Ghana’s Face of Disaster Response

Kofi Portuphy Talks to ADF About His Nation’s Accomplishments and Challenges in Emergency Management

Story by ADF STAFF, photo by SENIOR MASTER SGT. DAVID H. LIPP/NORTH DAKOTA AIR NATIONAL GUARD

Kofi Portuphy is national coordinator of Ghana’s National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO). He spoke with ADF in September 2013 about disasters that affect his country, how NADMO is building capacity to respond to them, and the country’s new Emergency Operations Center. The following is an edited compilation of his remarks.

On the Kinds of Disasters Most Common to Ghana
The types of disasters include floods and fires. Then we have geological disasters, we have pest and insect infestation disasters. We have pandemic influenza, we have epidemics, then we also have man-made disasters: nuclear disasters, radiological disasters and so on.

On How Ghana Responds to These Disasters
We have identified these hazards, we have national, technical committees on these hazards, and we’ve drawn the national hazard mapping for all these types of disasters. We have also drawn national disaster management plans, and we have the National Disaster Management Committee chaired by the minister of the interior. We have regional disaster management committees, chaired by regional ministers. We have district disaster manager committees chaired by district chief executives.

One we are battling with presently are floods. As I am speaking to you, there are two districts in the northern region of Ghana that are in the rainy season, in the peak of their season, that have 10,000 of our nationals displaced by floods. We are preparing for major flooding caused by release of excess water trapped in the Bagre Dam in our neighbor, Burkina Faso, where they have heavy, heavy rains. They have indicated to us that by the 23rd of September 2013 they will be spilling water, if the rainfall still continues or persists. Well, what we have done in the path is to map out the tributaries and distributaries of the main river, the Volta River, and we know the number of communities in the region that are concerned. We have 30 communities that will be impacted upon very seriously when dam spillage takes place. We know that over 200,000 of our nationals in the Upper East Region will be displaced or impacted upon. And part of our preparedness plan, having mapped out the vulnerable groups, we have plans to evacuate them in the emergency. We will do public education and sensitization programs for them.

On Responding to the Shopping Mall Collapse and Airport Crash of 2012 [In November 2012, a six-story shopping center collapsed in Accra, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens more. In June 2012, a Nigerian cargo jet overshot the runway at Accra’s Kotoka International Airport and slammed into a minivan and another vehicle, killing 10 people.]

In the case of the airplane crash, we are fortunate that the British defense forces, the U.S. National Guard, the U.S. Africa Command — AFRICOM — all had organized a series of trainings for us. So the response was quick, we took control of the situation, and took the survivors, including the pilots, to the hospital. The military hospital in Accra is a one-minute drive from the scene. So it was not a big challenge for us, because of our degree of preparedness. If you go to the shopping mall collapse, it offered us a lot of challenges. It put our standard operating procedures to a test. And that’s helped us revive our standard operating measures because, for example, people were trapped and were rescued under the rubble. Our law enables us to requisition from private companies and individuals, and so on. We wanted to do that, and people were willing to offer their equipment. And that remarkably contributed to our success.
People were willing to donate to support our activity. And I was cheered because the Ghanaian press were up to the challenge. They covered minute to minute of our activities and exposed our weaknesses to the public, our needs, our requirements, and the public responded in very, very impressive ways.

On How the Ghanaian Military Helps With Disaster Response
By law we are required as NADMO to coordinate all agencies in this country that have something to do with disaster management — preparedness, mitigation, emergency response, recovery, rehabilitation — and we have engaged the military for so many years now in terms of preparing and supporting. In the past we’ve had the Air Force to, within their challenges and constraints, fly aircraft that are not suitable at all for surveillance [to monitor] flood levels. And I did a lot of these flights myself with them. It has been very, very successful. They also help us move emergency equipment.

In the subregion of West Africa, we’ve had conflicts in Sierra Leone, in Liberia, in Mali, in Niger, around the subregion. And we go then, and while [the Armed Forces] are providing security, we are looking for the internally displaced persons from those countries who are Ghanaians, and a lot of times who are foreign nationals. A lot evacuated from Liberia, for instance — all nationals — with our national shipping line, the Black Star Line, in 1989-90 when the Liberia war broke out. And out of that we brought in a lot of foreign nationals, handed them over to their embassies, and they flew them away home. I mean the Ghana Armed Forces, the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Immigration Service. They provide this kind of support.

On Ghana’s New National Emergency Operations Centre
You know this Emergency Operations Centre is my dream. It is my personal dream for Ghana. And my visit to North Dakota in the United States of America reinforced this belief a few years ago. And looking at how the work of the operations center coordinates emergencies in the U.S., I was resolved that, no matter what it takes, I shall grant that Ghana commit to agree, and the government agreed. And so within the last two years we have put a four-floor structure in place. And we have now what we call the NADMO National Emergency Operations Centre. And once we have been in the structure, U.S. AFRICOM, the North Dakota National Guard supported us with capacity-building programs for our Ghanaian forces, for the Ghanaian Immigration Service, for local organizations like the Ghana Red Cross Society and the U.N. system organizations, in terms of managing disasters.

On Training at the Emergency Operations Centre
We have the Web Emergency Operations Centre training — how to run and maintain the Web EOC. We have the Ghana Armed Forces — the Air Force, the Ghana Army, the Ghana Navy. The representatives who have managed and run the center are being trained now. That is not only for the Web Emergency Operations Centre, but also for GIS [geographic information systems] in terms of emergency management. Then we have the health emergency training program.

On How NADMO Must Improve Its Disaster Management Capabilities
In fact, the major area is equipment, in terms of protective clothing and equipment for response. We are very low on that one. And I can say for sure that with the training that is running for us now, we are building into our NADMO system and collaborative partners a lot of expertise, a lot of knowledge, which we need. So our human resource capacity is being built nationally. But in terms of emergency response, our partners need to be equipped. NADMO itself needs to be equipped. And that is an area where we’ll need a lot of support.