Fourteen agencies participate in 40-minute mock drill at King’s Circle, block traffic.
Can one possibly fight a war without an enemy? If your answer is no, there is a surprise from the civic body: not only can the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) fight a battle without an opponent, it can win it as well.
As part of the urban flood and disaster management, the municipal body organised a drill near Gandhi Market at King’s Circle on Tuesday. It fought a “raging flood” for 40 minutes and “rescued” several people. But the whole operation lacked just one thing: water.
Because of the drill, the main road was blocked for about 40 minutes. In the drill, 14 agencies including the BMC’s storm water drain department, traffic police, fire brigade, the National Disaster Response Force, ambulance service, relief department and civil defence participated. It started at about 3.10pm.
As part of the drill, some BMC staff “drowned” in the “flood”. Then they were “rescued” by the National Disaster Response Force personnel in a raft bodily lifted by a few fire brigade personnel to give an impression that it was floating. The response team than carried away the “victims” on a stretcher to an ambulance waiting nearby.
The whole drama was amusing, but it caused chaos on the road. A spectator said: “The whole exercise looked futile. The dramatised version was not even remotely similar to reality.”
When BK Khanna, urban flood specialist, National Disaster Management Authority, was asked why the drill was not conducted in an open space, he said: “The objective [of the drill] was to prepare a culture of preparedness and to check the co-ordination between various agencies to respond to a disaster in an effective way. It had to be done on the road in order to get the feel of the real incident. We wanted to see the gaps present in the system,” said Khanna.
SS Shinde, joint municipal commissioner, said: “The drill was conducted near Gandhi Market because it is a flood-prone area.”
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