Drills for natural disaster management

In the winter of 1977, a huge tidal wave, an aftermath of a cyclonic depression in the Bay of Bengal, struck the coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. In the Krishna district, where the impact was the most severe, the waves were so high that bodies had to be recovered from the top of coconut trees! The storm was to hit the southern district of Ramanathapuram, where, as district collector, I supervised elaborate evacuation and relief arrangements, clearing out coastal villages, moving villagers to shelters, arranging for food and provisioning. On the last day, the storm suddenly veered northwards to unsuspecting Andhra, leaving over 8,000 dead, thousands of heads of cattle and hundreds of villages destroyed. We have seen disasters ? flood, earthquakes and drought. Gujarat, Andhra and Tamil Nadu used to boast of the best disaster management drills ? there were blue books of instructions on what to do and who should do what, and it worked very well.

We learned the priorities, some of them the hard way, seeing calamities. The first, a system to recover and to dispose of bodies. It?s not possible to move machinery to these locations immediately, and the recovery has to be done by manual labor. So you require a lot of manpower for each village. And not all of them will handle animal carcasses ? only some people will, so you need some of them in every village, and must know where to get them from. Dry firewood is needed for cremations. Quick systems are required for identification, photographing and documentation of burials and cremations. And all this must be completed within 72 hours of the disaster. Importantly, villagers should be made aware that the administration is in charge, and not to allow indiscriminate handling and disposal of bodies.

Next, clean water and shelter, and the assistance of voluntary organizations for cooking, feeding and medical relief in each shelter. Water has to be brought in ? bullock carts, tractors, and even motorcycle loads. And this has to be sustained for weeks, perhaps even months until rehabilitation is possible.

Once these are in place, then one can look at relief and rehabilitation. Again, a systematic drill. First, clear the debris using heavy mac-hinery to move and dispose of it. Then the surveys as to who to get what ? houses, boats, fishing nets. Enumerate, distribute, and supervise reconstruction. Takes over a year?s work to complete.

What it requires is meticulous attention to detail, breaking down tasks into small discrete elements, which are repetitive, and can be handled by small groups in village after village. It requires clarity about what needs to be done in 72 hours, in one week, in one month and thereafter.

In the present disaster, precious time was lost initially. Access to disaster areas was not so much of a problem except in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. On the mainland, the tsunami hit villages were only a flat land walk away from those villages that were not ravaged. It took time for teams to move into action, for the army to mobilise (it was waiting for instructions from Delhi), for the paramilitary and police to swing into action for rescue.

Order restored itself fairly quickly in Tamil Nadu, and one could see the old drill back in action after the first 24 hours. It is the neglect of activity in Andaman and Nicobar that is a cause for concern, not just in the matter of relief, but also in the matter of governance.

Interestingly, the first pictures of the Car Nicobar damage were from US satellite pictures. We have a sophisticated remote sensing agency, with capability of resolution up to at least five meters. Damage analysis should have been available the same day. Second, air and sea-borne rescue operations could have succeeded in bringing quick relief. At the end of one week, it is interesting that there is no clear plan emerging on rehabilitation of islanders. Is there going to be resettlement or reconstruction? This is always a major debate, even more so in the case of ecologically-sensitive communities. This debate raged in Bhuj after the earthquake. It is the lack of a clear strategy that is leading to media comments on how to reach relief to villagers and problems of implementation. And perhaps, in the enthusiasm for collecting donations and on doing something big, attention on the immediate activity gets lost. Announcement of big sums of money are not required immediately. They are required in the reconstruction phase, and that takes a period of time ? a tsunami watch system is an example of this.

It is important to realise that. It is important to get the relief phase in order and in control very quickly. Clear the debris, and rehouse and take care of the displaced. Focus on this is sadly lessening. Even the best managed of the voluntary agencies need guidance from the administration on what to do where. In the first two days in Chennai, those affected close to the town kept getting fed by different agencies every hour, while others, further away, got very little.

This is what the blue books were all about. Meticulous instructions documenting personnel, resources, responsibilities and duties, which used to be updated every six months at a huge conference of all departments in the secretariat. Our administrative grounding was in relief operations. These systems have disappeared. To quite some extent, the media has to take responsibility. When relief is carried out in the glare of the media, expectations of large announcements, ad hoc packages, overtake routine necessary activities. Second, there is little attention paid in state headquarters to disaster preparedness. Finally, the tendency of the central government to jump in with unsolicited advice, exacerbates the confusion.

Once again, the disaster is an opportunity to take stock of the weaknesses in the delivery system, to recognise that this system was effective even a decade or two ago, and to bring back order and systems to what has become, largely, an ad hoc system of administration in state after state.

The author is a former finance secretary and economic advisor to the PM