Responding to earthquakes 2008: learning from earthquake relief and recovery operations

This briefing paper provides a distillation of the learning from thirty years of humanitarian response to earthquakes, looking at preparedness, relief and recovery. The paper is intended for operational decision-makers and relief programme managers working in the response to such sudden-onset natural disasters.

Disaster-risk reduction is a long-term investment. The immediate post-disaster context provides fertile ground for planting the seeds of risk- reduction strategies. However, these strategies must reflect the full range of hazards and risks, rather than focusing on just one of them. The time for introducing a more hazard-aware approach is limited, and this must be done from the start rather than as a later add-on.