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On the Dead Sea incident: whom to blame?

Nov 01,2018 - Last updated at Nov 01,2018

Technically, almost all disasters, even recurrent ones, are associated with uncertainty. In some cultures, they are also associated with mystery, especially cultures which continue to believe that disasters represent divine punishment so inescapable that the only response from believers is the passive acceptance of suffering.

Disasters, however, do not come from space or from another alien galaxy. Scientifically, even those disasters which have always been regarded as purely natural and traditionally referred to as “acts of God” have an element of human intervention, and can be investigated with current technologies. Subsequently, in order to identify the causes of disasters, in-depth insight and multiple rounds of investigation are required. In an attempt to investigate who was responsible, shifting the blame becomes a common attitude in our culture, unfortunately. Let us not deny it.

A careful and thorough diagnosis of the Dead Sea disaster reveals a network of different individuals, government officials and parties who were involved, directly or indirectly, in the occurrence of the incident. Systematically, the investigation is made on three different levels; the strategic, tactical/planning and operational. To start with, at the very top strategic level, the government should declare responsibility, specifically the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. The Ministry of Education should declare responsibility for not releasing a very precise, clear, well-documented and widely  distributed strategy for school trips in Jordan. If anyone claims that such a strategy exists then the question remains, why was it not implemented and associated with a legal framework? The Ministry of Public Works and Housing should also declare responsibility for the safety of security of public, touristic and leisure sites in Jordan.

The death toll of the Dead Sea incident reached 21, and the number of those who were injured rose to 35. In a local incident like this one, it is especially odd and surprising, considering all the weather forecasting agencies and news media had been publically and warning people regarding the extreme weather conditions the country was about to witness. From a disaster and emergency management perspective, this is also odd. Ignoring early warning signals that precede potential disasters, which might be the main issue in our case, was part of the mismanagement and denial I am addressing here. Ignoring early warning signals is risky and is likely to escalate the situations. This is where the concerned school should declare its responsibility; in failing to plan for this trip properly.

At an operational level, contracting companies, subcontractors and other contracting organisations and agencies who claimed they executed the relevant projects impeccably, surrounding the area affected by the excessive rainfall, including highways, water drainage systems, support ramparts and safe pedestrian crosswalks, should also be interrogated. Their projects should be assessed in terms of quality and project risk factors, using proper damage assessment techniques and guidelines.

In the end, the question that remains most viable is: Who will compensate the mothers who lost their children. I wonder, extremely sadly, but not hopelessly, because I still do believe in my country. Without a doubt, our civil contingencies act, local authorities and emergency services in Jordan always seek to fulfil their duties to the most perfect level and quality required. However, they do not hold all the responsibility for not being able to respond and cope with the disaster. Before the events of September 11, one of the major factors contributing to the failure in responding to major incidents in the US was the fact that first responders had traditionally been thought of as police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel only, who should be the first on the scene of an emergency and hold all the responsibility for successfully coping with large scale incidents. Subsequently, this thought ended up resulting in a totally passive behavioural response from everybody else, and creating a culture of shifting the blame.

 

The writer is an associate professor of risk management at the Risk Management Department at the American University of Madaba. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times

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