We are dying more from ‘responses’ than disasters

When it comes to the business of news, disasters are always assured of front page space or primetime on TV. Because of how precious human life is, a disaster that claims lives always gets our attention. In a short while voices merge to condemn, condole, or simply narrate the events that led to the disaster. The most common disasters in this region have been floods, landslides, fires and nasty road accidents. They have become so common that some countries even have ministries for disaster preparedness. I cannot vouch for how prepared these ministries are beyond registering the victims and offering blankets and plastic plates to the displaced. Just a few weeks back the region’s biggest airport went up in flames. I woke up to live images of the inferno beaming on television. At one point images of Kenyan military personnel carrying buckets to fetch water were made public. On Thursday a bus veered off the road and rolled killing 41 people and injuring more than 30 others in Narok, Kenya. The pictures of the wreckage were not ones you would want to look at again. But let us look at the response to these two situations. When the airport caught fire, President Uhuru Kenyatta arrived at the scene and with the bus accident he issued a stern warning to the owners of passenger service vehicles. The Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Eng. Michael Kamau also went on TV and defended the use of buckets to put out the fire at an international airport. Concerning the bus accident in Narok, Eng. Kamau said the transport ministry would come up with a law to ensure that buses are not allowed to carry passengers at night. A few months back passengers from Kigali headed to Kampala were robbed at night and Uganda’s police chief suggested that armed policemen would be moving with passengers in the bus. An accident is an accident what counts most is how we respond to it. If we are going to have knee-jerk resolutions every time we have these cases then we are wasting everybody’s time (and life). If a an accident at night means banning travel at night, what will happen when another bus is involved in an accident during the day? In fact there have been worse accidents during the day than the night for example at the sharp corners of Kabale in western Uganda. The fact that vehicles are made with headlights is enough proof that the problem is not night travel. The problem is simply corruption. It is corruption that allows faulty buses that are over loaded and over speeding on our roads. A friend of mine once described these buses as flying coffins and indeed they often are. Every time there is a nasty accident that claims many lives, politicians make declarations and the police officials will embark on the usual crackdowns that never last longer than two weeks before everything returns to normal. The continued failure to enact rules and implement them to the letter is what causes road carnage. In Rwanda where the traffic police is known to be almost incorruptible chances of an old overloaded vehicle speeding off are so minimal. It is also bad enough that when an accident happens, the first ‘rescuers’ often come to steal from the victims. Then others come to just look on. We need to develop a culture that makes it possible for lives to be saved in such circumstances. We have heard so many times of a fire or accident where police or fire brigade trucks take forever to arrive. Sometimes they arrive without the necessary equipment or run out of water. I always cringe inside when I see an injured accident victim (especially in Kampala) being placed on the hard metallic floor of a police pickup truck and rushed to hospital on what are often bumpy potholed roads. And why do we always allow people to walk all over a crime or accident scene and then have people filling our TV screens talking about how investigations are going to be done. We have just seen all the evidence trashed or stolen and you are telling us about an investigation? The Red Cross societies and probably units of the army and police should be on hand to handle disaster areas. It is always nice to see the army taking charge of a situation and the only ones allowed to access disaster scenes in order to streamline rescue efforts. With news that soon people will be able to use national IDs to cross EAC borders, the talk of banning night travel in Kenya is a step in the wrong direction given how many people are now used to night travel from Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Blog: www.ssenyonga.wordpress.comTwitter: @ssojo81