SESSION 1

Introduction to Disasters and

Disaster Risk Reduction

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

SESSION OBJECTIVES

At the end of this session children will be able to:

1. Describe how disasters occur.

2. List key factors of vulnerability which make children, their families and communities unsafe in the event of any

disaster.

3. Describe importance of capacities to resist and cope with impact of disasters.

4. Explain simple practices to be adopted for disaster risk reduction.

KEY MESSAGES

1. Disasters can be classiﬁed into two categories Natural and Man

Made.

2. A situation of serious disruption for a short or long time with a

widespread damage to human life, property, day to day facilities

and environment.

3. Disasters occur when Hazard and Vulnerabilities meet.

4. We have capacities to cope with disasters, and increased

capacities help in reducing risks due to disaster.

5. For every disaster we need to learn simple practices to make

ourselves and families safe in the event of disaster.

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

Disasters can be classiﬁed into two categories

Natural and Man Made.

Session Plan

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

In recent past, all of us, across the world, have experienced disasters, which have taught many lessons to human

kind. If we remember, COVID-19 pandemic made everything difﬁcult. There was a lockdown, when schools, roads,

markets were closed. Many people fell sick and they were not able to get beds in the hospitals. There was crisis of

medicines and oxygen availability, and most importantly our parents were not able to go to work. It was a painful

and scary situation for all.



Apart from COVID-19 disaster, there are many other disasters which occur in our society. Floods, Droughts,

Lightning, Earthquake, Tsunami, and Cyclones are natural disasters. And industrial blasts, village/city ﬁres, gas

leakages are the examples of manmade disasters.

Disasters can be classiﬁed into two categories Natural and Man Made.

Case Study: Shirol taluka of Kolhapur district in Maharashtra was affected due to Mega Floods in 2019. In the

interviews with children after six months, they expressed that it was a scary situation. All the elders were running

around to save buffalos and important material at home. We were told that the water will soon recede, but it went

on rising and we had to move on to the terraces of the houses. Our parents were tense and ﬁnally they released the

ropes of Buffalos and left them to swim and survive.

There was water everywhere and ﬁnally NDRF teams came to our village and they took us to taluka schools to take

shelter. There were many people in the school, and many of them were shouting. There was a chaos and everyone

was competing to get food and water. Many of the children, women and men were wearing wet clothes, which got

slowly dried on the body itself. This started etching. From fourth day, many people were complaining of stomach

ache and diarrhea.

There were very few toilets and they were dirty. We didn’t take bath for almost four ﬁve days. Few times elder

people were ﬁghting. On eighth day our family decided to come back to the village, however, when we came back

our house was damaged. We are still scared of going to the camp.

DURATION

MIN

Disaster is a situation of serious disruption for a short or long time with widespread damage to human

life, property, day to day facilities and environment.

DURATION

MIN

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

What is disaster?

We need to remember that any disaster creates serious disruption to

our day to day activities e.g. going to school, playing on grounds.

Disasters also create a situation where we feel unsafe because of chaos

in the communities with fallen buildings, collapsed houses, closure of

markets, scarcity of food and water. In many cases like ﬂoods or

cyclone, NDRF, Police or Home Guards take families to the crowded

camps where people need to survive with whatever food and water is

available. There are limited number of toilets and people fall sick due

to diarrhea, and other ﬂu like infections.

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

How Disasters Occur?

We have learnt in school that for any phenomenon/reaction/incident/experience there is combination of factors

which happen. E.g. If I add one spoon of sugar to one glass of water the water will become sweet. If I add one spoon

of salt to one glass of water it will become salty. Ground rule here to remember is water will not become salty if I

add sugar and in the same way water will not become sweet if I add salt to it. In the same way disasters also happen

due to combination of two speciﬁc factors. Let us learn about it.

Hazard

• There are unusual incidents which happen in environment. E.g. heavy rains, low air pressure belt in sea or earthquake.

• These unusual incidents further have potential to damage life, property and environment. E.g. heavy rains have

potential to create ﬂoods which may damage our houses, roads and crops. Low pressure belt in sea have the potential to

convert itself into cyclone and damage houses. An earthquake below the sea have potential to convert itself into

Tsunami and damage everything near the sea coast.

• This, ﬁrst factor of unusual incidents with potential to damage life, property and environment, is called Hazard.

Vulnerability

• In case of any unusual incidents there are many people in our society who are not able to save themselves, their families

and their properties, and they are shocked due to occurrence of Hazard. E.g.: When Tsunami occurred in south India

many elder men were able to run away from the situation but not children, women and old aged were able to run, and

they were either killed or injured.

• We should remember that Vulnerability is the inability to resist a hazard. It is also important to note that this inability of

person or community to resist a hazard is result of:

 Poverty: Impoverished people don’t have resources to recover, rebuild their houses, repair their farms etc.

 Social Exclusion: This means that few members of society like children, women and old aged have been

excluded from many social privileges, and so they get very little attention at the time of crisis.

 Own Behavior: Many children unnecessarily swim in ﬂooded rivers and then there are cases of drowning.

 A disaster occurs when Hazard is combined with Vulnerability. This means that intensity of Hazard and nature of

vulnerability will decide the scale of disaster.

• More vulnerability in a society means that the impact of any small scale hazard will be bigger.

• This also means that impact of more vulnerability and large scale of Hazard will be biggest.

A disasters occurs when Hazard and Vulnerability meet.

DURATION

MIN

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

In case of any unusual incidents there are many people in our

society who are not able to save themselves, their families

and their properties, and they are shocked due to occurrence

of Hazard.

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

Let us Understand the risk:

Case Study: After the experience of 2019 ﬂoods in Shirol Taluka of Kolhapur district, people realized that they

are living in an environment which has potential for the ﬂoods and they should keep themselves safe from the

disaster. One of the important decisions they took was to follow government early warning and instructions. They

also decided to help each other at the time of disaster and evacuate themselves to the safe places. Before

monsoon they kept all their valuables at a safe place.

In 2021, ﬂoods again came. This time they were bigger than 2019. As soon as they received early warning from

their Gram Panchayats they sent women, children and old aged people to their relatives in other villages and

small towns. Second biggest task they collectively undertook was - they took their buffalos to a safe place

immediately and in some cases they used trucks to transport buffalos to highway which is elevated. Villages were

evacuated in timely manner and this time there were very few families who took shelter in camps. Many of the

families were able to come back to villages sooner than the time they required in 2019. Key learning from this is - if

the community decides, the impact of disaster can be reduced.

We and our families may be living in an environment which has history or potential for a disaster. As many villages did in

Shirol, it is important to understand that every person, family or community has the capacity to resist or cope with the impact

of a disaster. We as children also have capacity to understand the disaster risk, and adolescents also have capacity to

contribute in building culture of safety.

The possible loss, impact which can happen to us, when a hazard meets a vulnerable group of people, is known as Risk. When

we start discussing about past disasters and the places where we feel unsafe, we start understating the risk. And yes, it is

possible to reduce the disaster risk! For that we, our families and communities need to build their capacities to cope, recover

and resist the impact of disasters. Case study of Shirol gives us the same message. Many times our parents, elderly people,

neighbors don’t like us to discuss about disasters but we can start it with our friends and families.

We have capacities to cope with disasters and increased capacities help in reducing risks to disaster.

DURATION

MIN

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

Disaster Risk Reduction is nothing, but a

practice, involving some very simple things

to ensure you and your family are safe in

case of a disaster.

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience Module for Children

Let us learn more about Disaster Risk Reduction

Even after lockdown is over and the cases of COVID-19 are reduced, many children use mask when they are going

to school and travelling in buses. Though cases of COVID-19 are reduced, there are still few people who are

detected with COVID-19. These children understand this risk of getting infected, so they are still following this

simple practice of using masks which reduces possibility of getting infected. Congratulations to all these children

using masks for adopting a new practice which is nothing but disaster risk reduction.

So, Disaster Risk Reduction is nothing, but a practice, involving some very simple things to ensure you and your family are

safe in case of a disaster. Now let us think of what practices can be adopted in case of possible cyclone or ﬂoods. Here are few

examples.

• Listen to the news and understand the risk of ﬂoods and cyclone.

• If we feel that there is a risk of disaster and we need to evacuate from our houses, let us make a bag with dry food items,

water bottle, and yes let us also pack some books and sports material.

• Let us keep all important items at safe places, let us not forget to protect our school bag.

• Let us tell our parents to take important medicines for grand parents.

For every disaster we need to learn simple practices to make ourselves and families safe in case of

disaster.

DURATION

MIN