Accessing Disaster Areas
Recent natural disasters have emphasized the importance of emergency relief response logistics. One of the most serious problems affecting the modern world is the vulnerability of nations or regions in relation to natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, drought or man-made crises: civil unrest, war, political/tribal disturbance (Pettit and Beresford, 2005). Even though modern technology is often used to predict natural disasters, they are still, often, unpredictable. The most unpredictable disasters are natural disasters and they may occur with little or no warning (Wijkman and Timberlake, 1998). For this reason, they cause major damage because of their unexpected impact and the fact that the population is not prepared for them. This results in those in charge of the relief operation primarily focusing on response rather than preparedness, so the system becomes reactive rather than proactive.
There are various difficulties that can occur during a humanitarian aid operation. One of these is to access disasters which occur in landlocked countries, or landlocked regions of maritime countries, making the logistics of the response operation even more complex as, in the first case, it requires a neighboring state to be involved for transit (Pettit and Beresford, 2005). In the case of disasters in landlocked regions, distance, inaccessibility and difficult terrain form the main challenges (Jennings et al., 2002). A different set of problems arise when a country, faced with the consequences of a natural disaster, is unable either through lack of internal capability, or because the disaster has rendered the authorities unable to respond in any meaningful way, unable to provide the necessary response. In such circumstances reliance on third-party countries becomes a necessity. In the recent past there have been several major earthquakes and two are notable because of the problems outlined above.