Annual Report Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance Agency for International Development Washington, DC 20523 Contents Introduction ii Benin Expelled Persons U.S.Foreign Disaster Assistance FY 1985136 Botswana Drought Summary by Fiscal Year -- 140 Burkina Faso Drought/Food Shortage-- Cape Verde Storm___ Chad Drought Comoros Cyclone Ethiopia Drought Lesotho Floods Mali Epidemic Mali Drought Mauritania Drought Mozambique Drought Mozambique Floods Mozambique Storm Niger Drought Nigeria Medical Emergency/Civil Strife-- Somalia Epidemic Somalia Accident- Sudan Drought/Famine- Uganda Civil Strife Bangladesh Cyclone 90 Burma Fire 95 Fiji Cyclones 96 India Accident 99 Philippines Typhoon 103 Solomon Islands Cyclone 105 Vanuatu Cyclones 106 United Kingdom Fire 108 Argentina Earthquake 111 Bolivia Accident 113 Chile Earthquake 114 Ecuador Bushfire 120 Honduras Displaced Persons 122 Mexico Accident- 123 Mexico Earthquake 125 Panama Floods 134 Peru Landslide 134 Non-declared Disasters 135 A Year of Crisis and Response iscal year 1985 was one of the worst years devastating disasters, Congress may make special in OFDA's 20-year history in terms of the supplemental appropriations .to address specific number of people killed and affected by emergency relief needs. In FY 1985, Congress ap- disasters. Drought and famine ravaged propriated $137.5 million to alleviate human suf- two-thirds of the African continent, causing the fering due to the drought affecting the African deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and continent. As a result of this appropriation, the threatening the lives of millions more. The world's USG spent more money on emergency assistance worst industrial accident occurred in the town of to disaster victims in foreign countries than ever Bhopal, India, when a toxic gas leaked from a before. Number of People Killed by Declared Disasters (FY 1980-85)' FY80 Accidents 113 Droughts NA Earthquakes 4 69 Epidemics 485 Floods 5 1 Severe Storms 338 Volcanic Eruptions 0 TOTAL 1,456 10,154 3,551 4,166 3,376 427,073 'Includes data on all non-U.S.disasters to which the USG provided assistance Source: Disaster History: Significant Data on Major Disasters Worldwide 1900-1985, OFDA, Washington, D.C. 1985. pesticide manufacturing plant and killed an esti- When a natural or manmade calamity strikes a mated twenty-five hundred people. In Mexico, two foreign country, the U.S. Ambassador on the high-magnitude earthquakes caused billions of scene may move to provide USG assistance by dollars worth of property damage and claimed the declaring a state of disaster. The Ambassador is lives of thousands. Coordinating the U.S. Govern- authorized to spend up to $25,000 immediately; ment's (USG) relief response to these and other additional relief expenditures are approved and foreign disasters is the mandate of the Office of coordinated by the Office of U.S. Foreign Disas- U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, a component of ter Assistance. The Director of OFDA reports di- the Agency for International Development (A.I.D.). rectly to the A.I.D. Administrator, who is the The U.S. Government's foreign disaster assist- President's designated special coordinator for in- ance program was established in 1964 under the ternational disaster assistance. OFDAfs three authorization of the Foreign Assistance Act of geographic divisions - Africa and Europe, Asia 1961. Funds to provide such assistance are appro- and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Carib- priated annually by Congress to the International bean - provide country-specific expertise to re- Disaster Assistance (IDA) account to be used for spond to relief and preparedness needs in each disaster relief and rehabilitation, early warning, region. and preparedness. In response to exceptionally Africa ong before the international news media The Task Force on the African Famine (TFAF) alerted the world to the mass starvation brought together staff from OFDA1s Africa and in Ethiopia and other countries, the USG Europe division, A.I.D.'s Africa Bureau and Of- was supplying food and other emer- fice of Food for Peace, as well as representatives gency relief to the most severely affected from the Departments of State, Defense, Agri- drought-stricken countries in the continent (see culture, Health and Human Services, and Trans- OFDA Annual Report FY 1984). However, as the portation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric magnitude of the emergency grew, the United Administration (NOAA), the Ofice of Manage- States Government formed an interagency task ment and Budget (OMB), and the National Se- force to coordinate U.S. assistance. Julius Becton, curity Council. Representatives from these key Director of OFDA (1984-85), was appointed to resource groups played a pivotal role in coordi- head the task force at its inception in early Oc- nating one of the largest emergency relief pro- tober 1984. grams in our history. Task Force members traveled to several of the most affected countries to meet with host government officials, coordi- nate with international donors, and evaluate USG-sponsored relief projects. Nutritional, logis- tical, and hydrological assessments were also conducted by TFAF members. To insure that all USG relief projects were cost effective and food and assistance were reaching the most needy, TFAF members worked closely with representa- tives of the private voluntary organizations that implemented these projects. American PVOs dis- tributed over $182 million in food and other sup- plies for the USG, in addition to more than $69 million in assistance from their own resources. The drought in Africa was a crisis of enormous complexity and it presented an overwhelming number of problems and constraints to the disas- ter relief effort. Twenty countries in Africa were af- flicted by drought. Of these at least ten were seriously affected by food shortages and poor health situations. Low per capita incomes and standards of living and high population growth rates were shared characteristics of the drought- affected countries. However, drought was not the only cause of the food shortages that afflicted these countries; human activities also contributed to the disastrous situation. Environmental degra- dation, deforestation, and overexploitation of nat- ural resources in some countries accelerated desertificat ion, threatened domestic food produc- tion, and contributed to a developing reliance on foreign food imports. In some cases, ill-conceived host government programs and policies also con- tributed to the problem. Food shortages in the four most critically affected countries - Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, and Mozambique - were exacer- AID Adminislrator Peter * McPherson accol vpanying food deliv wies to Eth iopi and !Sudan. bated by civil strife, which inhibited food produc- Providing relief assistance to countries affected by tion, displaced thousands, and hampered food disasters is just one of OFDA's functions under its deliveries to affected regions. Deteriorating or ex- mandate from the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. tremely limited national infrastructures - ports, OFDA is also involved in disaster preparedness ac- airports, railroads, and road networks - also tivities in several disaster-prone countries. Disas- served as obstacles to delivering food and relief ter preparedness covers a wide array of projects in supplies to affected populations. Political, na- disaster early warning, mitigation, technical as- tional, and ethnic group hostilities in some coun- sistance, monitoring, planning, and training. Since tries stymied effective relief coordination. Despite 1979 OFDA has supported an agroclimatic early these frustrations, the lives of millions of people warning assessment project in sub-Saharan Af- were saved by the intervention of the various host rican countries developed by NOAA's Climate Im- governments and the international community. pact Assessment Division. Using meteorological and agricultural information derived from satellite The crisis in Africa galvanized the international imagery, crop yield statistics, and precipitation community to respond with a massive relief effort. measurements, NOAA issues monthly climate im- The United Nations created the Office for Emer- pact assessment reports that are used to forecast gency Operations in Africa (OEOA) to coordinate drought and food shortages. h response to a re- international donor assistance to the affected countries of Africa. Perhaps the most positive re- quest from the Government of Ghana, OFDA sent two U.S. Forest Service technicians to work with sult of the crisis was the tremendous outpouring local firefighting committees in finding new ways of support from people all over of the world. Pri- to combat bush fires. 'In FY 1985,'OFDA sent vate voluntary organizations reported substantial participants to a pesticide management works hop increases in charitable contributions which they in Nairobi, Kenya, a disaster preparedness semi- directed to relief programs in the affected coun- nar in Tunisia, and a conference on environmental tries. In addition to an increase in contributions to problems in Africa held at The Hague, in the the regular international private voluntary organi- Netherlands. zations, several spontaneous fund-raising efforts were organized to aid victims of drought in Af- rica. Two of the most successful were the Live Aid/Band Aid rock concert broadcast worldwide and a recording produced by USA for Africa. Asia and the Pacific Here in the United States, the U.S. Congress moved swiftly to appropriate additional funds