General discussion

MR A. HAYES, Ove Arup & Partners, UK I am a member of the Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief (REDR) and have had three secondments to provide emergency water supplies to refugee camps: three months in Northern Somalia in 1981-82, four months in Uganda in

1983 and three months in Eastern Sudan in 1985. I was seconded to the Save the Children Fund (SCF) in Somalia and Uganda and to Oxfam in the Sudan.

The real tragedy of disasters is the world's inability to prevent them from happening in the first place and to deal with them efficiently when they have happened. In the field the problem is usually tackled by voluntary agencies who often rely on highly motivated although sometimes inexperienced people.