Identify disaster-prone buildings, says Ravindra

Inaugurating a national seminar here on disaster management, “Safe World -2010” organised here by the National Authority, New Delhi & Director General of Police, Commandant General Home Guards, Director Civil Defence and Director General Fire & Emergency Services, he said, “It is time we give a thought on the mechanism of co ordination and come together to take collective decisions.”

Jija Madhavan Harisingh, DGP Home Guards, Civil Defence & Fire Services said, “India has been vulnerable to many natural disasters due to our geographies. After the 26/11 attack on US, the definition of a disaster has changed and few other man-made disasters in the city are still fresh in our minds.  We understand that we cannot prevent all the disasters but we can however prevent some of them by taking adequate precautionary methods including proper training to handle such emergency situations.”

Jija Madhavan Harisingh said the time has come to have evacuation drills at every highrise building or otherwise every month at least in the metro cities. Speaking at the launch J K Sinha, retired IPSofficer and member of NDMA, New Delhi said, “Disaster Management is a very important subject as it costs a lot to reconstruct.

In Japan, even a calamity like an earthquake results in almost zero deaths due to their training and preparedness to tackle such issues. The NDMA plans to sensitize all the Home & District level officers and these training events will be funded by NDMA, where all the issues will be addressed and clarified.”

He further said, “The first responders of any calamity is the community and to address this issue, we need to put a strong plan in place to prepare the community for any kind of disaster management.  We need to have lot of trained man power during such calamities and this can be achieved by Civil Defence only if the civilians come forward and volunteer themselves.”