Two recent earthquake incidents in India’s neighbourhood have woken up the Noida Authority forcing it to take substantial steps to formulate a Natural Disasters Action Plan in the twin cities — Noida and Greater Noida.
The authority is going to deploy a unit of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team having 140 commandos in GB Nagar district in order to deal with any natural disaster in the future.
Authority has also decided to train selective groups of Uttar Pradesh Police personnel and hundreds of volunteers under disaster management action plan. NDRF is already highly equipped to deal with natural disasters.
The authority has opened a natural disaster management cell in Noida and appointed a disaster planning specialist Kumar Raka, a consultant from NDRF, who is looking after the plan. Raka had conducted the rescue operation in Bihar floods, as well as
Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir disasters.
Kumar Raka said the Central Government has granted the permission to deploy a unit of NDRF in Noida that will work 24x7 in the district for immediate response. The decision was taken in view of the fact that the NDRF team from Ghaziabad could not respond in time in Noida as it takes nearly two to three hours to reach due to traffic mess.
“The twin cities are rapidly increasing in infrastructure with high rise buildings, but there was no disaster management plan like all top cities in the world. Now, Noida will have its own disaster management unit. A specialised training session
would be started for volunteers to assist in rescue operation.
Then the other phases of the action plan would be done simultaneously,” Kumar Raka told The Pioneer.