Midweek Musings 36 13.08.26
Mock drills are central to efficient administration
By Malini Shankar
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The earthquake in Colombia on Monday revealed the need for preparedness at the very least. While Preparedness calls for food rations and potable water availability for atleast 60 days for every citizen in every city, Multipurpose disaster shelters with enough water supply and sanitation and compatibility to frail, infirm and nursing mothers must be built for the entire population in every village in India, Medical preparedness, civic preparedness, training for search and rescue agencies, evacuation logistics and early warning installations, HIV screened blood supply, medicines, volunteers database, are other high points of disaster preparedness. In Smart City governance this can be made easier if calibrated against planned residential commerce and industrial hubs. Infrastructure, as Colombian and Venezuelan earthquakes point out has to be calibrated on a per capita basis and should be disaster compatible. At the very least this calls for a Census figure!
Mock drills help in being prepared not just for an earthquake struck landscape but for potential hydrometeorological disasters like avalanche, blizzard, cyclone, cloudburst, coastal storms, desertification, droughts, epidemic, earthquakes, El Nino, flash floods, floods, famine, forest fire, mudslides, landslides, hailstorms, hurricanes, squalls, thunderstorm, urban floods, and volcanic eruptions.
Mock drills bring out the deficiency in multi-purpose
disaster shelters: lack of compatibility to frail infirm and nursing mothers, inadequacy
in vet are infra in calamity stuck disaster landscapes, medical
preparedness, search and rescue agencies’ wish list, SAR teams get hands on
experience against a time-line too.
This checklist has to be updated as inter
agency database once a week; updating this database is best served by Mock
drills as it brings out the core competence as well as inadequacies of the
administration. More significantly it alerts us of the areas for improvement
which makes the difference between life and death in a disaster situation. Even
more significantly mock drills teaches us the gaps in inter-agency
coordination. That is of critical significance in disaster prone Sub-continent.
Mock drills serve as an important benchmark in
creating awareness hence mock drills in schools and educational institutions on
a monthly basis will simultaneously serve the interest of reaching out to
families through their children too.
While every multi storeyed apartment complex
must have a dedicated ambulance and fire station calibrated on a per capita
basis, this topic merits engagement in a separate article in itself. Nevertheless
there is a need for captive power generation plants, rain water reservoir,
dedicated ambulance service for humans and veterinary care for every blessed
multi storeyed apartment complex; and for every block of single storeyed houses
on a street; serving a maximum of 1000 citizens.
Water supply and sanitation boards for every
city administration must conduct a mock drill atleast once a month. In doing so
the water supply authorities can learn to manage inadequacies in water storage
infra, best practices in water supply management, and make recommendations to
the government for expansion in water supply.
We still do not have clarity on the propensity
to fire disasters once we have 100% piped cooking gas supply in cities like
Bangalore, Mangalore, Panaji or Bhubaneshwar Mysore.
Mock drills will show you for example which
loudspeakers are functional and which are not. Same for traffic signals. When
early warning has been sounded traffic chaos is inevitable. So protocols have
to be established by experts in traffic management. Green corridors in
congested cities will only compound the chaos. Imagine if a Tsunami warning has been sounded
following a massive earthquake and evacuation has been triggered. Traffic chaos
follows survival instinct and none is to blame obviously. So it is essential for
the traffic police to conduct a mock drill for learning about the gaps in
traffic management during early warning triggered traffic chaos. Ambulance
staff must be trained for mass evacuation. Legislators must keep in touch with
leaders of volunteer task forces to manage vet care as well as welfare of
differently abled, citizens, frail and infirm in the aftermath of calamities…
disaster struck landscapes.
| Search and Rescue underway in Cali, Colombia earlier this week |
But India’s Island territories like Andaman Nicobar
Islands do not have accredited correspondents of national newspapers like Times
of India, Indian express or the Hindu based in Port Blair / Sri Vijaypuram. Doordarshan
and All India radio have some fantastic penetration in Island territories but
the secure job / pensionable jobs means they are least concerned about import
of news.
All India radio Port Blair Station for example
did not bother to broadcast the early warning broadcast from the 11th
April 2012 M8.6 earthquake which triggered a Tsunami Warning in the entire
Indian Ocean Region issued by Indian National Centre for Ocean Information
Services. In a Right to Information application made by this writer for
publication of my photojournalistic treatise Preparing
for the Day After to All India Radio in Port Blair Station, the Station
Director replied that there was no Government Order to broadcast the Tsunami
Warning. Whereas the Station Director of Port Blair’s Doordarshan Kendra
personally took interest and broadcast a text scroll on the issuance of the
Tsunami early warning.
Mock drills by fire brigades have to be
conducted on a weekly basis especially in emerging smart cities like Vijayawada,
/ Amaravati. It is all fine to bribe an idiot in the municipal corporation to
get a fake license for construction of a 40 storeyed apartment complex with ‘smart’
piped cooking gas lines being laid below the foundation of the upcoming 40
storeyed apartment complex. Completely overlooked is the fact that there are
unexplored unquantified amounts of natural gas in vast portions of coastal
Andhra Pradesh. Just friction emanating from mild seismic activity can erupt
both natural gas emissions and the infrastructure for piped cooking gas. How
the natural gas emissions might burn out piped gas infra needs to be looked
into even before mock drills are in place.
But taking into account the corrupt idiot who
lacks knowledge of even geography never mind geology but is issuing licenses
for construction of multi storeyed buildings over oil and natural gas reserves
of coastal Andhra Pradesh, mock drills have to be prepared accordingly. Then we
scale up the corruption to know the rough estimate of potential cost of
disaster that can emanate from laying cooking gas pipelines in areas with
natural gas supply below the ground. What fate to cope with this kind and scale
of corruption!
Mock drills teach us all the do’s and don’ts in
disaster situations. More significantly it shows us inadequacies in housing,
infrastructure, utilities, services, food, water, and energy security, health
care, and medical preparedness. When was the last time we had a mock drill?
During COVID 19 Lockdown there were a few flag marches; but as we prepared for
bombing during Op- Sindoor there was no mock drill held, atleast in Bangalore. We
as citizens need to be aware, need to apply through RTI for information on
conduct of mock drills as it benefits, ultimately.
I wrote to the Lok Sabha Representative and
Circle Inspector of my local police station offering to take care of frail, infirm
and pet animals if evacuation were to be offered.
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