5th September 2022 – An International Meeting on Earthquake Emergency Management is currently held from 5 to 9 September in Grand Hyatt Hotel, Nusa Dua Bali. The meeting talks about the management of the situation post-earthquake with countries from all across Asia-Pacific attending. Delegates attending are from the United States of America, Australia, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Fiji, Pakistan, Philipines, South Korea, Samoa, Sri Lanka, Mongolia and Canada.
There are also other national agencies that attend the meeting, such as BNPB (The National Agency for Disaster Countermeasures), TNI (Indonesia National Armed Forces), Polri Indonesian National Polic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other stakeholders.
This meeting is called the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group Asia-Pacific (INSARAG) Regional Earthquake Response Exercise (AP ERE) 2022.
Indonesia sits on top of “the ring of fire”, which results in being prone to various scales of earthquakes. Disaster usually resulting an aftereffect that not most people know how to handle it. An example is people going missing due to either being trapped under the wreckage or separated from their families during the evacuation.
BASARNAS (The National Search and Rescue Agency), which acts as a leading sector of search and rescue in this country, organises this event. It aims to upgrade its capability and competency in handling the situation post-disaster. Other than that, it also intends to strengthen cooperation among similar organisations across the countries in the Asia Pacific.
Indonesia has 2 disaster management agencies which are known as BASARNAS and BNPB (The National Agency for Disaster Countermeasures). BASARNAS’s work is to compile and establish norms, standards, procedures, criteria as well as licensing requirements and procedures in the implementation of search and rescue. Meanwhile, BNPB works to provide guidelines and directions for disaster management efforts that include disaster prevention, handling of disaster emergencies, rehabilitation, and reconstruction in a fair and equal manner.
