Each state needs a well-informed action plan for disaster readiness
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Vinod Thomas,
Chitranjali Tiwari
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The spike in recent years in extreme calamities, topped by the covid outbreak, spotlights the urgency of better disaster preparedness in Indian states and the Centre. Health pandemics like covid and climate hazards like the Uttarakhand floods or Delhi heat waves have differing origins, but they spotlight common gaps in readiness. With extreme health and climate disasters set to continue, these events must be seen as regular occurrences rather than one-off acts of nature.
Bloomberg ranks Singapore highest in covid resilience, based on fatality rates, test rates and vaccination rates. Drawing on its experience with Sars and Influenza A, the Singapore government has prioritized disaster preparedness in its investments. One indication of this priority is that the government has built up digital infrastructure and engineering capabilities that can be deployed
Uttarakhand floods highlight the need to factor in the environment while planning development
The fact that it was the location of the hydropower project that added to the human toll in Chamoli got mixed up with the debate over what caused the landslide. The site of a destroyed hydroelectric power station after a flash flood in Uttarakhand. | Anshree Fadnavis / Reuters
The recent landslide in February on a glacier in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli and subsequent floods and toll of human life and property has drawn our attention once again to the irony and stark reality of the fragility of the mighty Himalayas. A similar focus emerged when large scale devastation followed a bout of intense rain in 2013 in Kedarnath.
When disasters strike in the times of Covid-19, the challenge for disaster managers increases manifold. In the last one year, India was hit by three cyclones in its coastal areas while Uttarakhand faced a tragedy as recent as February. Learning from its experiences, New Delhi would be hosting the annual conference of International Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) from March 17-19. To be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the conference would be attended digitally by prime ministers of Britain, Fiji and Italy. “We expect 900 participants and are looking at a whole lot of issues around resilient infrastructure including those of policy, sectoral focus, technical issues, etc,” said Kamal Kishore, member, National Disaster Management Authority.
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For the last one month, our team has been camping at the Tapovan power plant disaster site in Uttarakhand. The team met hundreds of victims and the families of those missing/dead in the last couple of weeks. Asha Negi (name changed for privacy) is one of them.
When we met her three weeks ago, she was numb, sitting expressionless at the corner of the temporary relief camp in Tapovan. It seemed her body had no energy left, even to cry. She was in a state of complete shock and despair.
Our team member sat beside her for more than an hour, struggling to find the right words, before she finally spoke. When we asked Asha how she was, she turned her eyes towards us, and seemed to be noticing us for the first time in the last few hours.