Disaster Management Meeting

Senior Specialist of the National Disaster Management Authority, Brigadier B.K. Khanna (third left), Director, Disaster Management Institute, Bhopal, Rakesh Dubey (second left), Joint Chief Inspector of Factories, S. Raghunathan (left) and Deputy Commissioner of Excise, I. Raghavan (fourth left) at a disaster management meeting held at Coimbatore Collectorate on Tuesday. The objective of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) is conducting mock drills and review meetings in order to have the official machinery in place with the orientation on preparedness and not relief, said Brigadier B.K. Khanna, Senior Specialist of NDMA, here on Tuesday.

After a meeting with the officials from various departments in Coimbatore, Dr. Khanna and Director of the Disaster Management Institute, Bhopal, Rakesh Dubey addressed the media persons. Dr. Khanna said that NDMA was striving to bring in institutional frame work, policies and guidelines for handling disasters and to lessen the sufferings of the victims. The Authority was bringing in institutional setup at the national, state and district level. The objective of the NDMA is to have policies and guidelines will help in improving the nation’s capacity to manage manmade and natural disasters.

NDMA had conducted 21 mock drills last year and was planning to conduct more than 35 mock drills during the current year. Cyclone-related mock disaster drills were earlier conducted at Kancheepuram and Cuddalore districts of Tamil Nadu. After the initial meeting on Tuesday, the NDMA will have a “table top” exercise on July 8 to check the preparedness and finalise the role of every department. On July 25, a disaster in a chemical industry will be enacted at the LPG refilling plant of the Bharat Petroleum Corporation in the City. Disaster Management Institute at Bhopal is the nodal agency for handling chemical industry disasters.

Dr.Khanna said that the objective of the mock drill is to fine tune the performance of every department and identify the gaps and initiate remedial measures. The plans and experiences gained in every mock drill will help in improving the preparedness of the machinery, he said. Mock drills will explain the utilisation or the lack of utilisation of resources in the event of a disaster thus helping the machinery to improve, he added. Mock drills are aimed at bringing in a culture of preparedness and to educate the community i.e, the first responders in any disaster, he pointed out. Public should be educated to keep ready food, drinking water and bare essentials for survival while fleeing from a scene of disaster. Citing a world bank report, Mr.Khanna said that every US dollar spent on preparedness is estimated to be equivalent to 40 US dollars saved in a disaster.

When asked about the disaster management plans for Coimbatore in the event of an earth quake, Mr.Khanna said that Coimbatore was in Zone III of the seismic activity map. He added that the plans and experiences from the mock drills conducted at Uttarkhand, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh and the one planned at New Delhi shortly will be appropriate for handling earth quake situations any where. The policies and guidelines for disaster situations were available in the website of the NDMA i.e., http://www.ndma.gov.in/

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