By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 22 Jun: In view of possible disasters during the upcoming monsoon season and Kanwar Yatra, a meeting was organised with various districts under the chairmanship of Additional Chief Executive Director (Administration) of Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (USDMA) Anand Swaroop here today.
In a virtual meeting held at the State Emergency Operations Centre of USDMA located at IT Park today, Anand Swaroop sought detailed information from all the districts regarding the preparations being made at their level to deal with any possible disaster during the monsoon season and the upcoming Kanwar Yatra. Regarding Kanwar Yatra, Swaroop asked Haridwar district administration to share the action plan and SOP with USDMA and State Emergency Operations Centre soon. He said that the biggest challenge during the Kanwar Yatra is crowd management, so it is important that all the districts along the Kanwar Yatra route ensure adequate preparations from now on.
In the meeting, Additional Chief Executive Officer (Implementation) Rajkumar Negi emphasised that during the Kanwar Yatra, it is necessary to have a strong security system for the Kanwariyas and common devotees on the Ghats. He said that in this, Aapda Mitra (Disaster Friends) can also be deployed at the Ghats for security arrangements. In view of the upcoming monsoon season, he instructed the officers of the districts concerned to review the security arrangements at the camping sites on the river banks.
Joint Chief Executive Officer Mohammed Obaidullah Ansari said that soon a check list will be sent to all the districts to check and test the preparations for the monsoon season. The format for the checklist has been prepared to make it easier to find out which works have been completed and which are remaining.
The district level officials related to the districts shared information regarding the deployment of NDRF, SDRF and JCB in view of the monsoon. Swaroop directed that GPS should be installed in JCBs present in all the districts, so that it is easy to find out where the current location of the JCB is and in case of landslide during the rainy season, it can be immediately sent to the spot from the nearest place. He said that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has recently issued SOP regarding specifying the role of each agency during a disaster. He said that these are being shared with all the districts.
Anand Swaroop said that in order to the instructions of the Chief Minister, all the District Panchayats, Block, Tehsil levels should prepare a database of pregnant women. He said that the Chief Minister had given instructions in a meeting held in the secretariat regarding monsoon that all the districts should make a database in view of monsoon so that in case of loss of connectivity during a disaster, they can be safely taken to hospitals.
It was also shared that a training meeting will soon be organized with the districts on how to take help of military forces during a disaster and how to request help from the Air Force for air evacuation. Additional Chief Executive Officer (Implementation) Rajkumar Negi has been assigned responsibility to share this information with the district level officers in this regard.
Executive Director Dr Piyush Rautela, SEOC in-charge Rahul Jugran, USDMA experts Manish Bhagat, Dr Vedika Pant, Rohit Kumar, Dr Pooja Rana, Jessica Teron, Tandrila Sarkar, Hemant Bisht and nodal officers of various departments posted in SEOC were present in the meeting.
