Additional chief secretary Radha Raturi chaired a meeting with officers of the air force, army and paramilitary forces along with other departmental officials concerned regarding coordination for ensuring swift provision of relief to citizens during the monsoon season.
Raturi stressed on the need for focusing more on the villages vulnerable to disaster scenarios during the monsoon season. She suggested that disaster management plans should be shared with municipal corporations and municipalities while priority should be accorded to the role of the Gram Pradhan in mason training.
For fire related disasters, she spoke of using messaging system for taking the help of helicopter pilots. Raturi also advocated according priority to disaster awareness programmes in private buildings and slum settlements.Earlier, disaster management and rehabilitation secretary Amit Singh Negi said that the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority is aiming to maintain the zero-accident level during the coming monsoon.
For this purpose, all districts have been directed to ensure adequate level of preparations and facilitating necessary resources at vulnerable places. The State Disaster Response Force is developing a mobile phone application for the convenience of tourists and pilgrims on important routes. Instructions have been given to all districts for conducting mock-drills before the onset of monsoon in order to check their level of preparedness and resources.
The USDMA additional CEO Ridhim Agrawal gave a presentation on the preparations of the authority and SDRF.
She informed that a total of 108 satellite phones had been provided to the districts with process underway for procuring 25 more satellite phones for the SDRF. For more accurate information about the weather, the task of setting up one Doppler radar each at Mukteshwar and Surkunda is in the final stage. Further, 107 automatic weather stations and 25 field observatories have also been established. A mobile phone application is also being developed for sharing information about rain.
The armed forces officers requested that picketing be facilitated at all helipads to enable stability of helicopters parked there.
