linked with the future system rather than being left separated and unused?

3) In order to minimise the damage, to a currently under development sanitation system for high risk areas with non/improper sanitation system and infrastructure, what would be the ideal implementation?

[hui]

What do the people in these situations actually do? What do they think would be a good solution?

[claudia]

Why do these people (developing countries) have to figure it out? where are the Engineers? If a disaster happens in London, we don't have to sit down and think how to deal with our solid waste, do we?

So why do they have to?

[yin]

London doesn't really get earthquakes or major floods (thanks to the barrier). But I assume that we would have to consider where the waste goes if the infrastructure is damaged. In-fact when the sewer system does flood - the waste management issue is still a problem.

It's interesting to consider communities that never had to consider it before (e.g. places of open defecation), because in a refugee camp-environment it becomes more of an issue because the density of the camp combined with the spread of human waste can pose a major health risk which didn't exist before.

I wonder how often it is that these refugee camps become permanent settlements?

[claudia]

When you say "London... we would have to consider where the waste goes..." Who is we? Is it the whole community or is it the engineers??

[yin]

I suppose it's the government/local council's responsibility, which is then contracted to engineering firms. The residents of London are responsible for paying taxes so that they don't have to deal with it themselves. However, there will be residents of London who are paid to deal with it, the engineers, the labourers, the sewage maintenance people. Essentially the people dealing with it are part of the community, just like the baker, or farmer are.

"The Engineers" are hardly ever completely separate from the community itself. In developing countries it's more common for foreign engineers to be involved in local development, but even then, in the long term there needs to be a system in place for maintenance and repair. There will always be somebody who has to consider where the waste goes.

[afshin]

Regarding to Q1, I think, during the very early stages of the relief, ie. just after the disaster, we can not really blame the NGOs for conducting an unthoughtful strategy or applying an inappropriate technology. Because, after any disaster as such the main aim and the priority is to save lives by rescuing the trapped ones and moving the rescued ones to a safer place. in a case of an earthquake, also to prepare for the post quakes which can usually be as disastrous as the first quake.

So, we don't count that phase as relief at all, but rescue. I assume we can define the relief phase as when the situations gets slightly better and affected people are sheltered.

In that situation, the NGOs and Red Cross bodies are already playing a good role by providing the "emergency response units" which to my understanding, this is the best way of dealing with the situation. because, if you put yourself in that situation as an organisation you don't want to lend your trained team to build unnecessary toilet blocks or dig for latrines.

As we are making progress through the project, there are ideas of considering other options to deal with the situation in right from a very early stage. I think having the situation discussed as above we should not recommend any changes to be made to the relief phase as defined. Unless we have different definition for the relief phase.

this was only regarding to question 1.