The extreme rains that hit the north coast of São Paulo last Carnival, with landslides, flooding and isolated neighborhoods due to the interdiction of access roads, highlighted the work of the Civil Defense and the efforts that this body needs to make to save lives and reduce damage. But a survey showed that the country’s municipal civil defenses face a lack of funds, personnel and structure.
Responsible for mapping risk areas, preventing and containing environmental disasters, municipal civil defenses must alert and advise the population. However, in 67% of these agencies, the lack of resources is the main obstacle to carrying out the work (26% corresponds to lack of money; 22% of staff and 19% of equipment).
Based on a questionnaire applied in 1,993 cities that participated in the Municipal Research in Protection and Civil Defense 72% of the municipalities answered that they did not have their own budget for the area, not counting on money from other secretariats or, sometimes, not even from the city hall itself.
Data is in the article Federal Public Funds and Implementation of the National Civil Defense and Protection Policy in Brazilpublished on Senate Legislative Information Magazine and signed by lawyers Fernanda Damacena and Luiz Felipe da Fonseca Pereira and researchers Renato Eliseu Costa, doctoral candidate in Public Policy at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), and Victor Marchezini of the National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters (Cemaden).
The report of Brazil Agency spoke with Victor Marchezini, who is currently doing his postdoctoral work at the Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado-Boulder, USA, with support from the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).
For the researcher, what was most surprising in the survey was the lack of its own budget for municipal civil defenses. “This implies, for example, the planning of preventive actions with the communities, even not having fuel or a vehicle to go to the communities to carry out educational actions, prevention or even verification of areas considered at risk of flooding or landslides”, pointed out the researcher, who works since 2004 in the area of sociology of disasters, with a view to the involvement of local communities in prevention.
In the researcher’s opinion, the problem is not just for municipalities. “In many cases, lack of support from state and federal governments to help with a budget to structure these municipal civil defenses. There are many training actions by the federal government, but there is a lack of a national plan to help structure them. It’s a cascade effect, for example, if you don’t have a well-structured civil defense, it will imply the lack of creation of community centers of civil defense. The research also ended up revealing this, that there are few community centers for civil defense”.
Human resources and structure
Municipal civil defense agents pointed to the high turnover in positions as the main factor behind the reduction of disaster risk, combined with precarious working conditions, lack of training and unclear responsibilities in risk management. Some bodies reported that they only have one or two employees available for work and, as for physical space, 65% of civil defense departments share it with another department.
“More than 50% of civil defense teams in Brazil have one to two people on the team and even accumulate functions in other secretariats. Often, this team is made up of people with political appointments, and every election there is a new team. With that, the investment made in training these civil defense agents has to be done again, this is a symptom of this crisis in the system”, warned Marchezini.
In the study, the researchers point out that the lack of definition of the roles of the actors involved in risk management compromises governance, reinforcing the importance of professionalizing the area. In response to this point, last year, the Ministry of Labor included the civil protection and defense agent in the Brazilian Classification of Occupations (CBO), being the first step towards the recognition and qualification of the profession.
Assignments
The municipal civil defense department is responsible for risk and disaster management, attributions ranging from the analysis and monitoring of risk areas, with prevention and mitigation actions, to assistance and action in recovery projects. O National Civil Protection and Defense System (Sinpdec) gathers all competencies for managing risks and disasters and must emphasize prevention.
In case of rain, Cemaden issues a statement with a diagnosis for the national civil defense to forward to the state and/or municipal authorities. Civil defense, in turn, sends messages to the local population warning of forecast rains, floods and landslides. In some cities there are sirens installed for the alert.
Generally, among the problems of this communication system are the number of people registered in the alert, which can be low, and the texts of the SMS messages, generic for a region and even for the type of event foreseen.
In the capacity diagnosis survey, 25% of the agencies responded using SMS to communicate alerts. For other types of communication, 56% responded using social networks (Facebook, Instagram) and 43% messaging apps (WhatsApp, Telegram).
good examples
For the researcher, municipal civil defenses can also develop various actions for the prevention and mitigation of climate disasters. He points out that both communication and the involvement of the population can be the differentials to save lives in cases of disasters.
Marchezini mentions two examples: one of them is from the Civil Defense of Recife, with the Parceria Program. “It involves actions to mitigate the risk of landslides on the slopes of Recife, in partnership with the civil defense, engineering staff and local residents, in order to try to reduce the risk of landslides on the slope, so that it does not deteriorate with each rainy season. . Allied to this, there is also the formation of community centers of civil defense by the body in Recife”.
The researcher cites as an example of long-term investment the Civil Defense of the city of Rio de Janeiro. “Many years ago [a Defesa Civil] has been working with communities on alert systems. The community is involved not only to receive an SMS alert, but in every stage of the system’s planning: in the participatory mapping of risks in the neighborhood, how to define an escape route, safe points and even in the identification of community leaders who can help coordinate these actions and work together with the neighborhood schools”.
Marchezini warns of the need for a program to create and strengthen municipal alert and alarm systems. “It is not just investing in an observational network of rain gauges and radars, but also in training municipalities so that they themselves can strengthen these municipal systems at the time of an emergency, since those who will respond in the first moment are always the residents and then the agencies locations. This strengthening of local capacity is very important”, he highlighted.
