Mock drills to check quake readiness

Tribune News Service

Dehradun/ Mussoorie, Feb 21

Mock drills were conducted at Dehradun, New Tehri and Uttarkashi today to assess the disaster response preparedness of the district administrations during earthquake.

As part of the drills, officials linked to various units of disaster management rushed to the Emergency Operation Centre at the secretariat in Dehradun around 10.02 am today and took charge in the aftermath of a simulated earthquake at Chamoli. This was followed by making district disaster management centres at Dehradun, Tehri, Chamoli and Uttarakashi immediately operational. All the rescue teams, including police Department, Home Guard and other officials were also put on operational mode.

The drills were conducted on the basis of the incident command system, which is a mechanism to respond to emergency situations such as earthquakes and natural disasters. It provides a standardised approach for multiple agencies to act in a streamlined manner in such situations.

At New Tehri, Chief Development Officer and incident commander Ashish Bhatgai led a team of officials to participate in the mock drill. The drill began with the information of an earthquake measuring 7.02 on the Richter scale being shared by the District Disaster Control Centre at 10.02 am. This was followed by the incident response system being activated.

NDRF jawans, along with several other government employees, responded to the disaster alarm and rushed to take up tasks assigned to them at the staging area set up at Bauradi stadium in New Tehri. All the government divisions involved in the earthquake response system assembled at the stadium as per the directions by the operation section. It being a severe earthquake measuring more than 7 on the Richter scale, Army and Air Force officials were sent the information about the disaster and were told to stay standby.

The SDMs posted in various tehsils of the district served as deputy incident commanders and provided information about the damage caused and rescue work to the officers concerned.

At the Bauradi stadium, arrangements were made for 10 ambulances, 10 buses, 10 trucks and eight small and six big tents to cater to any form of injuries occurring due to the earthquake.

In addition to this, two fire tending vehicles, four JCB machines and two cranes were also arranged to meet the requirements. More than one dozen police wireless sets were activated to serve during any disruption of regular communication services.

The State Disaster Centre was keeping a close watch and receiving minute-by -minute updates from the district headquarters during the mock drill. Major Sandeep Dhankar was appointed as the observer to the whole mock drill exercise at New Tehri.

Tehri CDO said the teams from NDRF, Police Department, Home Guard, NCC cadets and medical officials supported the drill which was a success.

He said Tehri comes under the seismic zone four and the exercise was important to assess the response of various departments. As many as 33 officials were given important responsibilities during the exercise, he added.

At Uttarkashi, the incident response team was activated as the alarm of the mock earthquake was sounded around 10 am, with Ramleela ground acting as the staging area for the drill. The search and rescue parties were sent to those places from where casualties were being reported. Several persons posing as injured were rushed to a Dehradun hospital.

Officials form the SDRF, Police Department, ITBP, Army, fire services, Red Cross volunteers, Border Road Organisation (BRO) along with 200 NSS volunteers participated in the Mock drill at Uttarkashi.

However, no such mock drill was organised at Mussoorie, an important tourist destination of the state.

Many residents said the hill town of Mussoorie should be included in mock exercises so that lives of tourists caught in an earthquake-like situation could be saved.

Later, presiding over a meeting of senior officials, Chief Secretary S Ramaswamy reviewed the overall performance of the mock exercises. He asked the officials to further improve their preparedness. He directed Transport Department officials to prepare a list of vehicles that could be acquired for rescue work in case of a disaster.

National Disaster Management Authority senior advisor Maj Gen VK Dutta, who was a witness to the mock drill, expressed satisfaction over the performance of the officials concerned. Uttarakhand’s senior official Amit Negi was also present at the meeting.