Early Warning SMS Warning Initiative Save Lives

Twenty-five year-old mother Tran Thi Muoi was woken up by the noise of violent winds blowing away the roof of her house at midnight. Inside the house, the water, brought in by heavy rain, rose quickly. Muoi held up her son in a panic. "The storm came all of a sudden. We were not informed of or warned about it. We didn't have enough time to do anything. I took my son to the attic," she said.

If Vietnam's disaster-prone regions had a good warning system in place in 2009, Muoi wouldn't have had to risk her life and the life of her son.

Save the Children implemented the USAID-funded project - "Increasing Emergency Preparedness and Resilience of Vulnerable Coastal Communities in Central Vietnam" in Da Nang and Thua Thien Hue povinces in 2011-2012. The project aimed to equip 24 coastal communities, including children and local government agencies, with necessary knowledge of preparedness for disasters, provide life-saving equipments and advocate for DRR management policies in the coastal region.

The SMS (text) early warning system, as part of this disaster risk reduction project, allows for the Provincial Committees for Flood and Storm Control to send early warning SMSes directly to people's mobile phones. 

With the support from local telecommunications suppliers, a call centre was established in Da Nang city to provide value-added services such as customised SMS, typical call centre services, using bandwidth purchased from the key telecommunications companies such as Vinaphone and Viettel. The customised SMS service is then used to disseminate early warning through mobile phones. Through this system, early warning and weather information are delivered directly from the Provincial Committees for Flood and Storm Control to end users' mobile device, instead of the traditional channels.

It was the Ketsana Cyclone that hit the central region of Vietnam in September 2009, affecting three million people. The lack of early warning and preparation resulted in huge human and material losses. Hundreds of families were isolated, thousands of them lost productive assets and their houses were severely damaged, some had lost their houses completely. In Nam Yen village of Da Nang city, Muoi's and 12 other families were among them.

The situation has changed a lot since then. Now, community members are given timely notice to prepare for relocation or essential commodities if a possible storm or typhoon arrives. Now that the Da Nang province has seen success, this SMS-based early warning system can be made available for other provinces to use if necessary.

The Director of Da Nang Disaster Management Centre, Hoang Thanh Hoa, said:

"Previously, it took at least a half day to get a warning of disaster reached to the community members in different locations with continuous phone calls and by post. With the SMS system, we can dispart information up to 60 receivers at once.

This worked very well in the light of Bopha storm in 2012, all the residents living on the coastal line of Da Nang were well informed of the storm. 200,000 people in the most vulnerable area had enough time to prepare for relocation."

Now, a total population of 202,060 living in the coastal towns of Thua Thien Hue and Da Nang provinces have access to to all or a combination of disaster preparedness services, including life-saving equipment, DRR trainings and the early warning system.

The project has been a massive success and Save the Children was recently awarded a Certificate of Merits by Da Nang People’s Committee for its valuable contribution to the city’s social development.