Disaster management appears more about maintaining number of victims of a calamity and disbursing relief funds than preparing plans to reduce the risk in the event of calamity hitting the State, especially Ranchi and the surrounding areas.
Undeniably, disaster management in Ranchi district has been a low-key affair even after the lapse of five years when the prevailing guidelines were issued by the Disaster Management Division of Ministry of Home Affairs. The plan which ideally should have been in place as the current guidelines will cease after 2015 apparently has just began in Ranchi district.
The Disaster Management Committee has small record pertaining to loss of lives, livestock and property in all 18 blocks in Ranchi due to a calamity in last five-years. A data at disposal is considered necessary for charting out a comprehensive disaster management plan for bringing timely relief and carrying out rescue operations with the help of community in the event of a calamity. The belated realisation of the need of data has made the administration to issue instructions to block officials to compile the data for five years and report it to district headquarters.
“Right now we have details of only 15 departments so we have asked remaining three departments to provide us the data,” said Additional Collector (law&Order) IA Ansari.
Excessive rain, hailstorm and thundering are some of the calamities that strike the capital and hinterland especially when weather is in transition from summer to monsoon and for the entire monsoon period. Besides, cyclones like Phailin emerging from the Bay of Bengal also wrecks havoc in the region. In last one year the district administration has distributed more relief fund due to devastations caused by a passing Phailin that hit the city in October 2013.
However, risk reduction plans in rural and urban areas are still to be framed even as the monsoon is just around the corner. While, the urban risk reduction plan is nonexistent representatives of Panchayati Raj Institutions will be brought on board for carrying out relief and rescue operations in rural areas.
“We have installed conductors at every school however we rely on information to reduce risk due to thundering in rural areas,” pointed out Ansari.
Meanwhile, the instruction to collect data was issued at a meeting of the Disaster Management (DM) Committee of Ranchi conducted on Thursday. The meeting was chaired by Ranchi DC Vinay Kumar Choubey and officials of other departments who are in the DM Committee.
Sources in the Disaster Management Cell of the district confided that block officials have also been asked to report the details of assets maintained for carrying out relief and rescue operations in the aftermath of a disaster. The exercise of compiling data is being done with the twin objective of facilitating students of Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi in framing a disaster management policy for Ranchi which the committee is likely to make the part of the plan officials claim to exist besides estimating the need for improving the ability to manage a catastrophe.
“We have a plan but it is a good approach to get inputs and innovative ideas from them (IIM students),” maintained State Project Officer, Disaster Management, SK Shrivastava.