Just weeks before a major earthquake rocked Haiti, a British disaster committee released a report noting the lessons learned in rebuilding after a massive tsunami destroyed large swaths of coastline around the Indian Ocean five years ago, reports CNN. The report, from Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), said there are lessons from the post-tsunami rebuilding that can be used in Haiti, but there are many differences in the situations. While the tsunami was unprecedented as a massive natural disaster, the interior of Indonesia and Thailand were largely unaffected and their governments were left intact. Many of Haiti’s governmental offices and buildings were destroyed in the earthquake, and the Haitian government structure itself was fragile even before the temblor hit. The aftermath of the 2004 tsunami also brought another change in relief efforts. While the Haiti global aid response has been criticized in some quarters, a new relief system will make the response to the Haitian earthquake more rapid than that of the 2004 tsunami.
